I have compiled a list of circumstantial evidence, if, when taken in context, shows a very disturbing sequence of events. Mr Wolter, login janc, when repairing the GreX machine, happened to stumble across item 39 in the agora conference on m-net's bbs, regarding his wife's baby diary, which he found very insulting. He entered a response about this; here is the header: #211 Jan Wolter [janc] (40) (Mon, Jan 5, 2004 (07:23)): Later on, Mrs. Mates read the same item and responded to it; here is the header: #217 Valerie Mates [popcorn] (4) (Mon, Jan 5, 2004 (11:49)): In it, she alludes to the fact that the diary had been purged. Research revealed the diary was located in the femme conference. However, some items are missing. Having a look at the bbs errorlog, we find this: ----Valerie Mates: valerie(112) pid=13463 cf=/bbs/femme 81 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 11:59:08 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 81^J error was:You can't do that! ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 81 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:01 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 81^J error was:Deleting message 81 ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 106 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:13 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 106^J error was:Deleting message 106 ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 145 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:19 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 145^J error was:Deleting message 145 ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 142 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:25 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 142^J error was:Deleting message 142 ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 117 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:34 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 117^J error was:Deleting message 117 ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 113 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:42 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 113^J error was:Deleting message 113 I would like to point your attention to the dates and times. Ten minutes after responding in m-net's agora conference, Mrs. Mates enters the femme conference and tries to delete some items. A few minutes later, the conference admin enters and deletes them for good. I sincerely hope these items were not the aforementioned baby diary. However I have good reason to believe it was. If so, a great and evil act of censorship has taken place. Regardless of the potential sensitivity of the material, they did not merit censorship. I demand action.393 responses total.
I thank soup for bringing this matter to our attention.
Valerie reported her actions, but not their cause, to the Board and staff. I see no reason to assume any wrong-doing on her part.
If I mail bombed the system, but I reported it first, would I be let off? No. Neither should Valerie: she actually censored items with HUNDREDS of responses from other users. That is a SERIOUS offence, and no-one but someone fucking a staff member would be given the priviledge.
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Um, Valerie, you know it's not. That's why people can't do it unless they abuse their staff powers.
(Of course, we know for a fact that Valerie IS a liar. She said in a previous item that she'd restore my polytarp account if I fulfilled certain conditions. I did, and she never restored the account; no PRAGMATIC harm was done, of course, because cross eventually restored it for me, but there's, I should think, harm done in that LIES are INHERENTLY unjust. that's just imho, though.)
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Right, especially ignore us when we're trying to prevent abuse of the system.
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Right, let's let Grex become a place absent of free speech, because you don't like the a subset of the people complaining about the erosion of free speech.
#4: "It's longstanding Grex policy that the person who created an item can delete it." Really? I don't think so.
To clarify: People are allowed to purge their own responses, but not those of other people. At least, that's always been my understanding.
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It's never been the case that one user could remove another person's posts. No without root power. Didn't you notice then when you first tried to remove the entire items while on as valerie? Is it possible for you to put the items back (I assume you have them backed up somewhere) then delete only your responses? I know that would be a job, but it's the right thing to do. In my opinion.
re 11 The only time that can happen is if that item has responses only by the person who created it. Once other people respond to it, that ability is removed. As you can see, it required an abuse of Conference Admin priviledges to delete these items. There were several other alternatives, such as freezing and retiring them, or censoring her own responses, rather than the deletion of not only Valerie's posts, but other, innocent users. Not to mention she hid the fact that she deleted these items. At least on m-net, this doesn't happen.
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Valerie took advantage of staff powers to do something that the rest of us wouldn't be allowed to do. I don't think she had any ill intent, though. I'd have to say I think it's a bit "unfair" but I don't find it too troubling beyond that. If this is the most inappropriate thing Grex staff has ever done, we're doing pretty good. I think valerie at least owes an apology to people who posted. If the items can be recovered I think they should be replaced. I'm not willing to call for her to resign, though; as far as I know this hasn't happened before, so I don't see a pattern of abuse here.
Your demand has no force. If you are serious about it, make a specific proposal in Co-op, and if the majority of the membership agrees with you (which I seriously doubt will happen, especially if the removal of the posts by other users is undone), then Valerie's staff staus would be revoked.
gull slipped in
Oh for Christ's sake, naftee, get a clue. Nobody hid anything. And this wasn't a malicious action. I expect Valerie was very hurt by what she found on M-net. Why not talk about this in reasonable terms and see if there is a less drastic "fix" before we bring out the stones. Maybe we should even see if folks care. Lots of forums seem to function pretty well with censorship the norm. It's been a long long time since we looked at how our fairly rigid censorship policy is working for Grex. I know how I feel about it, but I'd be curious how others see it.
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If you think the welcome line should be changed, make a proposal and if the majority of the membership agrees with you then it will be changed.
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It's not childish to be hurt. Adults get hurt.
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I've long thought the general practice here on the deletion of text to be too strict. The "ownership" of a collaborative work is always murky. In the case of a conferencing item, the responses often are worthless without the text of the item that led to those responses. To remove large pieces of an item is to destroy its coherence. It makes no sense to me to leave anything behind. An item that is largely about one person's experience, and the reactions to that experience, seems to me to belong more to the person being described than to the person doing the describing. Prose, despite the poetry, is rarely deathless. Sooner or later, the medium it is recorded on disintegrates. Often, the disintegration is none too soon. Let it go.
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Yes, Valerie did something the rest of us can't do. Yes, Grex has had a long standing policy that once you've posted something, youo can never change your mind about having it online. Fortunately, Grex members changed the policy a few years ago to allow you to scribble things you've changed your mind about so that they aren't publically available any more. Frankly, the things in her baby diary were things I'd m never put on the Web/Internet in the first place. And they involve personal informationo ab out people too young to have an opinon about what was being done/said. I wish we -all- had the authority to kill items we started. Let me mull that over, because it may be time for a member vote on a well-crafted version of that. The whining about free-speech is ludicrous. As has been explained, on a word for word percentage the content of those items was about 95% Valerie This whole bit has me thinking we should move toward MORE ability to censor items on Grex, not less!
I'd want to hear complaints from the people whose content was deleted, not the usual troublemakers like polytarp and jp2.
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While I am a little surprised about valerie's feelings in this matter, I am not surprised that she wanted to remove the baby diaries. I mean, she has talked about a lot of very private things and I can totally understand that she might not want those lingering around here. Maybe it is time to revisit our censorship policy. Maybe making the author of the item the "owner" could have some advantages.
On what basis is it "wrong," jp2? I don't see it.
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"Arbitrarily"? No. For good reason? Yes.
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I feel that staff shouldn't be allowed to remove their personal items just because they no longer want them public unless the same ability is granted to everyone. I know there are probably items in old agoras that I'd prefer to go back and delete, but since I'm not a staff member that option isn't open to me.
(So I guess I agree with jp2 to the extent that I feel this was wrong, and that valerie should, at very least, get a stern "don't do that again." I'm not willing to call for her resignation; I see this as an isolated incident and not a pattern of abuse of staff powers.)
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I actually doubt that. But it would probably depend on what staff member you asked.
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I'm not stupid. :(
>#36 of 50 by Scott Helmke (scott) on Tue Jan 6 13:24:39 2004: >I'd want to hear complaints from the people whose content was >deleted, not the usual troublemakers like polytarp and jp2. I resent having my posts deleted. While I can understand why Valerie did what she did, it's not like she didn't have an alternative to just nuking the complete items. There were a large number of side-discussions, like any other item on grex, that could be pretty beneficial to the community. And it's not like she knew it wasn't allowed. She did try to delete them as herself, but when that didn't work.. out came the magic staff powers. Nice work.
Funny, all the evidence I've seen points to the contrary. You're welcome to attempt to provide some counter evidence, but I doubt you're up to the challenge.
Mynxcat slipped in
Would an author of an item have the power to retire it?
(I could have sworn that, as a FW, I had the option of killing an item. I don't believe this to be anything new and, when I was actively FWing the games conference, it was a standard practice. isn't valerie a FW in the conference where she had posted the items? doesn't that give her the power to kill said items, regardless of her staff position? and, if that's the case, will the jackasses who have groundlessly claimed that valerie abused some nebulous staff power [and the list appears to be getting longer] apologize to her?) (what was the problem, again?)
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I also object to having had my posts removed.
Re resp:53: These lines from resp:0 would tend to support mynxcat's interpretation: --- ----Valerie Mates: valerie(112) pid=13463 cf=/bbs/femme 81 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 11:59:08 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 81^J error was:You can't do that! ----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712 cf=/bbs/femme 81 ps T3.3a Mon Jan 5 12:00:01 2004 prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 81^J error was:Deleting message 81 --- It looks like Valerie tried to delete them as a normal user, then when she couldn't, switched to doing it as cfadm. That should have provided her with a pretty strong hint that this isn't something normal users can do. I'm sorry but pleading ignorance isn't very convincing.
Response 57 highlights the disagreement: I think the author of an item has the right to remove the item, EVEN IF OTHERS HAVE RESPONDED. This includes agora's "happy", "bummed" and "license plate" items, where the item author is often just the 'lucky' one who got there first.
Do you think it'd be appropriate for, say, naftee to be able to delete this item, despite how obviously important it is?
I'm not thrilled that valerie used her extra powers to do what she did. But if all grex users without those extra powers can request of those that do, at any time, to have their items similarly killed, and that arrangement is duly documented, then I would be satisfied. (I'm not happy about the precedent this sets, but OTOH I don't see this coming up that much.) However, if grex is not willing to guarantee all users this capability, then it should freely admit that some users, for right or wrong (and it might be "right"), get special treatment.
Please clarify #61 - by "has the right" do you mean "currently possesses the capability" (i.e. via picospan commands) or "philosophically should have the ability"?
resp:61 I would agree with you but I think I have to admit that I would be kind of angry if someone entered the "happy" item and then later on in the month decided that they wanted to be a pain and kill it. (not that I think that is very likely to happen) However, an item such as the baby diary where so much of the content was personal and from one author is different. In my mind it is anyway. Maybe the answer is to give authors control over their items. That way folks who are worried that their responses might get deleted can refrain from posting in items where that is likely to happen.
re 30 You're an idiot. It was janc who was the one who found them, and he was more upset than valerie. Do something useful for once, and read the stupid item. re 63 Despite what Mary Remmers says, the deletion of those items was not "duly documented" as you wrote above. I had to find them myself. Why didn't valerie post an item about it in femme, that the items were gone? Simply because she knew what she did was wrong. I think jp2's demand in response #17 is quite in order. According to http://www.valeriemates.com/programming.html , it appears Mrs. Mates is an experienced programmer. She certainly had the ability to write a script to remove all her baby diary and associated text from the femme conference. Instead, she chose the big red hammer.
Re #62: Yes.
Re #64: Right, not (currently) capability. (cmcgee made some comment
about drafting a proposition to add the capability.)
Re #65: Yup, I'd be a tad irritated by such behaviour as well. However,
I think it self-correcting: When the item was deleted, someone else
would enter a new one. If the same person did the same thing enough
times ("enough" is in the eye of the beholder), folks would make sure
that the item was entered by someone they deemed reliable and avoid the
unreliable item.
"Fully documented" means that the procedure for getting an item removed
is published. (BTW, I've learned something from this item: I didn't
know there was an "error log" for bbs.)
I don't think Valerie did the appropriate thing here. However, I'm far more disapproving of naftee, polytarp (whatever the current login is) and even jp2 for using this as yet another excuse to harass people while pretending to be outraged.
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True, there are some people who are *upset*. You are the only one(s) claiming outrage.
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re 67 You shock me. re 70 Does that make you the American asshole? You could be on to something. re 71 Response #0 does not claim outrage.
Re resp:61: I think that's a valid argument to make. But it's not what the item is about. If you want to make it possible for people to delete their items, that would be a good proposal to put to a member vote. What we're talking about here is a staff member exercising, for their own benefit, a privilage that no one else has a clearly defined right to.
and for good reason!
Well, I thought that was part of the discussion: _Does_ the item author have the right to remove their items? I'd thought so. So the author removing the items does not strike me as an abuse of the tools available.
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jp2's right. The fact that picospan was configured so that a user could not delete an item he authored after someone had responded implies that such a thing is not allowed. And why would one think that it was ok to delete posts by other people, especially since it's common knowledge that fws are not allowed to delete items ad hoc unless it contained material that was security sensitive. If a fw does not pholosophically have this right, it's not hard to see that a normal user definitely does not have such a right. I guess Valerie always thought of her baby diary as a "private" place on grex and resented any comments in it that didn't match her philosophy. Since she couldn't ban users from responding, she froze the item. Fair enough. But to delete the complete items, instead of just her responses is definitely stepping over the line.
FairWitnesses are expected not to delete items because that is more "control" of a conference than is generally granted.
You can extrapolate that to individual items you enter.
I disagree. FairWitness is an official role, authorship is not.
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re 1 Anytime, plongeur.
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Valerie was the author of the items. Remember?
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Quit talking to your right hand.
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Neither has her husband.
What, exactly, does "Nobody from the Board or the Staff has responded" mean? What kind of response are you looking for?
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re 93 Hey, some of us actually care if the staff members abuse the system and their users. But wait, since being an abusive staff member is the norm for you, I guess you trying to push the matter off means that we're doing the right thing.
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Wow, you guys have too much time on your hands (all of you). So do I. Actually, I don't, but I'm slacking right now so it's all right. My 2c: You can't unring a bell, and you shouldn't be able to unsay something you've said. People need to take responsibility for their words, even if they're in a public forum. People also need to realize that *because* they're in a public forum, it's not only possible but highly probable that someone with an ax to grind will say something nasty about what they've written. It's too bad, but that's the way it is and the price we pay for our freedom of expression. Therefore, I don't think authors should be able to delete their items, even if no one else has responded. But, that's just my opinion. I do fear that grex is stepping dangerously close to censorship in its grossest form: deleting text of others because you don't like what they say. If that happens, I *really* _will_ quit staff and grex in all its forms. Freedom of speech is just too important to me; it's the cornerstone of the country grex is hosted in, and it's under attack constantly (including in the United States Senate and Congress), and the first thing I learned in high school journalism class is that as soon as you start down that slippery slope, no matter how good your intentions are, you can't pull yourself back up. It's also the thing that makes me *want* to support grex. If it goes by a formal vote of the membership, then I'll consider grex's mission compromised, its commitment inauthentic, and I'll go, too.
I've become very aware that it's best to be wary of what to post out on the Internet, as people will get a hold of the information and lampoon it at their leisure... perhaps because they thought it was worthy of a cheap laugh, or it was deemed worthy of scorn, or whatever. I agree with Mark-- adults do get hurt, but I also agree with Coleen (cmcgee)that some information maybe shouldn't be posted public. Myself, I decided to grow a thick skin about my experience and move on- - if I wanted to have a journal of sorts, I decided I'd do it differently. Some of the weblogs out there do allow you to lock entries to certain users and not the public. Grex is not equipped to do that. I'm not sure if granting an author the power to kill their own item is necessarily the right thing to do. It wipes away what others have said, which may have been off the topic, as Sapna said. Freezing items... well, I'm sure that function is there for many good reasons, even if it would seem it functions like a "No more for now" button. As for deleting your own posts/entries... hmmm... I am a bit curious why Grex members changed that to make that the case, i.e. why that was not the case before.
I don't think it's that you couldn't do it before, but that the text still showed up in the censored log, and people objected to the idea of being able to delete their text without it really disappearing. The situation right now maybe isn't perfect, but it's workable. People have the right to delete their own text. Okay. I'm not sure I agree, but since the capability is there I've made use of it myself. What I object to is extending that power to include the text of others. In an ideal world, we probably wouldn't have that ability. But in an ideal world, no one's feelings would ever get hurt, so it'd be a moot point as far as this is concerned.
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I would be glad to give Valerie permission to delete all my entries on those items. The items were -diaries- that she allowed other people to read and (sometimes, when the items weren't frozen) comment on. We are not talking about censorship here. Valerie didn't remove posts that she disagreed with. In fact, it would be pretty hilarious if we could edit and reenter only mynxcat, jp2, and the other complainors' posts. Then everyone could see how meaningless this attack is. We're not talking about throttling free speech either. anyone is welcome to start an item to talk about any issue they like. Valerie didn't keep anyone from starting new items. Any FW of a conference could do what Valerie did; it doesn't require extraordinary root powers. Attacking Valerie is stupid. What we are grappling with here is our ever-present balancing act between you-can't-unring-a-bell and the ability to make amends in some fashion if what you said in an item was something you'd like to remove from the public record. Not make people forget, just remove the words from public display. We voted to allow everyone to make that decision for themselves. The whole thing would be within our policies and non-controversial if Valerie eliminated all her responses, and those of us who agreed with her eliminated ours. We could let mynxcat's immortal words remain on display, along with anyone else who thought their contribution to the descriptions of Kendra and Arlo's development processes was significant. If Valerie were the conf fairwitness, she could have done this without violating any Grex principles. The only real policy violation came when she did it herself, without having the FW involved in the decision. Give it a break. Troublemakers are stirring the pot again. We are rehashing the same issues of "permanently engraved versus able to be erased" I think we have come to a reasonable balance by allowing scribbled to be truly hidden, and allowing FWs to make decisions on an item-by-item basis. If people want to remake either of those decisions, then let's discuss the policies. If people want to cause a fuss, then don't pretend it's some big personal affront or some heroic support of freedom of speech. Fuss about the policies we have. Because Valerie's actions were all allowable under current policy.
Hot Keyboards! Both 98 and 99 slipped in.
Just for the record, I wouldn't be so sure there *aren't* copies floating around. I don't know if anyone did (and I don't have one), but as you know, it would have been technically possible for anyone on grex to create a copy if they really wanted to, and there are probably still copies on backup tape. I always take the position that anything I write on the net will never go away. I've already given up any hope of attaining an elected position as a result. :-)
Exactly. I learned the hard way that what you put out there can be scrutinized, copied, and satirized at will. Also-- I'm sure it's worse outside Grex... I've seen some hints of horror on weblogs-- but of course, people get much more scarily candid then they do here. resp:100 Point taken... discuss the policies. Whining and bellyaching and attacking people isn't going to get a lot. It might breed resentment, distrust, apathy, hurt feelings-- any of the above-- all of above-- but it probably won't change a lot.
I don't have a lot of time to respond right now, so I'll just reiterate what I said earlier: Valerie's earlier assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, it has NEVER been Grex policy to allow authors to delete their own items. Had it ever been proposed as a policy, I would have opposed it, on the grounds that it grants people censorship rights over OTHER PEOPLE'S WORDS. I feel that that is contrary to the free speech principles that Grex supposedly stands for. I'm very much in agreement with Dan Cross's #96.
I'll add that, like Dan, I'm a staff member. There is NOT a concensus among staff on this issue.
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Do any of the people who posted in Valerie's baby item want their responses restored?
Yes, I do.
re 99 >If I was a user without staff privileges, > at this point I would contact a staffer for help. I would have explained > to the staffer that I no longer wanted my baby diary to be public <snip> > And, as a staffer receiving > that request, I would have deleted the items in a heartbeat. So now you're saying that your opinion would (and should) be the one adopted by all staff members. Wake up; some of the current staff have objected. Don't assume that just because you are a staff member that your opinion somehow magically becomes the same as your peers.
Re resp:99: "Well... actually any discussion of changing PicoSpan is moot, since there's no legal way we could get changes made to it, because of the way its ownership is all tangled up with the collapse of the Vancouver stock exchange and NETI and whatever all else." That doesn't mean the subject is moot. It could be implemented in Backtalk, or someone could create an external command (much like the "export" command.) Either one would give users the same right you've already claimed for yourself -- the ability to delete their items at will, without having to offer a reason to anyone else or beg a staff member.
I entered quite a bit in the baby diary and I don't care that she deleted my "deathless words". Whoop dee doo. They only meant something in the context of the diary.
Hah, now it remains to see janc's opinion of the matter.
I have a radical suggestion. I believe that taking this action represented a lapse in judgement on the part of Valerie, and ultimately, a (relatively minor) compromise of the stated values of Grex. Therefore, and particularly in light of Valerie's ambivalence toward the notion of remaining on staff -- which I feel presents the most significant risk of harm to Grex -- I would like to suggest that Valerie be relieved of staff responsibility, including root, but that she be allowed continued access to the staff conference and mailing list (if she so desires), so that effectively she will be in a staff-emeritus status. This way, she will still be in a position to provide other staff the confidential benefits of her expertise and knowledge, but she will no longer feel obligated to spend large quantities of time performing services for an organization to which she no longer apparently feels committed. This may seem harsh, but as far as I'm concerned, though Valerie's value as a resource is quite significant, her value as root staff is compromised by her stated ambivalence about it. I do not think this action represents a bow to the trouble-makers and antagonists, or a punishment to Valerie, but I think it does responsibly address both the concerns about actions perceived as inappropriate (whether or not they in fact are) and Valerie's own need to focus on making her living and supporting her family without the distractions of a largely unappreciative crowd of Grexers riding her.
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I would prefer Valerie remained a staff member and if possible just put back the responses of Mary and anyone else who wanted their responses put back. I don't care about my responses. I want to thank Valerie for being the first and often the only one to answer all the emails I sent to staff. I would be happy to make a special exception for this particular item deletion. As Jim points out, parents don't always think clearly ;=). My mother wrote some pretty embarassing things in her diary about us kids which I would not have wanted to be made public. (At least it was my brother who had the bedwetting problem, and not me). Valerie, thanks for sharing with us.
With regards to what I read here, looks like if I have something I said here parodied on mnet or anywhere for that matter, and I didn't like it, I could go to cfadmin, or staff, or root, and ask them to delete not only my posts (which is stupid, since I could do that myself), but also all posts that quoted me verbatim, or made referenace to what I said, so that there would be no trace left. Where do you stop then? This is the beginning of censorship. I'm with remmers and cross on this one. I understand the issue with the baby diaries. And I understand the sentiment behind making this an exception. But you make one exception, and you'll have to make many more.
I would not be surprised if, under the mistaken impression that "a user can delete any item that he or she entered" was actual Grex policy, the staff actually gets requests to delete items in the Coop conference. And with them, of course, all of the relevant policy discussion that is and should remain part of the public record. Here's something to think about: If the deletion policy becomes a reality, guess who gets to delete this item - and with it, a lot of discussion of an important policy issue.
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Re 120: "I seem to recall..." is hardly evidence sufficient for a charge of "pattern of abuse and censorship".
I'm with Remmers. I think there's a huge distinction between being able to delete text you entered, and deleting text other people entered. Entering the item shouldn't give you control over the text of everyone who has responded to it.
I think Eric is on the right track here. I'm not particularly concerned about the baby diaries as such; I've never read them. I am pretty worried that a staff member decided to use root priveleges to delete entire items with responses from many people for personal reasons. No matter how compelling the reasons, that is censorship and I don't think it has any place on Grex. I'm even more disturbed that Valerie isn't willing to restore the responses from other people, even people who have requested it. > the fact that I'm soooo ready to resign means that I'm pretty > willing to undertake risks that might get me kicked off staff. > [...] > it did cross my mind that if I get kicked off staff for > this, I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, this is pretty much a resignation from staff. If there's a staff member who is no longer willing to stay within the consensus bounds of acceptable behavior, it's time to change the root password. :-(
Back when there was all the controversy about whether users should be able to delete their own responses beyond the ability of ordinary users to read them, I believe there was general consensus that each user owned the copyright and all the rights pertaining thereto to every post they made. (The disagreement was over whether or not Grex still had the right to continue to publish them since they had been posted here, and whether, even if we did have that right, we ought to exercise it against the user's wishes.) That is; the reason we gave users the right to delete their own posts was because they were the legal owners thereof. Are you people arguing now that they aren't really the owners; the author of the item is the legal owner? If you really want an item in which you are the owner of (and have the rights to delete) every post, here's how to do it: moderate it. Make an item. Freeze it. Enter in the item text that this item is moderated by you; to respond, one should email you the text of their response, and that you would enter it at your leisure if you felt like it, possibly editing it beyond all recognition. I imagine a sufficiently clever and motivated person could even automate this process.
Re resp:124: I agree. If valerie is, as your quote seems to suggest, admitting that she's willing to engage in behavior that might not be acceptable because she doesn't mind losing her position, she should be asked to resign. We don't really want people with a devil-may-care attitude like that on staff.
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Staff is already getting requests to have whole items removed. Evidently, others are having second thoughts about the public discussions they started. Yuck. My advice would be for anyone who has responses *they've* made that they now regret making, censor *your* comments. Now. But allowing users to kill other user's responses is a huge shift in our philosopy. Any change in policy should follow public discussion and a vote by the membership. I would be against any deal which would *sanction* a staff member's abuse of power in exchange for their resignation.
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I also think there is a difference between changing the policy so that some items can be put in control of the authors of said items and deleting items (and posts) that were entered prior to this discussion. I am not so sure it would be a bad idea to give item authors in certain conferences control over their items. In the future.
(jp2, I argued for closing the censored log. I agreed then that the
owner of the response should have control over its continued publication.
The only difference here is the identity of the owner: here, I claim that
there are, or can be, multiple owners. I have been arguing in favour of
the desires of the most-restrictive owner.)
jp2 mentioned asking that an item be deleted and not getting a response.
I have not replied to his message because I wanted to make sure staff
agreed on any response I would make before I made one. So far, the
result has been a clear lack of consensus. {Left to my own devices,
my answer would be, "Sure. No problem. It's gone." But I'm not left
to my own devices here. :) }
Based on the trend I have seen in this item, and the related items,
I predict the ultimate answer will be, "No." If that is the answer,
it will apply to any other similar requests.
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M-net would be the natural choice, but I think that'd be too easy. ;>
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Regarding #128; That's specious. No one yelled fire in a crowded theater here. Some people did something that offended someone and hurt her feelings. Rude? Insensitive? Stupid? Maybe. Seriously damaging to other lives or property? No, not at all. There might be valid reasons to delete entire items: a serial killer decides to pick an item and track down everyone who ever posted to it and kill them. That seems like a good reason to get rid of the item in question (and call the FBI), but that's not what happened here.
Where do you come up with such scary scenarios. It's coz you're a New Yorker, right? Now I'll have to go delete every post I ever made, or I won't be able to sleep at night.
This event has set a really bad precedent. Staff has, so far, gotten two requests to delete items in other conferences. One staffer (I'm not going to mention names here) suggested acting on one immediately and opening the other for public discussion (which got which response is beyond the scope of this note). I think that that sets an even more dangerous precedent. Folks, this is not good. The issue goes beyond one person and her feelings. We're talking about freedom of expression, and granting other individuals the right to deny you that freedom by erasing what you've expressed. It's a shame Valerie felt hurt by what happened to her baby diary on mnet, but what she's done is far worse, not in and of itself, but for the precedent it sets. A lot of people are seeing the usual suspects complain loudly and saying, ``just drop it.'' But for once the usual suspects are on to something (even if it is couched in hyperbole and self-righteousness in some cases). This *is* an important issue, and it goes to the *core* of what Grex purports to be all about. Ignoring the argument because you don't like who's arguing would be a tragic mistake. At the end of the day, is removing Valerie's baby diary *that* big of a deal by itself? No. But sanctioning it says we're willing to let people trample on the words of other's when they feel they have reason, even if those words present no clear and present danger to anyone, and *that* IS a big deal. Oh yeah, and for once, I actually agree with Mary! (Actually, I've agreed with Mary many times in the past.)
(Sapna slipped in.) Yeah, living in the city has something to do with it, I guess. A more timid example would be someone picking a random item and publically harassing all the participants in it with endless prank calls, house eggings, anchovi pizza's, etc.
Even scarier.
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Aren't the fairwitnesses being overlooked here? Since they, too, seem to have the ability to fully kill items in their conferences, item-enterers should be starting with the fairwitnesses of the conference in which the item was entered, before going right to staff. Now, if you say, "Well, fairwitnesses shouldn't be killing entire items willy nilly either", then note that is a situation that has been around for a long time, with this whole issue apparently overlooked. If valerie had gone to the fairwitnesses of the femme and kids conferences and got them to unlink and/or kill her items, thus not needing to use her staff privileges, then no one would have cause to accuse her of abuse, although this issue still would remain for discussion. If it is decided that neither staff nor fw's should be killing items outright, except for clear security / legal reasons, that is likely to be strictly a policy decision, since you can't prevent staff / root from doing anything, and it might be the case that you can't take away fw's ability to kill items.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, if I had an item here that had really personal things in it, I would want to have control over that item. I was kind of experimenting recently with blogs and tried to do a sort of diary item blog thing (it is in the enigma.cf) similar to valerie's baby diary item. There are a number of reasons why grex's software isnt working for me for this purpose but one of them is the lack of control over an item's posts *and* the comments (although that isnt the biggest reason it isnt working for me) I also know that if I had an item here and I wanted it gone and I was on staff, I probably would use my staff/root powers to delete it but only if deleting it was more important to me than staying on staff. In other words, if I were in valerie's position, I would have done the same thing. I dont think it would be a good idea to adopt a policy where already existing items are deleted at the author's request. I do think it would be ok to adopt a policy where items in certain conferences are considered the property of the author. That way, anyone who really is worried about having their comments deleted can refrain from posting in those items if they wish. There also should be some policy about conference cleanup since if we make it a policy that no items can ever be deleted, things could get crowded around her real quick.
FWIW, had Valerie asked me, as moderator of the Femme conference, I would have deleted her baby diaries immediately.
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Re 144>The worry that things could get crowded around here hasn't come up before. I thought that it was a moot point. I could be wrong. If there are limitations to wht you can or cannot do on grex, and these limitations are cramping your blog style, and don't give you enough control, in terms of censorship, then move to another system. There are various sites out there. valerie has gone on to create her own software, and no one's complaining. But if you use grex to jot down stuff in, and you have people respond, what you're agreeing to is not deleting other people's comments. There's no screening here, unless it's the author of the comment.
Re 145> And this discussion would have come up about the fw of femme abusing her powers. This discussion has grown to beyond whether valerie was hurt or abused her staff powers. It's now whether one is allowed to delete posts made by other people, just because you created the item
Re 142> You make it sound like kissing my favorite body part is a bad thing :(
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Sorry valerie, you still should have asked the fw's to help you first, before alighting your light sabre. But I personally don't care that much. Re: #148 - The *discussion* might have been about a fw abusing her power, but it would have been a false accusation - fw's have the power to exercise discretion about what items to nuke. It's been that way "forever", apparently. If that is not desirable, then a policy change / establishment is needed. I know, have a discussion about it! :-)
re 120 It's all about the logs. re 135 What staff? re 143 >If valerie had gone to the fairwitnesses The scary thing is, she didn't go to anyone. Except maybe to her husband to ask for the cfadm password. Don't forget that fairwitnesses are not immune to being abusive. re 144 >There also should be some policy about conference cleanup Good point. But at least on M-net, there's a time period where *everyone* is allowed to object or ask if some items are kept, etc. I'm going to wager a guess that the GreX policy is comparable. But it is impossible to keep everything, and people accept that. However, what happened in the femme cf was an act of selfishness, really, and was pretty much hidden from public view (e-mailing board and staff doesn't count. Most of the posters don't receive their mail).
re 150 I suggest you and Misti learn about the 'retire' command.
There was a case, a few years ago, when the fairwitness of the sex conference went through and deleted all the items in the conference, to avoid them becoming available on the web. As I recall, everyone agreed that that was an abuse of power, and the items were restored from backup. Am I misremembering the outcome?
resp:147 - I realize that. I am not asking that any comments be removed. I am pointing out a reason why we may want to consider changing the policy.
Re 151>Re: #148 - The *discussion* might have been about a fw abusing her power, but it would have been a false accusation - fw's have the power to exercise discretion about what items to nuke. It's been that way "forever", apparently. If that is not desirable, then a policy change / establishment is needed. I know, have a discussion about it! :-) Actually it would be abuse of power. Just because a fw has the ability to delete an item, doesn't mean that they can when they need to. From what I understand, you can only delete items if they're a security threat or contain some illegal matter. I've had my wrist slapped on mnet for deleting items which were irrelevant and no-one read. Being fw ain't all that it's cracked up to be ;)
Re 155> I don't quite get what you're trying to point out. It sounds like we need to change policy so that people can post stuff that they want to censor. Or maybe I'm mis-reading
I am saying that we may want to consider changing the policy so that in certain specific cases, item authors retain control of the entire item including other people's posts in that item.
I'm curious. Folks who want to discuss personal issues here have a choice. They can run it like a diary, entering responses and then freezing the item until they have more to say. Or they can encourage discussion by leaving the item open for postings. If it's displayed as a diary (frozen) then the author remains in control and the item can be killed at any time. If it's left open for discussion the person who started the discussion doesn't own anyone else's comments. I find it mind boggling to think otherwise. If Valerie had run her baby diary as a frozen item, and someone else had entered a companion item for comments, would Valerie consider it her privilege to kill the comments item? What's the difference, really. I think the baby item should be restored from backup and Valerie allowed to completely expunge her comments. The resulting item will be one long mess making no sense whatsoever. But this change in policy allowing users to censor other users will be far worse, I believe.
I think that keeping an item frozen is a pain. It is very common on many blog sites to allow the author control of everything, including comments. I have noticed some big advantages of this. Discussions stay on focus.
Regarding #149; He was referring to me. This does not induce me to want to get him an anchovy pizza, though.
I had entered responses in Valerie's items, too. Valerie's items were linked to parenting, Misti; you could only unlink them from your conference. You couldn't actually delete them from Grex. Some of my responses were about topics that weren't exactly about Arlo and Kendra. There were no other active items in parenting while Valerie's items were there. Valerie brought up Asperger's Disorder last summer, and since I am interested in the topic as well, I created an Asperger's item in parenting. It never got off the ground; the discussion all stayed in Valerie's item. I don't mind much that my responses got deleted with the rest of those items. I doubt if I ever said much of any value. However... now that the staff has granted Valerie the right to delete items she entered, I think there *has been* a policy change, and others who want their items deleted should be able to have them deleted as well. The staff shouldn't be debating it internally, or asking the Board, or waiting on the outcome of discussion or a user referendum. Not now. The policy *has* changed. I think, by not accommodating user requests, the staff is in danger of making a second policy change. Staff members are Special People; above the rules.
Valerie's action changed a lot of things by a large amount. I am positive she didn't intend that. I am positive there was no bad intent. Things have gotten out of hand. I do not mean to be on the side of those who are shrieking, "She broke the rules! Corruption!" Valerie is not corrupt. I hope this won't end her contributions as a staff member. She's a very valuable staffer. I think Valerie made a big mistake. It's just a mistake, but it has a lot of consequences. We all need to learn from it and move on. I know what I wrote in resp:162, but nevertheless, the most important thing is going to be for Grex to not panic or overreact, and for Grex to find a reasonable course and stick with it.
I find it interesting that valerie is worried that some people in the baby diary items had quoted her verbatim and as such, their posts should remain purged. However, she has neglected to mention that on the m-net agora conference, some of her work remains, probably in verbatim form! Of course, she can't bring that argument over there, because it would clearly be seen for what it is: censorship.
Regarding #162; Just to clarify, staff didn't grant Valerie any extra `right'. She acted on her own, outside of the rhuebric of staff.
re resp:165: If that's the case, then there's no need for a debate. The items need to be restored. It couldn't be more straightforward.
> Actually it would be abuse of power. Just because a fw has the ability to delete an item, doesn't mean that they can when they need to. < First of all, does the fw have the *power* to kill an entire item at any time? If the answer is "yes", then they *can* "when they need to". If this is the case, then it's a matter of *policy*, what *should* the fw do. Is there anything documented along these lines? If so, where can we find / read it? If not, it's probably high time to document something. If there is something already documented, that could be updated if grexians though it should be.
Re: #166 - Whoa fella! So far I haven't seen anyone pointing to something clearly documented that says when staff / fw's can / cannot kill entire items, that is, policy-wise. It sounds like at least certain staffers, and certain fw's, could kill an item if its enterer requested it. Others might disagree, but it is not cut-and-dried that such a killed item must be restored. In this case, the item-enterer was also staff, so she wasn't deleting someone else's item without permission. My main complaint there is that she didn't try to work with the conf. fw's first. Since there is no established policy, I don't agree that it's "straightforward" that the items must be restored. I think that the focus should be on establishing / updating a policy to handle this situation in the future.
(entrant.)
Given the lack of policy, I still think we can say it was in violation of the spirit and stated intentions of grex. Whether it can or should be undone is another matter.
Frankly, Grex is not a closed circle, and Valerie has known that all along. There is no such thing as a guarantee of privacy or even obscurity for anything we choose to post in any public conference, so I am at a loss to understand (without having read either the diaries or their parodies) the urgency which necessitated her actions. As I understand it, FW's have the ability to remove items, but are encouraged to use it rarely, with proper observance of the law being a primary goal and protection of the free speech rights of Grex users as a secondary. If I were an FW/cfadm/staff member asked to remove these items, based on my understanding of the responsibilities, I would respond by removing only Valerie's text from the items, and out of respect for her ownership of her posts, I would also remove any direct quotes of her text from the posts f other users in those items (with appropriate indications of excision left in their places). That is as far as I could see properly exercising the powers of administration in honoring the request for retraction, and that is what I would have expected Valerie to do on her own. I have no doubt that if those were the limits of her actions, she would have been satisfied and she would be receiving full support and backing from all other staff.
re 171 Great, nice, thanks for your opinion on what you would have done in those hypothetical situations. But we need to move towards a decision. I think jep's proposal is a great idea. A lot of stuff from those items can still be read on M-net.
I agree with other. That's what should have been done. In this case, I think that the items should be restored, and the specific responses deleted.
I also agree with other.
My comments can be left out as well. Or else make sure that I have the ability to delete them myself.
Re resp:143: I wouldn't feel the same about this if valerie had asked the fairwitness or another staff member to remove the items for her. Maybe there should be a policy that staff members ask another staff member to act when staff powers are needed to do something that affects them personally as a user. I think it should be clear when people are acting as staff and when they're acting in their own interest as an ordinary user. Valerie overlapped the two, using her privilages as staff to benefit her personally, and that's my main objection to what happened. Re resp:163: You may feel valerie made a mistake, but she doesn't seem to feel that way.
Wow. What a difference a day can bring...should have known better than to go to bed before reading through the responses and weighing-in. First, to the extent my view in this matters, I don't and won't support calls for Valerie's resignation. I don't think she should have removed the baby diary discussions the way she did but as the range of views in this item show, there is definitely room for interpretation and argument. I reject the conspiritorial assumptions and mean-spirited polemic used to describe what was at worst a mistake aggravated by understandable emotion. It is funny how the people quickest to express disproportionate outrage and call for staff resignations have typically been those that have made the least positive contribution to grex and don't even come close to meeting the standard of perfection they would require for staff. Moving on... Valerie's baby diary ceased being hers when the first person other than her responded to them. Arguments that they were private information don't make sense to me considering they have been publicly available for the years since first posted and could well have been copied at any point since. In fact, we know they were, in quote or parody form on m-net. We give people the ability to remove their own words on grex. While in some ideal world, I prefer that history remain immutable, I recognize that search engines and effectively permanent online records have shifted the balance of things rather against personal privacy and keeping a reasonable shelf life on the impact of one's words. So we changed grex's rules to allow scribbling to level the playing field a bit. (Btw, I actually don't like scribbling very much for another reason; I remember the chaos and social damage caused on the well when Tom Mandel did a mass scribble of all his words from all the Well conferences in which he had ever participated. As it is said there, "You own your own words. ..." but it is also true your words form part of a tapestry and an individual's threads are removed, some of the larger fabric unravels.) But what someone else writes, belongs to them and it is their decision under the current policies whether to scribble them. Not someone elses just because they happened to have entered the item or because they think their personal judgement is sufficient to make the call. If Valerie or others wish to remove their own words from an item, it is their choice but they need to individually make that decision and take action themselves to do so. If technical reasons prevent folks from doing that (can you scribble your own response if someone has frozen the item? Don't know...), we ought to provide a tool, change picospan or define clear policies for fw/cfadm assisted deletions to work around that. So I think the baby diary items ought to be restored sans whatever of Valerie's responses she's wishes to have deleted. Eric you mentioned: "I would also remove any direct quotes of her text from the posts f other users in those items (with appropriate indications of excision left in their places). That is as far as I could see properly exercising the powers of administration in honoring the request for retraction, and that is what I would have expected Valerie to do on her own." I agree with much of what you has said but think you go too far in asking fw/cfadm's to start rewording other folks responses. If I quote someone else in my response, well, they said it in a public forum, and it is my words that are stating it back at them. Sorry they decided to retract their own words, but that doesn't give them any right to retract mine.
re 177 Someone mentioned a conspiracy? Where?
I am in complete agreement with bhoward. Well said. Very well said. Btw- another problem with deleting quotes is the level of granularity one goes to in doing so. If someone quotes whole paragraphs of text, it's easy. If someone quotes a sentence, less so. If one quotes a phrase or handful of words, it's almost impossible to excise them and remain faithful to the other author's intent. So, what's the cutoff? This, like restriction of freedom of speech, is one of those instances where it's really better to do nothing instead of risking doing something wrong. An aside: the mnet parody only grew when Valerie added to her baby diary here. Since Valerie had already more or less moved the diary away from grex at the time Jan discovered the parody on mnet, it was already starting to be the case that the mnet item was dying. I think it's a given that no one over there is going to delete anything in that item, but it's run its course. So, I *do* have to wonder what the point of deleting the diary here was; there was no new `fodder' to canibalize over there, and what was there wasn't going away. So what difference did removing the baby diary from grex make?
I like the idea that instead of changing Grex's flexible policy for fws, that we have staff not be user/staff simultaneously. I would not like to see fws "kill" power removed. In fact, if Valerie had asked Misti to kill the items, and Misti had done so, there would have been no violation of policy. So, I think the only error Valerie made was in short-circuiting a process that Misti would have done anyway. If you want to control staff behavior, change the staff-behavior policy, not the fw policy.
Some day, I will try to re-read this entire item, to better connect people
with their thoughts in my mind.
For now, a few quick commments:
It's really too bad Mary never experienced Confer on MTS.
Marcus has very different ideas from Bob Parnes, and he left out some
things that Bob included when he tried to "Do Confer better than Confer".
Authors' deleting their items was, apparently, one of those things Marcus
disagreed with Bob about.
The rules, and culture, on m-net are very different than the rules
and culture on grex. It is very dangerous to try to apply m-net rules here,
just as it would be to try to apply grex rules there. It's not going to
work, and people are going to get angry if folks insist, either way.
I *know* that the cultures are different, and I'm still new to this
one (even after four years of active participation), so I tend to check
and double-check before acting. Valerie has been around a long time.
I expected her to be attuned to the culture and expectations here, and so
I'm very surprised to see the wide divergence of opinions on and memories
of tradional practices and policies.
Where I come from, authors' deleting items is accepted. I *thought*
it was here, too. I'm now discovering differently.
Live and learn. :)
Joe, even outstanding staffers like Valerie can do things they may not do otherwise when under the sway of strong emotions. I can't think of much a mother wouldn't feel stronger about than her children. Then again, Valerie says she did it in a calm state, and who am I to disbelieve her?
My real point was that even long-term members of the community have different ideas of what the underlying philosophies and resultant policies are.
Roger that, Staff Sergeant.
<grins>
I did participate on Confer, some. I'm old. Had Misti granted Valerie's wish then we'd also be telling Misti she erred. Some of us, at least. She's given the kill command to use for very special occasions, like when someone comes through and drops the same exact response in every single item in the conference. Leaving one for discussion and nuking the rest can be seen as a courtesy. But under no circumstance I can remember, and I've been here a while, did a FW delete response from users for the reason that one of the participants didn't want the discussion to exist any longer, and receive support for those actions. So the fact that Misti would have been part of the action doesn't make it any more appropriate, in my opinion.
There is something else that belongs in this public discussion. Over the past day or so a number of users have written staff asking, demanding actually, that their items be killed, in total, too. I'm not sure of the numbers, but this idea didn't get wide support. It was felt the subject needed more discussion and a better sense of policy. In the interim the users could delete anything *they had entered*. Valerie, knowing of this lack of consensus, plunged ahead, deleting whole items on the request of a specific. She then resigned. I too am sorry it came to this.
I wrote a long response in Backtalk, but when I posted it, it was lost. I asked that my divorce items from a couple of years ago be deleted, and this was done.
And they allowed it? Were there other people's responses to these items?
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They can delete in their own sweet time , it's not a paid job.
Yes, there were other people's responses in jep's items. Who is "they"? Did you notice Mary's response on the subject?
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It sounds like valerie felt more strongly about people (maybe only certain people, since the deletions appear to have been selective) having the ability to delete whole items than she did about keeping her position. That's her choice. I think she was an excellent staff member right up until she decided her own opinions were more important than policy.
> Had Misti granted Valerie's wish then we'd also be telling Misti she erred. Some of us, at least. She's given the kill command to use for very special occasions < I have seen that notion here and there, and have no reason to disbelive it. However, I would really like to so where this is *documented* policy. I think this and similar policies should be freely accessible by all grex users at any time, so that those who wish to can know what the rules are, what they're getting themselves into. :-) Can someone paste in the documented policy, or give a grex command, or a URL?
Clearly the best way to read Grex in the future will be to log everything read in BBS to your local machine, since one now has to expect that huge chunks of the discussion will be destroyed at any time.
I disagree with Mary that we'd be telling Misti she erred. As I understand Grex's policy, it's up to the people in the conference to discuss the fw's decision. If the people in the conference can come to consensus, that's what happens in that conference.
> Valerie, knowing of this lack of consensus, plunged ahead, deleting > whole items on the request of a specific. She then resigned. <shocked silence> Oh my god. I hope someone changed the root password(s). Seriously, I feel this is a security breech on the order of a root breakin. Shame on you, Valerie. You've spent how many years protecting Grex from vandals, and now you're the worst vandal Grex has ever had.
This morning, I tried to explain about why I asked staff to delete my items. As I told Valerie, it is not because I wanted to make a point or anything like that. It's because there was a lot of stuff in those items which could have really hurt me It was used to do so at least once. There was stuff which could have hurt my son. I knew I could come to regret all that stuff when I entered it, but at the time, my state of mind was such that I just didn't care. Eventually I came to care, but there was nothing I could do about it any more. Then this all happened, and it gave me the chance to have those items removed. I don't think, as a general rule, items should be removed, but I think mine were a worthwhile exception. I am sure Valerie thinks hers were, too. Obviously others are going to say the same thing. If items are going to be restored, I hope, expect and ask that mine will be excluded. If mine are restored, I will take such action as I find reasonable, effective and possible to keep them from remaining or being usable.
jep, did you not read item 71 in coop? I think if you really really want to do that, Valerie has already given you a tool. Personally, I'm still undecided about the issue of allowing deletions, but I must admit to feeling sympathy for Valerie's situation. Those of you who have fun poking holes at staffers, feel free to poke away.
I also wanted to discuss policy implications. You can't go backward. There have now been circumstances under which a root staff member will delete whole items on request from an item enterer. It's obvious to everyone, now, that it *can* be done because it *has*. When I asked for my items to be removed, I argued that the precedent had already been set. Others are going to do that, too. Overall, I think it would be better for Grex if it hadn't happened. Personally, for myself, I am mightily relieved, though. Please be aware, you cannot just restore all the items and have everything be where it was a few days ago. Now that my items have been removed, if they're restored, I will take it as a dangerous action against me. Actions cannot be undone. The consequences exist already for what has happened. Only new, future actions can be taken. I think now there *has* to be some difference in policy. I think you can't just stop after Valerie the former president and root has gotten to do it, and then John the longtime Grexer. I think there has to be some room for an exception when it's warranted, and some recognition that sometimes it *is* warranted. There has to be some way to do this without a firestorm of debate every time.
re resp:200: Kip, you must have received my e-mails to staff. The first, where I requested my items be deleted, was sent two days ago. There was no such tool then.
I did receive your email. I didn't feel qualified to respond to it as I didn't know the policy by heart. And yes the tool is new, I'm just mentioning it because I was under the impression you might have missed the item. I too want to discuss the policy implications and agree that no rule exists that doesn't merit some exception from time to time. And trying to craft a rule to justify the past actions and moderate the new actions is a little more difficult than I can do right now in the middle of my regular work day.
So, the new policy is, Free Speech Until Somebody Feels Bad.
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Oh, and the other new policy: I Own Your Comments About Me.
I don't think we know what the new policy is, or is going to be. Things are really mixed up right now, but they won't be forever.
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Valerie's tool only automates the scribbling of your own responses, something people have always been able to do. Whan Valerie did, and what jep asked to have done for him, is the removal of entire items, including other users' comments. That's a different matter. Basically, it means Grex discussions are now temporary, and can go away as soon as the item author is no longer pleased with the direction the item has taken. I find that troubling.
In my view, and speaking as a Grex staff member, I don't believe that "deletion of an item on poster's request" is Grex policy, despite the fact that a couple of staff members thought that it was, and one actually acted as if it was. Albaugh has a point about fairwitness powers. Fairwitnesses have the power to delete items, and to the best of my knowledge there is no Grex policy that says they can't. On the flip side of that coin, there is no policy that says they have to on request, either. There's feeling among many users, myself included, that in general it's a bad idea to censor items, but that doesn't make it policy. So if the FWs of the conferences containing Valerie's items had killed them on her request, there would have been no violation of any written policy that I'm aware of. There would have been some vigorous and in my view highly justified disatisfaction with the fw's. But not any breaking of rules that I can see. My main concern about all this was stopping the idea that "users can delete any item they've posted" was some kind of system-wide policy. It isn't, never has been, and in my view never should be.
It seems to be rapidly becoming a de-facto policy.
No, that's not true at all, David.
Re 198: Um, Greg, that's pretty extreme. It was an abuse of root privileges, & should not have been done. But removal of one item making her "the worst vandal Grex has ever had"? Give me a break. There have been remarkably few really *serious* vandal incidents on Grex, but I can remember a few.
It's not the removal of one item; it's the removal of all of her pieces in all discussions over 12 years. I find the word "vandalism" appropriate.
It really wants to make me cry, and I'm no sissy.
(I'm a Tough Texas New Yorker.)
Valerie's script removing all of her responses from Grex is having a severe impact on the system. I think it's impacting system speed; the system has been very slow all day today. It's also wreaking havoc on the conferences. She discussed a lot of things over the years, in a lot of places. According to 'top', the bbs process run by popcorn right now is occupying aruond 13-14% of the CPU. Hmm, the "bbs" process isn't constant; it comes and goes. Her perl script is occupying around 8% of the CPU. I can't think of Valerie Mates as a vandal or a system abuser... but her action is having a much greater negative impact on Grex than when jp2 sent e-mails to a group of users in December.
So, are we ready yet to actually talk about what to do next? I'm not sure, but I'll suggest this - one, we not jump into any type of membership vote to change the way we've done business. I propose posters still have the opportunity to permanently remove any responses they've entered. But whole items, with responses from other users, are not under the editorial control of the person entering the item. Two, some text be added, wherever it belongs, advising fairwitnesses to be very very careful with the kill command and pointing them toward this discussion or warning them that censorship tends to draw a lot of fire. No hard rules. It wasn't the lack of hard rules that precipitated this issue. A new conference be setup that will be for blogs where it will be completely upfront that the rules there are quite different. The FW will, on request, kill entire blogs on the request of the person who started one. If you enter responses there you do so with the full knowlege, expectation even, that they could be censored or removed at any time. The blog owner rules the item. The conference FW is simply going to follow the blog owner's orders. The conference FW is still strongly discouraged from removing items they feel are inappropriate. The items belong to the posters in blog. As to reinstalling items that have been deleted, I suggest we give this some time, and allow everyone to cool off. See if in a less volatile atmosphere some reasonable solution could be found. How long? Don't know. We'll just have to see how this goes. In the end they may just be better off left gone and we move on. I really don't see any place for the Board to jump in with help here. If folks disagree with that I'd be interested in hearing what you'd like the board to do. Valerie should be thanked for all she's done for Grex over the years. She will be missed. Anyhow, that's probably how I'd like to see this proceed at this point. I'd be curious what others would want done. I'm speaking here as Mary, the user, and not for any group.
re 217 valerie, the system administrator and longtime programmer, has yet to learn of the unix command !nice and the picospan command 'retire'. She will be missed. re 218 None of us are really "mad".
Regarding #218; That mostly sounds reasonable, but I'm personally opposed to the idea of a `blog' conference. Such things already exist in other places, and that's Not what grex is supposed to be about.
I think Mary just jumped in with an entirely reasonable response. Except for the blog conference -- about which I am ambivalent just now - - I agree with everything she said. Actually, I have more comments for the blog conference, too, but there's another item for that.
Would you be willing to give it a six months trial run, Dan, just to see how it goes? I'd hate to think we can't try something new here just because it's done elsewhere. We're talking one conference, clearly labeled as different. It would also serve as a bit of an experiment for those who might feel all of Grex should move in this direction.
If done in an experimental manner, contained, and clearly delimited from the rest of the conferences, I would have a hard time arguing with its existence. I personally wouldn't use it, but it's hard to argue with the idea of a forum in which people enter into it volunteerily knowing ahead of time they may be censored. If someone wishes to submit to that with their words, that's their decision. That's a long winded way of saying no, I wouldn't object with the qualifiers you mentioned. I'm tempted to say it would be better to build a new conferencing system for things like that, but that'd be a big undertaking.
Grex is about conferencing and to my mind, that includes being open to experiments in alternative ways of using this media. I'd like to see this blog conference experiment given a chance to run.
Has naftee demanded the removal of this discussion yet?
I agree with Mary's proposal.
Not that I've noticed, Joe. I think "vandalism" is the wrong word to describe Valerie's actions. I agree that the result is a huge whole in many discussions. But "vandalism" implies a malicious intent to cause harm. I don't see that in Valerie's actions. Harm has, and will, result, but I don't think that was her intent. Mary is right that we need to figure out where we go from here. I also think that she is right that we are not ready to vote on a change to the policy. However, I think she doesn't go far enough: I think we are not ready to vote on any policy on this subject at all. So no, I don't think we are ready to talk about where we go from here. Too many of us are still reacting from emotion, not from thought.
re 225 Why, was I supposed to?
I totally agree with mary and gelinas too.
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I would urge calm too. I don't think that the acts of one stressed-out
root should either establish a new policy or require policies to prevent a
repeat. (I'd suggest preserving the most recent set of backups in order
to maintain options, however.)
Re #228: If enough people were claiming that Valerie had set a precedent,
it's be worth doing. At this point, I think whoever the coop
FWs are would just tell you to piss off. That's the appropriate
response, so don't bother.
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re 231 She didn't claim to be stressed-out! re 230 Kiss my ass, bucko. It's hairier than yours.
I don't plan to take a large role in this discussion. I'm obviously
very biased on aspects of it. And there is a fairly broad range of
censorship policies that we could have that would be OK with me.
Various points I think I should comment on:
- No defacto new policy has been established. All these actions were
taken by one staff member who is now off staff. I don't think any
other staff member would have done the same.
- When I heard that Jep had requested that his divorce item be
removed, I didn't know what to think. I felt his that his desire
to have them deleted deserved respect, but Grex had no policy in
place to by which this could be done. I felt that it was an issue
that needed to be discussed in public. However, if the issue
was raised for public discussion, I knew that two dozen people would
immediately download copies of Jep's item and post it everywhere
they could, making the whole discussion moot.
In an attempt to resolve this dilemma, I sent mail to all board and
staff members suggesting that Jep's items be *temporarily* deleted
before starting a public discussion on the issue. In this way the
full Grex community could evaluate the request on it's merit,
without the discussion becoming instantly moot the moment it was
begun.
Several staff/board members thought this was a sensible plan,
especially since these were not active items - if we didn't tell
people that they had been deleted, then probably nobody would
notice for months.
Other staff/board people rejected the idea of even a temporary
deletion very strongly.
Before the discussion of this issue got very far, Valerie deleted
the items, in full knowledge that the board had not agree to either
a permanent nor a temporary deletion. I had no idea that she was
even thinking about doing this until after it had been done. My
expectation was that I'd have to pursue an argument in baff email
in hopes of winning a consensus of board to agree to a temporary
deletion. My guess is that a majority could have been achieved on
that point, though it would have taken time.
So, while I thought Jep's item should be deleted at least for long
enough to allow general discussion (and, in my personal opinion,
forever), I was fairly confident that that could be achieved "within
the system".
- No, Valerie didn't ask me for the cfadm password. I don't know the
cfadm password. If I ever knew it, I forgot it long ago. I also
routinely forget the root password. In the past I solved this
problem by asking Valerie for it, since she used it much more
frequently than I did, and has a much better memory. I'll need to
find a different strategy in the future.
- Staff should probably have a staff meeting soon. Probably not at
my house this time.
Oh yeah, I'm completely opposed to any policy that says the item author can always kill an item with responses from others in it. That Valerie and Jep were the ones who started these items is pretty much incidental. The thing that distinguishes those items is that they were the effective leaders of the discussions and the primary subjects of the discussion. The fact that they entered the original item is the very least part of what made the items "theirs". If we were to make a policy enabling such deletions (and I'm not at all sure that I think we should), then it would have to be something more complex - having some kind of board of review that would decide each case on a case-by-case merit. I think it's an icky concept, but it's about the only sane way it could be handled.
Once I requested that my items be deleted, they became a time bomb and a source of greater anxiety for me. There must be 12-15 people on the baff e-mail list. That's a lot of people for keeping a secret, especially on a system which is as open as Grex. There are discussions all over Grex as a result of Valerie's items being deleted. How long until someone slipped and said "valerie and jep", and people started thinking about what that means? How long until someone made a moral decision that the items shouldn't be deleted, and so they'd just go ahead and mention them and make it impossible to ever delete them? How long until it occurred to someone to archive all the controversial items, just in case -- and thought of my items? I'm still hoping no one on that list made a copy for themself before the items got deleted. It seemed to me that, if it became known publicly what I had requested, then those items could come back as an active discussion again, with excerpts posted around, and who knows what all else. I really didn't want that, obviously. When I found out the baff discussion was taking place, I pressed for the items to be deleted right away. It took two days to delete my items as it was. I wasn't prepared to wait for two weeks or two months. I appealed strongly to Valerie. I told her (and the rest of the list) that it didn't take a discussion when she wanted her items deleted; it shouldn't for me, either. That appeal, as it turned out, worked. Under the highly unusual circumstances, I think she did what she had to do. I'm not sure how to set a policy on such deletions, either. It sure seems to me my items were a good candidate for being deleted, and worthy of an exception even if it's specifically against system policy. Valerie felt her items merited an exception (or that she was actually staying within system policy; I guess I'm unclear on what she thought). The possibility now exists for other exceptions. I don't think it's reasonable to say, "Okay on deleting valerie and jep's items, but no other items can ever be deleted".
jep: Did you try retiring them?
I think she thought she was within the limits when she deleted her items. I think she thought she was beyond the limits when she deleted your items. Recently, someone mentioned having copied the entirety of /bbs to their local disk, for ease of off-line reading. Last night, in party, someone said they were in the process of copying off the entirety of /bbs to their local disk so that they, at least, would have a "complete" archive. I don't know if copying /bbs will include retired items. However, it is very clear to me that the genie is out of the bottle and is NOT going back into it. Further deletions will serve no useful purpose. I do not know exactly how many people are on the 'staff' list; only seven are on the 'board' list, and at least one of them is also on the 'staff' list. jep, I don't know that your follow-up plea went to the board. I know that I tried at last three times to bounce it to the board, but I never received a copy of those bounces. It was addressed to Valerie, with a carbon-copy to the staff. When staff first request, I asked for consensus because, although I thought your items could and should be deleted, it was clear to me that others disagreed. Staff should not act unilaterally. One staff member replied almost immediately, in favour of deleting your items. Another replied within eight hours (given the hour of my request, a reasonable delay), opposing the deletion. The community of grex is divided on this issue. The staff is divided on this issue. The board is divided on this issue. No rapid decision is possible. The losses of the past week, both of text and people, are regrettable. I think we are learning from them. I am going to take the liberty of quoting from your plea: "Additionally, I feel strongly that, since you [Valerie] were allowed to delete your items, I should be allowed to have mine deleted." She was not "allowed" to delete her items. No one who had read the discussions from Monday to Wednesday, when your message was sent, could reasonably conclude that she had any permission to act as she did. I think, knowing the harm she had suffered, and recognising the very similar harm you could suffer, she acted in the only way she ethically could. Note well: I can consider her actions ethical, even though they are not actions I, myself, would have taken. I also consider my *in*action in this case ethical.
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Some users are more equal than others, jp2.
Here's an answer for you then. I, as just one member of staff, am opposed to deleting item 39 in the co-op 13 conference because it involved a policy discussion. This is my personal opinion and is open to change with appropriate discussion.
Yes, Jamie; there is a debate going on about the appropriateness of fulfilling such requests. re resp:238: You have my permission to post anything I wrote in any of my messages which reached staff regarding this issue. Joe, there are a lot of ways to interpret what happened this week. I interpreted Valerie's actions in a way that would allow me to call for my items to be deleted, too. I regret some of the policy implications which this may have had. I knew of those implications when I did what I did, and also I brought them up here before I made my request. I don't regret getting my items deleted. I'll be very vehemently opposed to any possibility that they may be restored. I don't think the staff, or the Board, or myself, have done anything unethical.
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I'm surprised she didn't leave before...this is how grex operates. Something goes down and everyone immediately goes into attack mode.
I asked that my items be removed, and the response I got from party was that I needed to find a staff member who was willing to lose their staff position to delete them for me. It is most unfair that jep is allowed to use the "but Valerie did it" argument, and the rest of us have to have it debated. I guess Valerie just went ahead and deleted them, because a)Having done something like that herself (for lesser grounds), she was really in no position to deny that to another user and b)She was leaving anyways, policy really didn't matter to her, at that point. I believe that jep did have a more legitimate reason to delete his items, as compared to Valerie, though I'm sure she thinks otherwise. Likewise, at least a few people will feel that they have valid reasons to have their items deleted. Hell, I told all of grex, I was overweight. I want to erase that from the system. Where exactly are we going to draw the line on what a legitimate reason is to delete an item. Or we have to live with the response "You missed the bus. Should have got Valerie to do it before she left. Or get another staffer who doesn't mind being kicked off of staff". Basically it's true, some members are more equal than others.
You are smart enough to know that your conclusion does not follow from your premise.
I stand behind my use of the term vandalism. I fail to see how this situation is any different than if polytarp had hacked into grex and deleted the items in question. Jep, I consider you a vandal, too, just as much as if you had begged polytarp to hack into grex and delete the items.
The last statement I made was not a conclusion. You're right, it doesn't follow from the premise, or the analysis. It's what I believe.
mynxcat. I know exactly why you might feel the way you do. I wish there was something I could do to make you feel more included and part of things here. The thing of it is that all groups, including grex, consist of people with normal human characteristics. It is normal for people to have biases towards people they like and consider part of their social group. Of course grex has cliques. All large groups have smaller groups contained in them. This is human nature. I will say that at the very least, most people here really do try to be as inclusive as possible. I can see why you might see this business of folks favoring valerie and jep over others who have requested item deletions. But please recognize that valerie's actions were hers alone and not official policy. And while I admit that I dont personally hold it against her that she deleted the baby items or jep's items, I do recognize that feeling comes from my personal feelings about them.
I'm sure mynxcat is not the only overweight member of grex. I am underweight, can I delete all my items too? There is one about eating off dishes and someone might think eating off dishes makes you lose weight.
Sindi, are you sure you're not trying to parody yourself?
From #235: >> Oh yeah, I'm completely opposed to any policy that says the item author can always kill an item with responses from others in it. That Valerie and Jep were the ones who started these items is pretty much incidental. The thing that distinguishes those items is that they were the effective leaders of the discussions and the primary subjects of the discussion. The fact that they entered the original item is the very least part of what made the items "theirs".<< That's very interesting, because consider this: What if someone entered an item to discuss another person, perhaps in a very mean-spirited way. Would the "victim" of that item, who is not the one who entered it, be able to have a fw or staff kill that item at the victim's request?
In case you were wondering: help kill **** KILL **** kill (f-w and item author) -- delete the entire item. help retire **** RETIRE **** retire -- mark this item as "retired" so it won't appear in future "all" item-ranges. (f-w and item author only)
resp:252 I guess it depends, doesn't it. Several years ago, someone went onto my account as me (i know who they are) and had a conversation with another individual that revealed some very sensitive information. The other user was so annyoed at what the person said, thinking it was me, that they copied the material, posted it in agora and left grex. That item was killed per my request.
Re resp:246: I don't know. I think mynxcat is right. So far it looks like the policy is "if you're jep or valerie, you can have your items deleted. Otherwise you can't." Or maybe, "if you can find a burned-out staff member who doesn't care anymore, you can have your items deleted." Re resp:247: I agree with you. I think valerie deleted all her items as a petty slap in the face to the rest of Grex. An "I'm taking my ball and going home" sort of action.
Err, all her comments, rather. She didn't delete all her items, thankfully.
222 newresponse items in info - how......"delightful".
Re 250> Sindi, I'm not overweight, just trying to make a point. I think you're joking or trying to make a point too, but I'm not sure. Re 252>"The thing that distinguishes those items is that they were the effective leaders of the discussions and the primary subjects of the discussion." I was the effective leader and the primary subject of the "mynxcat wants to be svelte" item. I'd like it to be killed, because people could have the mistaken impression that I'm horribly obese (and possibly parody it on *the other system*). I would not like my friends to ever stumble upon this.
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I can understand why people would be upset with me. What I did was not blameless. I requested items be deleted which contained other people's responses. It was not fair. I was able to convince someone to take an action for me which is not available to everyone. I think it was justified in the case of my two items. I recognize that many people will disagree, either that it should ever be possible to get an item deleted, or that mine should have received an exception to a general prohibition against removing items. I also think I caught a break. There have not been that many times in the last two years that circumstances would have allowed me to get my items removed. The chance came along, and I grabbed it, and it was done. Greg, you can call me a vandal if you'd like. I think no one had read those items in over a year. I *know* no one had responded to either of them in that time. I can assure you I had no intent to cause harm to anyone. I wasn't trying to make a point, or get a thrill from damaging Grex, or cause a discussion to put myself into the spotlight, or anything of the sort. I wasn't trying to get back at anyone. I was trying to protect myself and my son from possible negative consequences of things I did a couple of years ago, at a difficult time of my life. I don't think I'm a vandal. My motives certainly weren't what I would expect a vandal's to be. I am very sorry if you can't respect the reasons for what I did, or the way I went about doing it, but there's my explanation.
Jep, I understand why you did what you did. flem is being a little harsh terming it vandalism (The image of you sitting at your computer rubbing your hands in glee and cackling comes to mind, and it makes me laugh) I'm glad that you found a break, and got those items that could have caused you potential harm deleted. However, Grex did have a rule. Either you make it cut-and-dried - there will be no deleting, you may only use retire, or come to the realisation that if we think it ok for your situation, you have to let other people be able to do it too. Your divorce could be a highly stressful subject for you to have on agora, in someone else's case it could be something else. Who is to judge how much concern an individual has about an item that is out there, that they may have started in a moment of vulnerability. (And while we're at it, I'd like that item I entered about the piano in the music cf to be deleted. People might read it and make fun of my piano playing skills, or lack thereof ;) )
Mynxcat, you are obviously joking about people thinking you are obese, considering you posted your original weight and we all admired you for sticking to an exercise program. Plus I doubt you are thin-skinned enough to care if mnet decides to use your item for a parody. And yes, of course I was joking. If I were going to get embarrased about anything I posted, it is not my weight.
I'll confess that my anger over what you and valerie have done is somewhat mitigated by circumstances. If you stole a loaf of bread to feed your starving son, I'd be sympathetic -- but you'd still be a thief. Insofar as Grex has any policy covering events like this, it's that no permanent action will be taken until public discussion has taken place and either consensus or a member vote occurs. We empower staff and board to act in emergencies and other situations where lengthy public debate would have a detrimental effect, but we expect that they will come up with temporary solutions that can be removed once the lengthy public discussion has taken place. As I understand it (I no longer have access to the mailing lists where I understand the discussions took place, so I may be wrong about sequence of events), Jan proposed a temporary solution, that your items be removed from public view while a discussion was held over whether or not you could delete the whole item. Instead of accepting this proposal, which would have addressed your (understandable) concerns about someone posting an archive of the items, you took matters into your own hands. I can understand and accept that you felt it necessary to take steps to make sure no one could read your own comments in those items. I don't really care why; it's none of my business. It is for your decision that the rest of us had no say in what was to be done with *our* responses taht you have lost my respect, and that I consider you a vandal.
jep, I somehow got the impression that you had done this in an attempt to force Grex towards a policy of deleting items. I seem to have misunderstood your motives, and I apologize for that. I still wonder if that was valerie's goal, though.
When you say that you wonder if was valerie's goal, do you mean when she deleted her own items, or when she deleted jep's items. I don't think that was her goal either case. But I guess, only she and people she's confided in would know what she hoped to accomplish.
re resp:263: Greg, no one told me of Jan's proposal of temporarily deleting the items. At first, when I made my request, I heard nothing. I sent a second request. That time time, Valerie told me there was a discussion among Board and staff. That's when I pressed for immediate removal. She sent me another e-mail after I'd gone to bed, asking if scribbling all my responses would sufficiently resolve the situation, then later that night, before I'd responded again to her, she told me she deleted my item. No one else communicated with me at all until after the item was deleted. Whups, one other person did e-mail me. Mark Conger apologized for going outside the bounds of his role as a recipient of baff e-mail, but asked me to save the items before they were deleted in case I ever wanted to show them to my son. Administratively speaking, he shouldn't have said that, and he acknowledged it. However, he was so kind and thoughtful, and was so clearly only trying to help me out, I wouldn't dream of criticizing him for what he did. Before anyone asks, you will have to conjecture on what I did with regard to his suggestion. I prefer not to say.
(( I was expressing support for the concept of "vandalism" as ripping out everything a person had ever written on Grex, everywhere, covering a period of years. The removal of the baby diary and divorce items have quite understandable motivations for me and while I'm not happy with how it was done, I don't consider it POINTLESS damage to the conferences, nor is the damage widespread. ))
re resp:264: I expressly did *not* ask for my items to be deleted in order to change system policy. I knew I might be causing changes in policy, but asked for my items to be deleted despite that. I did so solely because of the harm I believe could have come from those items, and because an unexpected, unsought-for opportunity arose for me to get them removed. I regret any policy changes that occur because of anything I did. I liked it for Grex better before any items were deleted. I made some remarks about the consequences of Valerie's actions in this item before I asked for my items to be deleted. Those were because I was preparing my position, trying to establish that my items should be removed when I requested that be done. I didn't want to change policy. I just didn't want a public debate before my items got deleted.
Regarding #234; I don't think I got that email.
John, quite honestly, do you really believe there aren't copies of your items out there? Get realistic. For one, I'd be shocked if your wife wasn't holding a hard copy of the entire discussion. Nothing entered here is private or safe from being archived. It's a public system. A very public system.
I am aware that it's possible someone has a copy of my items. It's also possible there are no other copies. I can't be sure, now, that there are no copies, but I can be sure if the items are restored, then there certainly will be copies.
(I don't believe my ex-wife ever read them.)
re #266: Ah, interesting. That does make it seem that the matter was much less under your control than you had made it seem previously. So maybe vandal isn't quite the right word for you. But I'm currently unable to think of any reason not to call Valerie a vandal.
While it's possible there are copies out there, I doubt most people would have found them personally interesting enough to keep. It also sounds like jep might have squeezed in before this became enough of an issue for people to start copying whole conferences on general principle.
re 244 ACTION mode, not attack mode. re 247 Yeah, a no-good HACKER<>. re 249 >valerie's actions were hers alone and not official policy Yes, and valerie's actions suddenly became temporarily official policy. Who knows, they may have become permanent, had this discussion not taken place. re 253 Thanks. I'm sure there were still people wondering. re 264 I think her goal was to keep it secret and hope her staff buddies didn't spill the beans. re 271 What is your opinion of the "parody" copies on the m-net agora conference, regarding valerie's baby diary? re 273 Just try not to hurt her feelings, k? She might resign from something spontaneously. Go on a mad hacking spree. Who knows?
When were Grex's most recent backups performed, and who has custody of them? And does Valerie still have physical access to the Grex machine?
She said she'd turn over her keys.
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Valerie gave her Pumpkin keys to Jan.
Seems reasonable.
Wait till you hear about the bizzarre sexual game under which the exchange took place, though.
IIRC, one of the arguments used in the great censor-log-closing debate was that the entity Grex does not own anything posted here, and therefore cannot force authors to continue publishing their material here if they decide they want it removed. It seems to me that a corollary of that is that item originators do not own the posts of others in the items they start, and therefore cannot force those authors to stop publishing their material here if the authors want it to remain visible.
resp:261 To be honest, I hope you don't get that item deleted, Sapna. I studied piano for a while myself, but was relating a little more directly as an beginning/intermediate guitar student at the time. (Right now my studies are on hold.) I enjoyed the discussion... felt it inspiring to new music students. I feel deleting the item would be a loss to the conference. But that is my opinion.
I'm sure the paino item would not be of as great loss to the system as teh baby diaries were or jep's divorce items. They wre definitely items I would return to if I ever found myself in those situations, and I'm sure many people related to them. On a much broader sense than the piano diary. Or the fat diary.
While I tend to agree with you, especially about the divorce item, which I think was one of the best ever and contained some of the best advice and observations I have ever seen on mnet or grex, lumen's point is valid to the extent he suggests items have value beyond what a poster may intend or believe to be the case. As a songwriter, I subscribe to the John Mellencamp philosophy that songs are like children. At some point they leave the nest to stand or fall on their own merits. A person's items and posts are similar in that respect. The issue is not one of ownership but control. The last few days clearly demonstrate, in my mind anyway, that certain posters are incredible control freaks.
Come on. That's why you parodied her in the first place. It's the most obvious and provocative trait that comes through in her posts, especially if you were ever around when someone entered a response that didn't fit what she wanted people to say. Her item was the Singapore of conferencing. I have some sympathy for jep, but I would have had more sympathy had he done it sooner to keep them out of his ex-wife's hands. By now, I'm sure Mary Remmers or someone has already given her copies, so the only purpose deleting them served was to annoy everyone else and help Valerie burn more bridges.
(Incidentally, I don't think either of those points was jep's intent, but he did delete them far too late to protect himself from any actual damage they could cause.)
[Actually, valerie deleted them. Detail, counsellor!]
[Causation is an interesting subject]
Valerie and I were talking yesterday about how it came about that she and I had such different ideas about what the rules for item deletion were. Valerie started the baby diary almost six years ago. Since then, for various reasons, she has reduced her conference participation until in the last few years those items were about the only conferencing she did here. In particular, she was not involved in the coop conference very much during the big debate about the closing of the censored log. I think the long discussion surrounding that proposal crystalized Grex's policy about deletions in the minds of many of us in ways that extended far beyond the actual proposal. The proposal just said the censored log is not permitted any more, and clearly implied that it is OK for people to delete their own past responses. The implications that it is NOT OK to delete other users responses is not at all clear in the proposal, but certainly was clear in the discussion. So those of us who were in that discussion probably have a much sharply focused idea of Grex's deletion policy than those who weren't. Probably this is an argument that Grex staffers should all be active participants in Coop. However, it is also true that with my active participation in discussions this week, my actual work on Next Grex has ground to a complete halt. So forcing staffers to be part of these discussions isn't exactly going to improve their efficiency, and a few would resign from staff rather than have to involve themselves deeply with periodic frabbles like this.
An alternative conclusion might be that policy which is clear should be stated clearly and that at least one staff member should be charged with keeping current in Co-op and informing other staff either at meetings or by email, whichever is most timely, of any effective or actual changes in policy.
I wonder if it really makes sense to keep everything around forever as we do. Maybe Grex should just always automatically delete every item that hasn't had a response for a year. Yeah, the old items have value. There were, as others have said, some very intelligent and thoughtful responses to JEP's divorce items, and if you were going through a divorce, looking back on that might be helpful. But you know, you could probably get as good advice or better by starting your own divorce item. Oops, no, I forgot. We all know today that we would never be so stupid as to do that, especially considering that our item could never ever be deleted if we had second thoughts later. So I guess we'd better keep JEP pinned to the wall for future reference. Discussions of that quality aren't going to happen again.
You don't think there's any value in preserving Grex's history?
Sometimes it's history, and sometimes it's deadwood, and sometimes it's historical deadwood. Eric: It would be hard to make that work. All staff knew what the conclusion of that discussion was - the closing of the censor log. But the whole discussion caused a shift and clarification of the Grex community's outlook on several related issues. Who's going to be insightful enough to recognize those shifts, figure out who didn't know about them, and accurately convey the right message to the right people. I had no idea that Valerie didn't have the same understanding that I did, and I talk to Valerie much more than I talk to, say, Marcus, and know her much better.
Interesting comments on the "censored" log, Jan. I participated in that debate, but I didn't come away from it thinking items couldn't be deleted. Sure, there is a value in preserving Grex's history. But a complete record of anything ever said on grex is NOT necessary to that preservation.
Perhaps an ongoing policy discussion in the Staff conference would be in order. The idea would be to discuss practical implications of policy changes, and perceptions of implicit changes could be discussed and validated. One of the strengths of Grex is that the policies by which we operate are not vast and complex, but one of the weaknesses of our system is that the fluidity of our policy sometimes results in controversial judgement calls, and over time, resolving those controversies has become a more difficult and noisome process. So the logical responses are either to increase the degree to which our policies are clearly codified, or take steps to insure that there is broad and clear understanding of those policies by those charged with their implementation.
Re resp:292: I would oppose that as a general policy. I find a lot of the old items in conferences like micros and jellyware interesting, and I'd hate to see them deleted just for the sake of clearing out deadwood. I think individual fairwitnesses should be free to set policies like that for their own conferences, though.
I think automatically clearing old items is a bad idea. The info conference, for example has a lot of "old" info that is still useable. In fact, I really hope valerie can later be convinced to restore her responses in that conference.
Maybe GreX needs a classics conference!
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you mean the common sense of not trying to do something as root when the conferencing system clearly does not allow you to do it as yourself?
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re resp:296: I would be interested in the perceptions of staffers for the rules being established in the coop conference. So would others. I think it might be hard to argue that the common users should be excluded from knowing how the staff might be interpreting the rules.
I think the purpose of Eric's suggestion was to make sure that all of the staff are on the same page, that all agree on how the rules established in coop should be implemented. Reporting that agreement is only necessary if it results in something different from what the membership established here. We want to avoid a repeat of this week's experience, where different staffers had different opinions of what the rules were and how those rules should be applied.
Haven't all the staff voiced their opinions in this item?
No, they've not. Several staff members do not read coop, as I think Jan mentioned some time back. If reading a coop is a requirement, they'll quit.
As a staffer (and general onlooker), I don't think adding my opinion on this will advance the issue. What is clear, to me, is that we need to move forward constructively and I'm putting my faith in the board to see some sense and get Grex back on track - we must not let those who wish to destroy us win.
menuadm
(Anyone who thinks there's anyone who wants to destroy Grex, or that there's a concerted effort to do so, is fucking paranoid.)
Re 307: too late, I'm afraid.
Note that my recollection on the reconsidering of "closing the scribbled log" was in response to the anonymous internet reading of grex conferences that backtalk allowed.
I have a question for Jan. Let's say we do indeed decide not to restore these items. We'll say that Valerie has a right to remove the responses of all those who participated in the discussion, because the discussion was about her. (I'm not going to argue that point but concede it for the moment.) And we're going to remove the entirety of the divorce items because, at some point, what other people said about or to jep may be harmful to him or his custody battle or his child or even his wife. Yes, John, even your wife. Anyhow, we do this because it's the right thing to do. So when the next person comes along, all upset, begging for responses entered by someone else to be censored because they could indeed hurt him, or someone he loved, or his job status, or whatever, then what? Do we say our kindness was a one time gift? Do we ask for the whole of Grex to vote but first remove the item? Do we elect a censorship czar to decide whether the request is authentic? That's the end of my question. You can say Valerie's action was that of a rogue staffer, acting on her own. But if we, meaning staff, board or even the whole of our membership, agrees to censor these items for the reasons that have been given, then we will have set some precedent. We will have instituted censorship of each other's posts if only you can make the case the responses are really about you or hurtful. Yuck. Double yuck. I'm very anti-censorship. I'm pro informing people of how the system operates and warning them to join in, with this warning: they might not like everything they see. And they won't be able to erase what others say. We all get to have opinions, for better or worse. Welcome to Grex.
Great! But neither jep NOR valerie told the general public that they had killed items until AFTER the fact.
Would doing otherwise have changed things? I'm curious.
The question was for Jan, but I'll venture my answer: Valerie deleted her items because she thought that such action was within the guidelines for grex. We have all since learned that she was wrong: her action was NOT within the guidelines. Valerie deleted JEP's items because she could not think of any way to NOT delete them, after having deleted her own. (I'm reminded of a line from "Joan of Arcadia": "Don't blame me for your lack of imagination.") We are all now very clear on what current policy is: we can delete our own text, but not the text of others. The events of last week were an aberation that will NOT be repeated. So why not restore the erroneously deleted text? Because to do so would serve no USEFUL purpose. It might make a few people feel better, but it would not improve the state of grex. It would NOT undo the harm of last week. However, it WOULD do fresh harm: those items could never again lie fallow. They would be instantly copied and recopied by all interested, and many disinterested, parties; we are all sensitised to them. Better to live with the single wrong of their deletion than the double-wrong of their restoration.
I've kind of come around to agreeing with the view expressed in resp: 315. I think we need to look forward from here, not backward.
Re #315: I don't think Valerie cared whether her actions were within the
guidelines or not; her own comfort and feeling of control were
paramount. She herself said that she was prepared to be removed
from staff for it, so it's clear she at least suspected she was
doing something she wasn't supposed to.
delete and be damned! They are no great loss.
If that's the standard, let's torch 80% of the conferencing system.
Mary, I would respond that if it came to it, our answer would be that this was an aberration, not a one-time kindness. Our answer would be that this was the result of an internal communication issue we didn't know existed, and we're using this opportunity to insure that it doesn't happen again. Our answer would be that this WAS a violation of existing policy. My guiding principle here is the one of least harm. That principle dictates that the text rightfully removed remain removed, and the text not rightfully removed be restored, except insofar as it quotes significantly (an admittedly unclear standard) from the rightfully removed text. The stated purposes of item removal were specifically prevention of future parody (Valerie) and prevention of future abuse (John). Valerie's case is easier, since it is her text in specific which represents the potential, and it can easily be identified and separated. Jep's case is a bit harder. Not having great familiarity with the precise content of the items, I can't say exactly how best to serve both his need and the need to protect against censorship, but I'm SURE there is a balance to be struck. However, that compromise will likely be less satisfactory to jep than to those others who posted in his items. Jep's right to redress his own errors does not supercede the rights of others to control over their own thoughts and ideas, nor does it supercede the rights of Grex to to what is in its own best interests within the limitations of the law, and that's something he'll have to accept. The point is that we can move on from here with some reasonable action which addresses the current issues without establishing a precedent Grex can't live with, and we can do it without completely backtracking and exposing jep to the full extent he fears.
Do you know about the harm principle? It's based on you shouldn't harm the harmless as a legal law. What do you think?
Re #320: That's well said, and a good explanation of my position too.
(for those of you who are impaired, the following is sarcasm:) i think that all text on grex should be erased in an attempt to start over from scratch. within every conference there should be a warning about not entering anything that you wouldn't want to be read on the front page of a nation-wide newspaper. and a prodding that you may claim to not care now, but that if you change yuor mind in 5 years you cannot go back and un-do what you wrote.
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That is a little bit of an over-reaction.
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You should see janc over-react.
Welcome to the theater of the absurd?
I encourage everyone who reads this to ask themselves the following: What would the reaction be if a random person broke root on grex and deleted a bunch of conference items? Wouldn't we restore them? So what makes this situation different? That some well known and popular grexers deleted (either directly or by proxy) their items? Is it the fact that these individuals are well-known and popular that allows us to condone their actions? Is it the fact that they had good reasons? This is important. Why are people willing to let valerie and jep slide when if the exact same thing happened under different circumstances, the question wouldn't even be asked: we'd simply restore the deleted data. I disagree with Joe that restoring the items would serve no useful purpose. It would send a message that Grex does *not* tolerate censorship, and that if such aberations do happen, they will be undone quickly. That said, as I have proposed before, I think that jep and valerie (or someone acting on their behalfs) should be allowed to delete their responses from their items prior to them appearing publically.
Honestly, I am willing to let valerie and jep slide on this because those items are so personal. I realize that I am not being objective about this. I think that restoring the items with the comments of anyone willing to have them deleted is probably the best solution to this issue. I think that most people would be willing to have their own comments deleted from those items. The few comments that would be left would not be harmful to anyone, imho. But honestly, that solution pretty much acomplishes the same thing as just leaving them deleted. I get the whole thing about how we dont want to set a precident for some users being allowed to delete other users posts and all that. I dont think that the posts themselves are worth much especially since they will be taken out of any context they once had. In the grand scheme of things, I dont think these items are important. I personally do not care if they remain deleted or not.
The difference between leaving the items completely deleted and restoring them minus the responses of users who *explicitly state* that they don't mind having those comments deleted is this: In the former case we as the community of grex are saying that the desires of a single user are more important than the rights of ownership and freedom of speech of all the other users who posted in those items. We're not even saying that one person's rights are more important than anothers, we're saying that one person's *desires* are more important than the rest of our *rights*.
Yes. I can totally see how you can see it that way. And I agree that it is wrong to allow a user to delete anyone else's posts. I know that if the board were asked to vote on this, I would feel compeled to be objective and the objective view is that grex users should not be allowed to delete other user's posts. Nor should they be able to have a staff member delete other user's posts (unless in the context of something like the proposed blog conference). Yet, I would hope that anyone who had responded in those items would be willing to give their permission to have their responses deleted. To do otherwise is, imho, rubbing salt into the wound. I honestly believe that most of the people who have commented in those items would be quite willing to allow their posts to be deleted. FWIW, I understand that there is a big difference between allowing one's posts to be deleted and having them deleted by someone else without permission even if the end result is the same.
So far how many people have said they are NOT willing to have their postings deleted from Valerie's and JEP's items? The only one I recall is Mary.
Re: #333 - it doesn't matter. The default position must be "as close as possible to what should have happened", which is all people's responses remain unless they exclicity go and scribble them themselves.
JP2 said he didn't want his responses deleted.
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I do not want my responses deleted from Valerie's items. I'm willing to discuss with jep whether I'd consent to having them removed from his. In either case, what matters isn't that my responses were particularly valuable, it's the principle: deleting them wasn't Valerie's decision to make.
i don't want my posts deleted.
re 332 >willing to give their permission to have their responses deleted. But now you're making assumptions about other people's opinions! Unless of course you remember exactly who responded to each item and can either vouch for them reasonably or have spoken to them personally. I'm willing to bet you did not do this. The above point goes for all the other users who made similar statements.
My items being deleted is different from a vandal breaking root in these ways: 1) Multiple staff members thought it was okay to delete those items and said so publicly before I made my request. 2) There was precedent, at the time I made my request, for deleting items of that sort. Valerie had deleted her items. 3) I asked for my two items to be deleted. I made an official request through the best means of doing so; a message to "staff@grex.org", and this request was granted. I've already stated that I wouldn't have asked for the items to be deleted if it weren't for points 1 and 2. I had no reason to expect they might be restored, amidst a publicity firestorm yet, when all I wanted was for them to disappear. I'd rather, right now, that no items had been deleted, rather than have the possibility my items will be restored in the current environment and due to the current situation.
Do you even try reading things in this conference? All three of those points are mostly bull.
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Like I said above, mostly bull.
In several items, jp2 has mentioned asking that Item 39 be deleted from this conference. I thought that item should be deleted, by the rules as I understood them. However, because of the discussion occassioned by the deletion of the baby-diary items, I asked for guidance from fellow staff members. The one response I remember seeing advocated a double-standard. While I was waiting for the discussion to resolve itself, Valerie deleted JEP's items and resigned. At this point, the policy appears to be against deletion of items. I'm not happy with the current situation, but I don't know how best to resolve it.
"I'd rather, right now, that no items had been deleted, rather than have the possibility my items will be restored in the current environment and due to the current situation." It's not *your* item. Never was. From the moment you opened it up to public discussion, and someone else took the time to enter a response, the discussion became a community effort. The item isn't yours. And what you're really saying is: I'd rather, right now, that no items had been deleted, rather than have the possibility that what others have said will remain. Again, you're sorry you took an action. Maybe you really should think ahead.
re resp:342: Q1 "Can you provide any evidence of this"... item:68:resp:4 (as quoted in item:68:resp:11) #4: "It's longstanding Grex policy that the person who created an item can delete it." item:68:resp:61 (gelinas) think the author of an item has the right to remove the item, EVEN IF OTHERS HAVE RESPONDED Q2: I said that I'd never expected to be able to delete those items, and that when the opportunity came up unexpectedly, I took it. Q3: I have no control over your item not being deleted. I didn't bribe anyone, of course. Am I a favored user? Hmm... I'd say I've earned some respect on-line. I also carry some baggage from my long association with Grex and M-Net; I am not universally regarded as the ideal Grexer or anything like that.
re resp:345: Mary, your third paragraph needs work. I don't even know what you mean, let alone what you are stating that I meant.
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From the rapidity of the shitstorm which gathered when valerie deleted the baby items, I'd say it's pretty disingenuous, if not downright dishonest, ofyou to claim that you didnt' know deleting your items would produce controversy.
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What I was saying John is you took a big chance you'd be able to have everyone's responses killed.. You simply wanted it done in a real hurry. You demanded it be happen before any discussion took place, even among staff and board. Clearly, the discussion of the propriety of this censorship wasn't as important as getting the items killed. So now it's being discussed. It may end up you won't be able to censor everyone comments. Opps.
I'm beginning to think jep is not deliberately lying in the typical sense of the word. What I do find disturbing is that he seems to be showing a cluelessness very similar to what some of us were discussing in his divorce item. In other words, I'm seeing more denial and rationalization than lying.
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It was unnecessary.
What was in there?
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Wow. Guess we really *do* have to be careful what we discuss here, if it's likely to be passed on to the police.
Huh?!
Yep. But then I decided how discussion of Jep's divorce didn't belong in the item discussing his divorce item. Hope that makes sense. Anyhow, it didn't belong here. There are already too many hurt feelings.
I am curious, now, if there's any truth to the rumors that mary also gave a copy to jep's ex-wife. I'd dismissed those comments as hypothetical until reading resp:358.
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See, now you're making it up as you go along. ;-) No hardcopy was given to anyone. Remember, this is an open access public system.
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Nope. Nope. At least not because of anything I did.
Re 365: Well, your scribbling of your responses makes your denial difficult to confirm. I think jp2 was making a point about scribbled responses...
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re #359: That's already happened on mnet, and the user was actually visited by the police. She laughed it off, according to her posts. Another difference between mnet and grex I guess. re #370: Is it time to invoke Godwin's Law now?
If you think Irving is a Nazi. However I don't believe Hitler had a website as slick as Irving's.
Fuck, I'd laugh if cyklone's postulate becomes true.
re resp:361: Mary, would you clarify what it was you did, exactly, with the divorce item, and when?
She already scribbled the info.
I'll share that with you in mail, jep, and then if you want it to go public, I'm fine with that.
Amiga, Nazi, Trek!
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cross Dan Cross response 165 of 377: Jan 7 17:35 EST 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- Regarding #162; Just to clarify, staff didn't grant Valerie any extra `right'. She acted on her own, outside of the rhuebric of staff. jep John Ellis Perry Jr. response 166 of 377: Jan 7 17:45 EST 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- re resp:165: If that's the case, then there's no need for a debate. The items need to be restored. It couldn't be more straightforward.
Okay, fine , I scribbled the stupid response.
(no-one wanted you to.)
It was freezing up the discussion, thanks to cyklone.
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Started by yours truly!
Isn't that way more than a decent novel?
Hey, when do we get the vote results?
We don't.
O yea?
It's been said elsewhere, but: Probably tomorrow afternoon.
say something? !motd
Thanks to the Ann Arbor Observer for the long-running Grex ad on arborweb.com
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The voting period for the two member proposals has ended. Final results will
be posted on Monday, February 9, as soon as the list of eligible members has
been certified. -jhr
Happy Birthday Richard (bruin) Pirie!
It's been said elsewhere.
Jappy birthday, Richard (bruin) Price!
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