In this item, I'm formally petitioning Grex's staff to delete every item I've ever posted, starting to this one. I've decided that they represent a bizzarre doppelganger of my self, and I feel very uncomfortable with them. To aid this endevour, I will post an approximate list of all the usernames I've used: polytarp dah plongeur leongold willcome Thanks!170 responses total.
If staff were to do this, the request would have to come from the originating account, and would have to include the conference and item number. No one on staff has the time to hunt down "every item ever posted." Further, they don't have time to confirm that the person currently using a particular loginid is the person who was using that loginid when the entry was created. Which is why I think the right of removal should be implemented within the capabilities of individual users.
So you don't care if your response #1, in this conference, which contains your ideas, etc. , is removed by anyone at anytime.
That's shocking.
Re. 1: Why don't you start with this item?
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I disagree, Ryan. There's an important policy issue at stake here. If naftee hadn't raised the issue he did in Item 68, I probably would have, had I found out about the situation.
I stand by my post long time back .. clear cut rules for any cases you can think of now . and new ones as the case arises.
(didn't Selena want to have all of her items and responses scribbled at one point? how did that work out for her?)
As for multiple logins. What if it's a well known user who is widely known to use more than one login, and they lose access to one. And they want all their posts deleted? What do you do then? Do you comply just because you know they're telling the truth and you like them? You allow censorship now, you're going to get into worse later.
It would seem that valerie's claim that anyone can have their items removed by staff is incorrect, since I've seen at least two people ask for it now and neither of them has gotten a positive response. Thus I have to conclude that valerie exercised a privilage not available to the rest of us.
She exercised a privilege *I* thought was available to everyone. The conditions in Response 1 above are to ensure that the original author and, therefore, legitimate owner (in my view) of the item was making the request. And to limit the work-load to something manageable, of course. The ensuing discussion has made plain to me that there is no clear course of action for a staff member to follow. Until there is, I won't be acting on the requests.
She exercised a privilege that even she knew was not available to everyone. She tried it as a normal user, didn't work. She then proceeded to try it as root. And legitimate owner in staff's view only? What if that person was widely known to have multiple ids, but staff wasn't participating in enough conferences to figure that out. Hypothetical situation. I know.
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Regarding #11; Speech in a forum such as this simply cannot be owned by one individual. The idea of a person `owning' an item is foreign to me, and I just don't see where you're coming from, Joe. It might help if you could explain your rationale, though.
Re 13>So you're saying we give staff members special privileges to keep them happy and interested enough in working on grex? As for the "toads" harrassing staff to quit, in this case, they were not the ones who led staff to delete items to which other people had responded.
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Hey, I don't like some of those toads, I admit it, but in this case, they really are on to something. At least, _I_ think they are. Sometimes the true measure of the person is whether they can bring themselves to agree with someone they really don't like, just because that person is right.
Ryan, I don't see what you suggest is happenning - singling out staffers and harrassing them so they quit. The only resignors I'm aware of were cross and valerie. In both cases, the reasons for resigning seem to be different, irrelevant to what the canadian posse do or don't do. Heck cross even returned as a staffer (and very thankful we are :) )
The request in #0 should first be taken up with the fw's of the confernces in which the items were posted. Of course, soon the fw's are going to (should be) asking for a broader, clearer grex policy about when they should(n't) be killing entire items, either on their own or in response to an item-enterer's request.
I think Ryan has a good point in #13. I think that there are consequences for constant harrassment of staff, and if Dan and Valerie are the only ones you've seen act dramatically about it, that doesn't mean it doesn't affect the rest of us. I find myself wondering, constantly, why I spend so much time enabling people who really deserve to be ignored. Eventually, it will probably get to me. Let me say that another way. I think a number of Grexers choose to participate here because they feel they can be assholes without any consequences. (Why they enjoy being assholes, I don't know, but it's undeniably the case.) But there *are* consequences, and ultimately, such behavior will likely kill Grex, because only other people of like mind will want to participate, and no one will want to administer a place whose purpose has become the promotion of such behavior. The death of Grex is also, perhaps, what some people want - another desire I've never understood. In case anyone hasn't noticed, we have a big shortage of staff already. That's why we were able to buy a new machine, but so far haven't been able to get it in service. THere has been plenty of finger pointing, but the bottom line is that a lot of staff members don't feel as compelled to serve Grex as they did in the old days. I think the fact that such service results in being abused has a lot to do with it.
I understand that sentiment Mark. I agree that there are assholes out there who seem to be making it harder and harder for staff to want to continue serving grex. And I see your point that staff could be straining under "attacks" as they perceive it. I guess I find it hard to understand why what a couple of boys insist on posting over and over again would really affect staff's morale, especially when it's open knowledge that they're alone in their views. Maybe there's something there that I don't see. The case in point is a rare occasion when people have spoken up, because believe it or not, the Canadians and jp2 have a point. (Though Jamie has been yelling so much, he's given me a headache) This also brings me to another point I've been trying to make. Grexers seem to be happy with the status quo. They know each other, they understand what other grexers are saying and the like interacting with them. Nice. So nice, that they've neglected to really look to expanding participation. So when a couple of assholes comes along, and attracts a couple more, and they get in a couple more, eventually you are going to be overrun by them. It's all very well to be happy with your little world, but unless you do something about expanding, pretty soon you're going to be run out. I know, we've discussed this before.
re 6 I dunno, the reference that the items were deleted was buried deep inside the m-net agora conference. Oh wait, you're staff. Never mind. THEY were informed. re 20 There is a difference between harassment and genuine concern about the situation of a GreX policy or staffer. If you can't tell the difference, please avoid calling people assholes.
It makes it very hard to attract new people to Grex when the general flavor of the conversation is nastiness. I find it really hard to recommend Grex to people for that reason.
But Mark, the general flavor isn't that. At least I don't see it that way. We have a couple of annoying characters (actually I can think of many, many more annoying characters, but thats what grex is all about - you take the good, you take the bad), but we have many, many more that are very nice people, and that are enjoyable to interact with. We're not marketing them well enough, and we let a couple of kids make us feel like the system is going to the dogs. /shrug
Well, I agree much is in the attitude. But I also think there are consequences for being an asshole on Grex.
I know where you're coming from Mark, but this one isn't about assholes. It's going to be a needed discussion where we fine tune our feelings about ownership and censorship. Grex staff shouldn't feel threatened.
I wonder why gelinas (Joe. Joe Gelinas.) thought there was a long standing rule allowing folks to delete their items after other folk had posted to them. Surely, if that were the case, Valerie wouldn't have E-mailed both the staff and the board about it.
re 23 Hey, dude, you're the one who started swearing here.
Re #27: Probably because he's never tried it. Few people have.
You don't think a mail to staff and board would indicate that, at very least, it was something unusual?
Or the fact that the items simply dissapeared, without mention? Without even the fairwitnesses of the conference knowing about their removal?
who says the FW didn't know?
Oh, so you kept it secret too? Immediately before I posted item 68 in coop I posted a response in the femme conference asking what happened to certain items (they were former baby conference items). So far, there's been no response. So either you don't read anything in the conference you're supposed to be responsible for, or you were deliberately trying to protect valerie from her actions which you knew were wrong.
Pfft, maybe she was just ignoring you.
Re #21: That pretty much summarizes what happened to M-Net.
Re second paragraph of 12: That's why I said "From the account that originally created the item." One of the odd things about unix systems is that login ids get re-used. If I let "gelinas" get deleted, anyone can claim it. And no one can prove, definitively, that the new "jgelinas" is the old "gelinas." All protestions from "jgelinas" to the contrary. So no, a request from "polytarp" to delete responses by "dah" should NOT be honoured. News flash, mynxcat: YOU are one of the annoying ones. YOU are part of the problem. I invite you to re-read this conference, concentrating on the responses from "mynxcat" and consider them as a third person. *JUST* this conference; no need to torture yourself with your reponses in agora, present or past, nor international. Part of the function of the staff conference is to report _any_ use of root privilegs. Allow me to repeat that: *any* use of root privileges. So Valerie's report in the staff conference was routine, nothing out of the out of the ordinary. I think I have tried to use the "kill" command, and failed. I chalked it up as an error in implementation and went on with my life.
I don't think grex staff should be going into individual items and deleting one user's posts. If polytarp wants to do that, he scan go scribble them out one by one. Otherwise each item exists as a whole, as part of the grex collective, and for historical reasons should not be altered. Grex should want its old conferences and the items in those conferences to be preserved as they are so down the road they can be read as they are, not modified just because somebody isn't comfortable with what they've said.
(This from someone who regularly argues for the wholesale deletion of conferences? Interesting.)
Regarding #36; I disagree, Joe; I think Sapna has said some very insightful things.
If Grex doesn't allow me to delete my copyrighted works, I will look into legal action.
Sure she has, some of them in this and the previous item. I stand by my comment. And invitation.
polytarp, you can scribble anything you posted on grex gelinas, I have argued for archiving dead confs and closing them. Not deleting them outright. I don't think dead confs and live confs should be listed together, because new users see dead confs and they think the whole of grex is dead.
how jp-ish
Re. 42: I can't.
Regarding _this item. Staff are voluntary , they will delete attheir convenience and when they have time , they may not if they don't feel like it. Second this item is now irrelevant as valerie (ref item #71) has written /a/p/o/popcorn/scribble which let's you do that by yourself.
It doesn't. That only lets you scribble things, not delete items. As well, it won't let me scribble things entered by accounts I remade, such as polytarp.
Must be tough.
I've taken you up on your invitation, gelinas. Personally, I don't see anything I've said that can be construed as "annoying". Am I annoying because I don't agree with you? Or because I believe for once the canadian posse is right, and that affronts you. It was never my intenstion to annoy.Believe it or not, I really care about Grex. I've bneen on and off since 1997, and I've been on regularly since March of 2002. I've met some really nice people here, I like the discussions and I don't want to see this turn into a place where complete items are removed, losing a lot of the valuable discussion we have on here. Joe, you've proven what I've suspected all along, but hoped wasn't true. I'd like all the items I've ever entered removed, and once I'm done I'd like my user-id deleted. Thanks for the good times.
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I'll miss you, mynxcat.
mynx, as soon as you delete your items, you can ask to have your user id deleted.
I went over to M-Net and checked out the parody baby item. Wow. Some people, mynxcat among them, have definitely lost my respect. I don't mind parody, but that was like the worst junior high clique nastiness I've ever seen, continued over several years.
From my perspective in this community, mynxcat has been a mixed blessing.
I can delete my posts. However, I am not staff, and I cannot delete the items that I have entered as other people have responded. I request staff to delete all my items. (I'm sorry I don't have a "resignation from staff" to offer in exchange for my items being deleted, but I figure "resigning" from grex itself should suffice.)
Actually, I'd be happier if you'd stick around and do more of the stuff I respected you for, rather than running away from the controversy.
Since I'm a staff member, and expect to continue being a staff member, I guess
I need to state my position on all of this, so people will know where I stand.
My understanding of the policy on deletion of postings has been that people
were allowed to delete their own postings, but not those of others. The
exception to this was that fairwitnesses where allowed to delete postings.
In the old days this had to be done to preserve disk space - fairwitnesses
would delete old items to make space for new ones. Though technically
fairwitnesses could use this power to censor things they didn't like, that
his not historically been an approved practice, and I'd expect that any
fairwitness that did so would be removed.
Valerie didn't think that was the policy. Apparantly there are other staff
members who didn't think so either.
The argument that she should have known otherwise because picospan didn't
let her do that kind of deletion from her own account isn't really very
good. Picospan hasn't changed in a decade. The rules it implements are
not identical to Grex's rules. For example:
(1) Given that willcome can establish that he really was polytarp, then
I believe Grex's policies say that his postings as polytarp can be
deleted upon request. The software won't let him do it. Grex staff
would have to do it for him.
(2) If someone posts a copy of your response in a literal quotation
in their own resxponse, I believe you can have that deleted. Again
this requires staff action, and cannot be done via Picospan.
(3) Though picospan allows fairwitnesses to delete any item from their
conferences, the actual number of circumstances where this is
approved of is narrow to the point of non-existance. I'd say the
only case would be if an item is being moved to a different conference -
link it to the new conference and then delete it from the old, or
if someone posted megabytes of garbage to an item. Otherwise
"retire" would always be prefered.
However, this is somewhat moot, because I'm pretty sure that if Valerie had
believed these to be the rules, she would have deleted the baby diary items
anyway (though she might have handled the whole thing a big differently).
I would not have done this myself, but I see the sense in her desire to do
so. The fact is, this is not the same Grex it was five years ago. What
seem reasonable and comfortable to put here then may well not seem reasonable
and comfortable now.
Joe desribes mynxcat as one of the trouble makers above. I don't perceive
her exactly that way. I see her as someone who has joined Grex recently and
thinks that they way things are is the way they are supposed to be. Not an
unreasonable assumption. She says things like "this is Grex - of course
you are going to be attacked if you say things like that." Those of us who
have been here longer cringe at the statement. That's not how the Grex
that we lived on for so long worked. But it is how Grex works today.
Yes, there has always a steady steady stream of isolated twits wandering
around, being obnoxious. But they where isolated idiots, easily ignorable
especially compared to the cohesive and supportive community that provided
a more positive response.
I think it is actually useful to look at the baby diary parody item on M-Net.
It is item 39 in the "agora" conference there. You'll see a lot of rude
behavior that isn't really very different than things you've seen before.
But there is something I think is fairly new there. You'll see people
pointing out to other people where they can find good stuff to attack. For
years Valerie has occasionally commented that surprising people would
show up in the baby diary. People who scarcely participated at all on
Grex, and who had no apparant interest in parenting. Now she knows why
they were there. They were there exclusively to find stuff that could
be taken back and parodied to the general applause of other people there,
or quoted verbatim and out of context to the comments like "Oh my god, I
can't believe she said that."
What that is, is not an occasional isolated twit, but a cohesive and self-
reinforcing community of twits, something rather harder to ignore. Combine
that with the increased level of local twitiness, and the gradual erosion of
the more positive and supportive community that used to live here as people
are slowly driven away, and it's easy to see why some people might want to
re-evaluate the appropriateness of past posts.
Why delete the whole baby diary instead of only her posts to it. Well, why
not? Picture what the remaining item would look like if all of Valerie's
responses were gone. The entire narrative thread would be gone. What would
be left would be almost entirely commentary on it by other users. If you
read it, you'd spend nearly all your time trying to infer what Valerie had
said from what other people were saying, with varying success. In some
cases you'd guess right and in some cases you'd guess wrong. It wouldn't
exactly be a precious jewel in the collection of great Grex items that
everyone would want to read. All you'd really have left would be a sort
of distorted negative image of the diary. Even without Valerie's responses,
it would still be all about Valerie.
This is quite different from jp2's request to delete his item requesting
a list of grex members. With out jp2 it would still be about lists of grex
members.
Though it clearly makes little sense to want to keep Valerie's baby diary
without Valerie's responses around, I understand the reluctance of some people
to start getting into value judgements about what is and is not appropriate
to delete. A nice clean rule that says people can only delete their own
responses is so very much simpler to administer. On the other hand simple
rules are also very stupid sometimes. In real life you do have to make
difficult judgements.
Personally, I'm conflicted about this. I don't know what Grex's policy
should be. I think it could bear some discussion. It would certainly be
possible to get Valerie's baby diary items off a backup tape, delete all
of her text from them, and restore the sad remains to the parenting and
femme conferences. It would be an amazingly stupid exercise, and rather
a Pyrrhic victory for those who want a hard line against censorship, but
it's certainly possible. Incidentally, I'm not volunteering for the job.
I'm saddened by the whole thing. Grex is still my primary social network.
To have Valerie out of it is a significant personal loss for me.
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Thanks for responding, Jan.
I tried deleting my comments in the international cf, of which I am fw, and got the following error in Backtalk "ERROR: response erasing by fairwitnesses not enabled" However, I was allowed to delete all items I entered, and one item entered by someone else, but was specifically about me. I've left all items entered by other people, but I wish to delete my comments. Obviously, I can't seem to do so, because I'm fw (ironic, but that's the way backtalk seems to work). I request staff to remove me from fw of the conference or remove my comments, whichever they prefer. Actually, remove me as fw, and let someone else take over, or kill the conference. Re 55> How nice to get approval from you. Couple of points 1. I am not running away from controversy. What controversy? That gelinas thinks I'm annoying, and maybe a few others? That I was one of the posters in the infamous baby diary parody. (btw, I was fully aware that other people may some day read it. It's not like I'm cringing that some grexers read what I posted and now think that I'm mean, or a cliquey junior high-schooler. Don't give yourselves too much credit) 2. I don't believe that I have the inclination anymore to keep up with grex or what it becomes or could become. I don't care anymore. And I could use the extra couple of hours everyday to do something else.
Why do you feel a need to destroy everything you've contributed to Grex, sapna?
I think it would be wise to ask Valerie the same question.
I'd like to point out that my decision to remove everything had nothing to do with Valerie's actions. I was not trying to prove anything like if she can do it, so can I. I posted my response about leaving before reading ahead, and seeing her item about leaving the community. She has the Unix skills to script something to remove her comments. I'm not a Unix person, and I'll prolly do it manually, where I can. However, as I've stated, I'm unable to delete items that I've entered, nor the comments from the intl cf. "Why do you feel a need to destroy everything you've contributed to Grex, sapna?" I guess I want to disassociate myself from Grex as much as possible. Why it's important that everything I've contributed be deleted is hard to explain. I don't want my stuff around here anymore. I don't believe it belongs here. (I realise I can't erase Grex completely from my life. That would mean getting rid of my Grex Mousepad that was a gift - and I can't part with gifts. I've made soem great friends, including Dan :). But I'd like to erase as much as possible)
Why do you feel that way, Sapna? I am curious why this made you decide to leave Grex. I do know why Valerie left, but you were one of the parodiers, and you were very active until this came out. I guess I'm just trying to figure out why someone who's active and was "happy" here until a few days ago suddenly decides to leave.
Awww, thanks Sapna.
I'm sorry valerie has left. I'm sorry mynxcat has left. I'm not leaving.
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I'm going to have to start archiving Grex. I don't like it when things dissapear.
I haven't left yet. I'm waiting to get my items removed. Or till some consensus comes up about it. Twila, I came here to make friends. And then when that happened, I realised I really liked Grex, till I started really getting into the whole policy and getting involved in coop. I think it's then I realised that it's pretty cliquey. I tried to work past that. I may have succeeded somewhat. But I think gelinas' comment drove the point. Maybe, grexers see it is as annoying. I haven't seen many people willing to do anything. Nearly every idea that comes up is either ignored, or criticised without giving it a chance. And god forbid you ever question policy or why it works for some people and not others. I will admit, that it's a little sad, but I'll live. And I don't expect to make a huge dent when I leave anyways. I realise I could still participate in grex, and forget coop. But that's not something I think I'm able to do. I can do that on mnet, but it didn't work too well on grex, and I don't expect it will. I just want to make a clean break. Do I apologise for being a parodier. No. I'm sorry that feelings were hurt. I would still parody someone if I got the oppurtunity, though I don't think I'm very good at it. I see my flaws, and heck I've parodied them too. And I've been parodied. I happened to stumble across a parody on me, and I didn't have the knee-jerk reaction that Valerie had. I thought it was pretty funny. (I don't remember what it was exactly, but I remember thinking - wow! that's pretty much on mark) And Jan, I know it's not worth much. And I guess this is more devastating to Valerie especially in light of people who never normally posted showing up in her diary. Speaking for myself, I was really interested in her diary. I didn't agree with some things she said, but I liked reading about the kids and other people's kids. I guess I'm saying that Valerie's Baby Diary wasn't just a source of material for me. (And I found it long before I found mnet's agora)
I don't like being parodied. And I resent being used as fodder. This is a personal preference, and maybe it's not very understandable to those who are comfortable with it. I wouldn't have minded one bit if the only people parodied were those who were okay with having it done to/with/for them. I wasn't and am not comfortable with it, and I don't think Valerie is either.
Re resp:68: I think it's odd that you'd claim Grex is cliquey and rejects outside ideas. This whole item, and the previous one, came about because an "outsider" brought up something a long-time Grexer did that they didn't like. There have been over a hundred responses discussing this, most of them supporting the "outsider's" objections. That doesn't look like a rejection of outside ideas to me.
In a free society, you don't get to choose who parodies you. Perhaps some people will read #69 and agree not to do it, simply out of respect for your feelings. But other's won't. That doesn't make it nice, but it doesn't make it wrong, either. The only way to escape it is not to post something that's parodyable, or ignore it. On mnet, Jan has said that that leads to a decay in the ability to form a cohesive community. I don't think that's true. It may lead to a decay in the ability to create the kind of community Jan would like to see, but that's different.
We live in an environment in which people cannot be expected to behave as if they understood the consequences of their actions. That means that we cannot simultaneously preserve individual liberty within the context of polite society. People are free to not be polite, and we are free to ignore them but not to restrict their ability to display the extent of their sociopathy for all the world to see. Those are the parameters we established, and Grex grew up in an environment which, merely by means of its relative obscurity, was somewhat protected from that reality. We no longer have the cozy shelter or our obscurity, and the rain is made of excrement. We can either plug our noses and go about our business, or change the way we exist, or cease to exist. It looks more like we're going down the latter path than either of the former, but this is all happening so fast it is hard to draw long term conclusions.
In which case (my not being able to choose dah dah dah... ) I can freely tell the people who did it that they suck. Which is pretty much how I feel about it. It was a cruel thing, and it wasn't necessary for anyone to do. It wasn't wrong in any sense but the fact that a person who respected others wouldn't do it. IMHO, of course.
mynxcat, this one paragraph from your response illustrates my point about
you being annoying:
} Do I apologise for being a parodier. No. I'm sorry that feelings were
} hurt. I would still parody someone if I got the oppurtunity, though I
} don't think I'm very good at it. I see my flaws, and heck I've parodied
} them too. And I've been parodied. I happened to stumble across a parody
} on me, and I didn't have the knee-jerk reaction that Valerie had. I
} thought it was pretty funny. (I don't remember what it was exactly,
} but I remember thinking - wow! that's pretty much on mark)
Note especially:
I'm sorry that feelings were hurt. I would still parody someone
if I got the oppurtunity,
That basic lack of concern for the feelings of others is what I find
annoying.
Am I annoyed that you disagree with me? Nope. Lots of people do.
when they can support their positions, I learn from them, and sometimes,
change my opinion. I'm fairly certain you could find instances of that
happening here on grex.
If you are interested, I'll be glad to go back through this conference and
isolate the specific responses that led me to my original comment above.
I'll send you the list in e-mail or post it here; your choice. I'll even
apologise if, after that review, I find I agree with you.
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Jamie, if you had the wherewithal to actually call me stupid to my face, I would laugh at you. Of course, despite the bullshit and all your troublemaking, you're probably someone whose company I would find entertaining in the real world, possibly because of and possibly despite our difference in political (and other) opinion. That doesn't mean I don't sometimes have the urge to slap you sillier than you already are, but thats all just part of the world we're in.
Freedom does not preclude civility.
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When I mention Grex growing up, I was referring to the period from its inception to about 1993 or 1994, by which time it had pretty well established itself in terms of style and character. The obscurity which shielded people here from the incivility of the rest of the world was primarily evidenced by the reluctance of people who did not share the Grex values of the time to stay and invest themselves and their time in the community. Of course, these are merely my perceptions. And that whitefish thing, THAT's what I'm talking about. I actually saw a live performance of that Monty Python skit by some local folks here in Ann Arbor (students at UM, actually) and I nearly lost control of bodily functions, I laughed so hard.
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They'll love that at the post office. Unless those things come in really small packages. I only have a little PO Box.
(The funniest parts were the reactions of the people who sat closest to the performance area, later in the skit when it became screamingly apparent that the fish being employed were not made of something with durable structural integrity like rubber, but were actually real.)
Re 74> I think I know where this is coming from. I can be insensitive, and I can be a jerk, true. And that sentence didn't come out right. Yes, I'd still parody someone. I'd be careful to choose my subjects though. Slynne's game, Twila isn't. Valerie's off limits. Iggy's ok to parody. Then there are some people who I don't care if they care to be parodied or not. They haven't tried to be nice to people. They're self- righteous and pompous, and rude. Some of them are self-centered and vain. Are they going to be hurt when they read the stuff? Have they considered other people's feelings? I'd be interested in seeing which posts you thought were particularly annoying, and why. Feel free to post them on grex.
Will do. Thanks. :)
Gelinas, you're a weirdo.
> Jan has said that [something] leads to a decay in the ability to form > a cohesive community. Here's what I think leads to inability to form a cohesive community: knowing that your contribution to the community may be erased at any time on the whim of some other person with an axe to grind.
I'm surprised to see anyone singling out mynxcat as annoying or as a problem on Grex.
Regarding #77; True, but freedom demands we tolerate some incivility to preserve liberty.
I've never had a problem with mynxcat on Grex, aside from disagreeing on whether Grex is a clique or not. But it was rather a shock to see that she'd basically taken stuff from Grex over to M-Net, for the purpose of a very long-term and rather mean parody. And that apparently she felt no need to inform the principal subject of that parody that it was going on all this time. Which tends to disprove the claim that it was all a friendly joke, since what would be the point if the subject (who presumably should find it funny) doesn't find out at all? I suppose it's possible that everybody expected Valerie to somehow know about the parody. Still, it's been pretty common for a long time that M-Netters seem more fascinated with Grex than Grexers with M-Net, hence no M-Net parody conference (or even items I can recall). Yes, I'll agree that the baby diaries told a lot of extremely personal detail. So when somebody gives you too much personal info, is the accepted polite response to go make fun that person behind their back?
re 87 Yeah, it'd be like someone disagreeing with GreX policy. Shocking.
Regarding #89; Actually, there *is* an M-Net parody conference on grex, called ``mnut''. One of the more prolific posters there was Jan, but it has since fallen into obscurity and only rarely used. I must say, as a reader of the mnet agora conference (and only a rare poster there), I always just assumed Valerie knew about the parody and ignored it for the juvenille rambling it was. Actually, it wasn't one of the better parodies there; I usually found it boring. There was exactly one time I read something funny; a quote of something someone (not Valerie) wrote about poo terminology.
There aren't too many abuse targets left on M-net.
How would you know? You're never there.
Regarding #92; Bite your tongue. One word: Twinkie.
Sigh. All right, I read the parody item. As far as I can tell, mynxcat never entered anything into it, other than expressing her amusement. I have to admit, I found parts of it really, really funny. I read Valerie's item for the last couple of years, during the time that parody was being made, and clearly recognized almost all of the references. I didn't find very much of it to be really mean-spirited. It was not kind or sensitive toward Valerie's feelings, but I think that's a different thing. I didn't perceive any intent to hurt Valerie, or to hurt anyone. Here's a typical example: ===================================================== #101 of 369 by mallory vates [popcorn] (cyklone) on Sat Feb 22 22:56:32 2003: Arlo is really making me angry. He's developed this bad habit of swinging from the ceiling fan when I am trying to work out to my "Feng Shui Aerobics for Recent Mothers" video. I am open to any suggestions how to stop this. I've thought about just dragging him down by his legs, but he might accidently kick me and I don't want him growing up to know he hurt his mother. I also thought about putting a mattress on the floor beneath him and then turning the fan to its highest spin setting in hopes he'll get tired and just let go. I could also have Jan remove the fan but I love the way it blows Kendra's hair when I am breastfeeding her. ===================================================== I find that funny. I don't think there was any intent to hurt anyone. Obviously Valerie never described Arlo hanging from the ceiling fan. Obviously no one is saying she would allow such a thing, or react indecisively if it happened. The author extrapolated from something Valerie said, and made it into a very funny comment. The item Valerie entered was not intended as humor, but dozens to hundreds of people read it. It's hardly surprising that some of the things she said in all seriousness were perceived humorously by other readers. I'm not going to cite examples, but at times, I was amused by things Valerie said, in ways she would find entirely inappropriate. While I was married, I had similar reactions to things said by my wife. I had to learn to repress them then, and I applied the same skill to Valerie's item. Had I known of the item on M-Net's agora, I might well have participated. I wouldn't have had any bad intent toward Valerie. I had, and still have, a lot of respect and admiration for Valerie. Some of my potential comments could have been perceived as mean, but certainly, I wouldn't have intended them that way. I guess I lucked out that I never participated. Dangit, sometimes the things other people do are funny, and sometimes one can perceive humor about another person, without meaning any harm or having any bad intent. Even if the other person wouldn't like it.
Scott, why do you think I should go ahead and inform Valerie about the item? I've never interacted with her before a few months ago when I joined the baby diary, and my comments have been few. People who were responding in the item were people who had been on grex for years. People who posted were people who interacted actively in the baby diary and on grex. People that you deemed good enough to be on your board. People who were definitely closer to Valerie than I was. When you see people like these post there, it's not difficult to see why one would think that the conferene was well-known. As jep pointed out, I assumed she knew about it and ignored it. And even if I'd thought she didn't know about it, I, a stranger, was hardly going to drop the bomb on her. If she had to find out so late in the game, I guess the right person told her. (It's hard to imagine how an item could run for 2.5 years, and the "victim" would have no clue that something like that existed, especially given that the ttwo systems have so many common users).) Jep, I did post in that item. My responses were posted after Valerie froze her items here on grex. I found her behaviour childish, that she couldn't get past discussion that disagreed with her views, and she felt the need to deny people to have an open discussion. I will admit that I lost some respect for her at that point, and that's when I posted. (These were prolly the most malicious posts I've made. If I made others in that particular item, it was basically because I found something amusing, and those were not meant to hurt. ) I've also parodied the item from 2002 (summer or fall agora, I don't remember), where we were discussing the need for a non-local board member. That was largely a parody on the whole situation and was not meant to target specific individuals. I've also parodied the
It seems janc is making backtalk ruin mynxcat's responses because he found her parodying his wife!! #39.182 Mallory Yeats (mynxcat)
parodied the... yes? If you go Sapna, I will miss you.
That's what happens when I try to edit my post using vi. The last line should be deleted.
But you did parody valerie, didn't you.
Doesn't google or some other search engine save archived copies of anything it ever found on the web, in which case items deleted from grex would still be available if you knew how to access the archives?
For the record, what Dan Cross says I said on M-Net is not anything I recall saying there, or believe to be true. Grex has a robots.txt file that requests that polite robots not index the conferences. Google is a polite robot. However, all the deleted items are on Grex's backup tapes.
There must be some impolite robots around because once in a while when I do a search I get a grex item as a hit.
Re 100> As I said in resp 98 (or thereabouts), yes, I did. Geez you should go to lawschool or something.
I would like to inject a couple of points here. The mnet agora conference has been mentioned several times on grex. It had been mentioned in the grex agora conference. Jokes were even made about certain users making a stampede and pushing each other out of the way so they could be the first to parody a particular response. This was all done out in the open. If you chose to remain oblivious and not go check it out for yourself, then your outrage at such ignorance is baffling. Also, I'm one of you. Like it or not. I'm not an evil mnet interloper. I've been a grexer off and on ever since it went online. I remember sitting at a big information gathering at an ann arbor park. (island?). My personality more closely meshes in with the "typical" mnetter rather than the "typical" grexer.. but you cannot deny that I am a longstanding user.
This is indicative of what grex has become, regardless of whether there is an "outside user" or an "insider". Grex is now a collection of little cliques, and the most damaging war has been this petty tug of war between the townies and the outsiders. It's become absolutely juvenile. Outsiders won't listen to insiders because they're considered old guard, insiders won't listen to outsiders because they're rocking the boat. This whole debacle has come about because no one will get off their asses and actually make a policy decision. Valerie isn't just getting reamed because of her own actions, Valerie is getting reamed and has left because Grex has been talking but has done nothing about actually formulating a policy. When it is on the table, Grex dithers endlessly until technology changes enough to make it temporarily moot, or until people forget about it. This whole community should be ashamed of this.
#106 is wrong on several major points, and is not generally a rational response, but is rather obviously emotionally inspired hyperbole. Sorry, Syl, but you're off the mark on this.
I'll explain what other didn't elaborate on. Syl, this time, believe it or not, it is not a "townie" vs "outsider" issue. Most people involved were very much "townies". It's more of an mnet vs grex issue, if you can call it that. There are two sets of views to what happened, one saying that the parodies are no big deal, and one saying that they are. (And then you have smaller factions who say they see both sides, or they think this whole thing is beneath them... but I digress). I know you've always had an issue with people bringing up the local vs non-local thing, and we've never agreed on that, but the discussion at hand had nothing to do with it. And as for Valerie leaving due to a lack of a policy, there was a policy in place, albeit unwritten, maybe, which she chose to ignore because it didn't help her accomplish what she wanted to. While I can understand what she did, and why she did it, it still doesn't mean it was right. It was still against grex policy. If you don't agree with policy, you fight to change it, or you leave. (Of course she had other reasons to leave too, I'm sure) As for the whole "grex dithers endlessly", I agree with you, but that wasn't the issue here.
No, I realize this is not a townie versus and outside issue. I can read. That much is obvious. But you cannot deny that the vehemence is a spill over from this event, and that part of the problem inherent in the system is cliquishness and the appearance of it. There are already people here that are pointing those kind of fingers. FWIW, I include myself in the "out to be ashamed category." Yes, dithering is the issue. We have had countless debates over policy, and this is a huge result of that. We are, after another seeming crisis, debating something that should have been solved a long time ago.
"Dithering over policy" - perhaps. But policy is not likely what most people want to discuss on a forum like grex. Most policies wouldn't be necessary except that a few rotten apples do bad things, and then you need something in place to prevent or address a future recurrence.
Re resp:109: I think you're off the mark on this. But I can see why you'd get that impression if you already have a preconcieved notion that Grex is hostile to outsiders.
According to comments in Valerie's new on-line baby diary (which she gave permission to readers to talk about on Grex, btw), she removed her text from Grex because she didn't want to be parodied on M-Net.
A little late for that. We were done parodying it when she moved it off-site.
Can't mnetters still parody Valerie's new online baby diary? They just can't make comments in it.
That would be against the principles of the parody conference. We parody what happens on grex. We're not really interested in what they post outside of grex.
Regarding #102; I'm sorry, then it's a gross misunderstanding on my part. btw- for reference, I was drawing from this, which you did write, among other comments: > - If you carry that argument to completion, then that gives us a world > where nobody ever exposes themselves in public. Nobody writes an > autobiography, or even a novel based on their intimate experiences, > unless their goal is to set themselves forth as a subject for > derision. I do not believe that that would be a desirable goal. > Thus I prefer to approach the culture of attack as a negative force > that decent people oppose, not as something to declare inevitable > and resign yourself to.
re 106 "rocking the boat" heh. Don't disturb my coffee! But I agree. It's hard to get the collective GreX force to make a decision. Everyone keeps talking about what they would have done. re 111 Yeah , xenophobia!
I agree with that quote of Jan's in #116.
Not true. I've already addressed this on mnet, so let me say it again here: the fact that people have been living public lives and writing autobiographies for hundreds of years, all while subject to public criticism and even (*gasp*) parody, shows just how silly such "if you carry that argument to completion" assertions are. To raise the issue in the context of a public bbs that purports to support free speech is even more ludicrous, though of course free speech includes the right to make demonstrably false statements.
Let me try to craft a different point of view of "dithering over policy". Consensus is difficult to reach when the starting coversations reveal opposite points of view, hardened through long use, coming from participants in the decision-making process. One of the strengths of this process is, however, that an organization does not "lurch from side to side" if different factions gain temporary acendancy. We have had a workable compromise between these points of view for a number of years. We even worked through a slight change in the policy when we allowed staff to "close" the scribbled/expurgated log. We all knew there were extreme differences, but we had a level of trust between the factions that allowed Grex to function smoothly. Now the behavior of one emotionally distraught staff member has triggered emotionally-charged responses, with some factions trying to enflame *all* sides. The presence of participants who are shouting of "action!" all the time makes it very difficult for the quiet, slower process to happen. I think Jan's idea of removing potentially harmful items from public access while this debate went on was brilliant. I don't know what to think of Valerie's removal of Jep's items. What some people see as "dithering over policy" I view as sane and rational response to try to heal a system that is used to a more civil conversation style. Right now people are drawing lines in the sand and behaving in defensive and hostile ways. People who normally don't behave this way are saying things that have the tone "and I'll leave if Grex doesn't publically adopt a policy that -I- agree with, right away". I don't think any policy is the issue at the moment. What I see as the issue is whether Grex has the strength and will to right itself, and try to develop better tools to come to trust and consensus. We must assume that we have some new, permanent participants who are disruptive and "make trouble" for our way of doing things. If we can't find a new process that accounts for their participation, the barbarians will indeed win the battle.
I don't think that characterizing some of the participants in the discussion as "barbarians" is consistent with the general intent of your response, but I agree with the rest of it.
And, really, if you carry the analogy to its natural and earthly conclusion, it'd be the CHRISTIANS who're fucking up Grex.
resp:105 sho' nuff.
re 120 >People who normally don't behave this way Well, gee golly, maybe they are behaving "hostile" now because for once, there is something profoundly serious to get worked up about? Maybe we don't have the time to sit around and act slowly! jep already proved this.
Ah, I understood Dan to have said that I said that that kind of behavior made community impossible. Which isn't true. M-Net has a perfectly good community, that is much enjoyed by many people. There are limits on what can be posted in such a community, as there are in any kind of community. Personally I'd rather be where community standards place limits on how nasty you can be, then where community standards place limits on how openly you can talk about your own life. But a lot of people seem to think the former is a horrid infringement on free speech, while the latter is perfectly fine and only sensible.
If were talking about peer pressure, I agree Jan. But if we're talking whole item censorship or moderated conferences just so some folks can feel more comfortable talking about putting breast milk in their eye, then I'd say it's a bad tradeoff.
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Regarding #125; Yeah, my bad; I think I misinterpreted the point you were trying to make.
re126: /falls out of chair!
Rowena!
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I tend to see this a several distinct but related issues:
(1) The stuff that was posted on M-Net. I've said I thought it was
remarkably thoughtless, and that I've lost some respect for some
of the people who did that. Nobody has ever called for it to be
censored, or for the people involved to be punished. Valerie's
reaction to it is only relevant at all as a measure of it's
impact. I can see where you might disapprove of Valerie's response,
but if her response was bad, that doesn't retroactively make the
M-Net posts OK.
(2) Valerie's deletion of her baby diary items from Grex. You can
evaluate this on several levels. Was it an over-reaction? Was it
legal within Grex rules? Did she know it was illegal within Grex
rules. My opinion is no, no, and no, but I can see where others
may disagree, especially on the first one.
(3) Grex's response to Valerie's deletion of her baby diary items.
Valerie didn't leave staff because of the M-Net thing, or out of
horrible guilt for deleting her item. She had mostly just lost
patience with the being routinely raked over the coals in coop.
Valerie was the single most active staff member, mostly policing
vandals and disk hogs. She had to make a lot of judgement calls,
and periodically everyone would have a big debate in coop to see
if Valerie was the latest reincarnation of Hitler or not. The
last case was the jp2 mail spam thing, I think. Other staffers
who actually do things get hit with the same thing. That kind of
staff work isn't fun and being routinely beat up about it isn't
fun either. She'd been approaching her limit for a long time, and
this happens to be the point where she crossed it. I don't think
we need to discuss whether Valerie was justified in leaving staff.
The wonder is that she stuck it out so long after her involvement
in the Grex community had been so much reduced.
(4) The deletion of all of Valerie's postings. This is actually the
one that some people seem to hold most strongly against her,
calling her a vandal. However, this is the one action where
Valerie was 100% within her rights according to Grex rules. If
this is all that offensive to you, then maybe Grex's rules need
to be revisited.
(5) The deletion of JEP's item. This is the one instance where
Valerie knowingly violated Grex rules and acted outside of her
authority as a Grex staffer. Also of all the things deleted it
is the one where the case for deletion was the most compelling.
(6) The restoration of JEP's item. This is among the things most
useful to discuss the merits of, as this a question we need to
find a resolution to soon. I don't believe that the question of
whether or not it should be restored should depend heavily on
how you feel about (5). It would make no sense to punish JEP
for Valerie's actions.
(7) The restoration of the Baby Diary items. This is essentially
an identical question to (6), except that if you are feeling a
compelling desire to punish Valerie, this is the one you can do it
on.
Then there are a bunch of less specific questions. What should grex's
deletion policy be. How should Grex be interacting with its staff? Is
it appropriate to use member proposals to address specific cases?
I think that if you try to address all these questions as a single
question, mixing arguments on one topic with arguments on another topic,
then you get a huge unresolvable mess. If you separate them out, then
you get some questions that we can resolve, and some questions that we
don't urgently have to resolve (which doesn't mean that they aren't
worthy of discussion).
valerie would still be called a vandal, even if she hadn't deleted all her own posts.
Re #133, point (4): Nah, no need to revisit the rules. But I'll point out that being within one's right to do a certain thing does not make it a good idea to do that thing, or make it wrong for people to be annoyed that the thing was done.
Hey, that's a decent point out.
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I like music. I really like it.
As I've been one of the most vocal using the word vandal in reference to Valerie, I can say at least that I'm not calling her a vandal for deleting all her own postings. I think it was stupid and petulant behavior, but not vandalism. Deleting everyone else's posts in the baby diary and in jep's items was vandalism. Restoring those posts in those items is not about punishing anyone, it's about repairing the damage that a vandal has done to the system. I just think it's a really, really awfully bad idea for Grex to put up with anyone deleting other people's comments, no matter who they are or how compelling the reason. If we allow it in general, we're setting ourselves up for years of having to make decisions about the validity of other people's reasons for wanting items deleted. If we disallow it in general but allow it in these particular cases, we're saying that valerie and jep are somehow more important and their reasons for censoring people are more important than anyone else's could possibly be. Suppose next year polytarp logs in and says that he is going to be conducting job interviews, and he wants all the items in which he acted like an asshole deleted because he has changed and they could potentially hurt him if a prospective employer got ahold of them. Are we going to have this whole discussion again? Or are we just going to tell him to delete his own posts and go away? Why is polytarp different from valerie and jep? I don't buy the water-under-the-bridge argument. This *isn't* in the past; we have backups which are (presumably; maybe valerie owns a magnet) still intact and so nothing is final. If we do not restore these items from them, we are collectively just as culpable for this censorship as valerie.
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I like the polytarp analogy.
re resp:139: "Restoring" the items is not undoing anything. It's not putting things back to how they were before Valerie's actions. Things have changed now. Things have been done. Those items aren't what they were before they were deleted. They're something else now. Restoring is doing something else that's new and unprecedented. If a fairwitness had deleted the same items, would they be restored from backup? I don't think they would; they never have before. I think, if anyone were upset about it, they'd yell at the fairwitness, and that would be the end of it. If this passes, is system policy going to change so that, any time an item is deleted, it gets restored? Is every item which has ever been deleted in the past going to get restored? I don't think that would be a great idea.
jep, you are simply RATIONALIZING!!!!! It's really quite annoying - stop it. "They're something else now." BS. They are what they are, threads of text. To me, the jury is still out on whether any of the items deleted by valerie should be restored. But I will not accept your argument that they have magically morphed into something more than they were. Your statements are self-serving, and I'm tired of hearing it.
re: the "magically morphed" theory: maybe you should have thought of that before you called all this attention to them.
Re #142: I've avoided using the "vandalism" word before this, but I
need to use it here to make a distinction. Those items were
not deleted by someone with the authority to do it as part of
normal Grex practice. Asking whether we would call for their
return if a FW had cleaned them out is a poor analogy for that
reason.
A better analogy is whether we'd ask for them to come back if
they'd been removed by a vandal who wasn't a trusted member
of the staff at the time. Say polytarp had done it. Would
we want them back? Absolutely.
I'm ALWAYS the fucker in hypotheticals.
yer just that special.
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Re resp:143: Everyone is rationalizing in this item. Specifically, they're presenting what they feel are the rational reasons for their opinions. I disagree with the 'vandalism' analogies. I don't feel they're accurate. If someone hacked root and started deleting stuff, they'd be clearly doing something that was against the rules. It looks to me like what valerie and jep did was in a grey area. Not even all the remaining staff initially agreed on whether what valerie did was permissable or not. I'm not sure it's fair to retroactively apply a black-and-white policy to their actions *now*.
It seems to me that "grey area" is the result of an unwritten grex "code" that allows personality and "take-my-ball-homeism" to prevail over common sense and uncensored speech. Maybe it gives ya'll a warm fuzzy, but I find it appalling.
I didn't say I thought their actions were admirable. Just that I'm not convinced it was obviously against Grex policy to take them.
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re resp:143: I'm really sorry you think I'm rationalizing, and that there's something wrong with doing that. I very much don't want my items restored. It's important to me. I am trying to answer all of the points being made from my perspective. It's definitely true that I'm trying to serve my own interests. As a matter of fact, I'm obsessed enough by the issue I've pretty much stopped logging in to Grex from work, because once I'm here I can't skip getting involved in it. I come to coop first. I might or might not read the other conferences before I'm done for the night. I hope I'll be in bed before 1:00 a.m. -- I'll have a bad day at work if I don't get some sleep. What you're seeing is what happens when an obsessive-compulsive type person gets wrapped up in something. I'm sorry to be annoying to you, though. It's not my intention.
re resp:152: Jamie, item:39 *is* a Grex policy item.
re 152 jep still seems to think that a permissible precedent was set when valerie deleted her items, as per response 340 item 68. I'm not sure if he will ever change his misunderstanding. Maybe he's just that obsessed.
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Jamie, as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to scribble any post you wrote anywhere on Grex. It's an ability all users have. What I don't want you to be welcomed to do is remove an entire item, such as #39 in coop, where others have responded. My personal opinion is that the items should be restored into some form of limbo and anyone who wants to scribble their section of it may. I believe these deletions were a one time occurence and should not be considered the precedent setting move some others consider it to be. Just to be perfectly clear, that's my opinion and not the consensus opinion of the entire staff. That should already be clear, but I'm slowly learning that what I think is obvious is apparently not obvious to all.
I do think a mountain is being made out of a molehill over all this, mostly due to the practicality that the likeliehood of recurrence is small. And I'll admit my share of the guilt in that mountain making, by engaging in these discussions. But I also think that a defacto precedent *was* set, by virtue that there seems to be no clear policy having been established beforehand to which people can point and say "valerie clearly and deliberately violated that policy". Thus until all the proposals currently alive in coop are resolved, there is at least a theoretical possibility that this same situation could recur, with all the associated controversy.
It's not the event itself, it's the principle of the matter that's at issue.
re: 92 - Cross...was 1996 so good to you that you refuse to leave it? I've been "flame target of the month" in M-Net's Flame conference for nearly five years now, M-Net's Twinkie conference is basically a parody of itself... Is there any particular reason you like to post about me so much? Beyond this, you've openly theorized in the last Agora that I was "willcome". I'm about to throw a tantrum to janc proportions, because nobody told me you were saying mean things about me here on Grex.
92 was entered by krj, not me, twinkie. :-)
Meh. 92, 94, close enough.
TWO GUYS HOT FOR TWINKIE GROSS
BRING ON THE SNARKY< EH?
Oh, the snarky is brought.
looks green :(
You're looking in the wrong place, tiger.
:( :( :(
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
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