I think, given the chaotic nature of the discussion over item removal,
the best thing to do now is enter a general proposal that will give the
debate something to crystallize around.
Therefore, I make the following proposal:
--- %< ---- cut here ----
Grex staff and conference fairwitnesses shall not remove items from
conferences. The following exceptions are made:
- Fairwitnesses of conferences where item removal is part of clearly
stated conference policy may remove items in accordance with that policy.
- Items that contain information that is unlawful to distribute or
otherwise presents a legal threat to Grex may be removed, IF the less
disruptive method of erasing individual responses is not sufficient.
- Individual members may propose a member vote requesting that a
specific item be deleted. If the vote passes, staff may remove the item.
None of this should be construed to affect an individual user's right to
erase ("scribble" in Picospan) their own responses.
--- %< ---- cut here ----
This proposal is about *future* policy. I don't want to get into the
issue of whether items that have already been deleted should be
restored, and I don't want to debate the actions of specific users here.
I want the discussion to focus on what Grex's policy from this point
forward should be.
108 responses total.
The first exception intentionally gives fairwitnesses broad discretion -- as long as the policy is posted in the conference, so everyone knows what the rules are ahead of time. I see allowing different conferences to have different policies as a good thing. It's analogous to U.S. state governments being able to experiment with their own policies. By allowing them to experiment we see what works and what doesn't. This also allows for things like the classified conference, where erasing old items just makes sense. I don't expect the second exception to be used often, especially since in most cases erasing the offending responses should be sufficient. The third exception is probably unnecessary, since another vote would override this one anyway, but I thought it would be a good clarification to have.
I dunno about myself, but I think the public will have a bird!
I'd be all for it except for that third exception.
Passage of the third exception may lead me to abandon vote administrating and seek a new career.
I'd be willing to take it out, but I don't think it actually changes anything. If later votes override earlier ones, even without the exception being explicitly laid out anyone can write a member proposal to have a specific item removed. jep's proposal, in a way, provides the template for this.
Since the third exception is both a no-op (it allows something that
would be allowed anyway) and is causing controversy, I'm removing it.
The amended proposal:
--- %< ---- cut here ----
Grex staff and conference fairwitnesses shall not remove items from
conferences. The following exceptions are made:
- Fairwitnesses of conferences where item removal is part of clearly
stated conference policy may remove items in accordance with that policy.
- Items that contain information that is unlawful to distribute or
otherwise presents a legal threat to Grex may be removed, IF the less
disruptive method of erasing individual responses is not sufficient.
None of this should be construed to affect an individual user's right to
erase ("scribble" in Picospan) their own responses.
--- %< ---- cut here ----
Yes, a later vote will override the current one. I'd prefer, though, that the third exception not be included: I think it _encourages_ item deletion, when, from what I've seen to date, the sense of the community is to _dis_courage such deletions.
(I'm so persuasive, gull removed the clause before he could read my argument. :)
I believe the Debate Team offers a special medal for that.
Re resp:7: Yeah, I anticipated that objection. I'm not sure if I agree with it, but I don't feel strongly enough about it to want to derail the discussion about the proposal in general.
Why not simply say, "fair witnesses shall not delete items from conferences period. the "kill" command shall be de-permitted for fw's. Henceforth, only the board's CfAdmin shall have the power to remove items. And Cfadmin shall only remove items in accordance to staff policy and not at the request of any individual user" I don't think every conference need have separate rules, as Gull's proposal allows for. The conferencing environment as a whole is what is important here. There ought to be consistency in conference rules for all conferences. And I don't think fairwitnesses need the "kill" command, not so long as they can freeze or retire items.
I think this proposal would encourage a lot of spamming of Grex's conferences. If I were a spammer, I would be delighted to find a place where I could post my spam and be assured that it can't be deleted, because it's against system policy.
Re resp:11: I disagree. For one thing, I think there are conferences where the 'kill' command makes sense -- for example, classified, where it makes no sense to keep really old items around. Also, there's no consistency in conference rules as it is -- some roll over on a regular basis, some never do, some do irregularly. I'm willing to let fairwitnesses manage conferences in their own style as long as everyone knows what the rules are. I see no reason to tie their hands. If you want to post another initiative to depermit the kill command for fairwitnesses, feel free. But I'm not going to change this proposal to include that. I don't feel it's reasonable.
Re 12, we already get spam posted occasionally in the conferences, but it usually appears in every conference at the same time. I assume staff could be requested by a fw to do a global delete.
I'd love to discuss this proposal but I don't think there has been enough focus on the existing policies to make such recommendations.
Not if this proposal passes they couldn't. I think the proposal is to rigid, so I will be voting against it, if it comes to a vote.
aruba, I would be curious as to *how* you find the proposal too rigid, given the 2 remaining exceptions.
I think I said so already. It would be an invitation to people to spam the conferences - literally fill up the disk with trash because they know it can't be deleted. Are you saying you don't know anyone who would do that?
(resp:12 sums it up. resp:16 appears to respond to resp:14 and, IMO, is a correct assessment of a failing of the proposal.) [aruba slipped]
Re: #18 - Sorry, I do remember you reading that. Well, that should be solved simply enough - the "standing" policy for *every* conference is that the fw's can & will kill entire items that are deliberately created for the purpose of SPAMming the conference. Or, a "progressive" approach might be that the fw's first *retire* such SPAM items, and after some period of time where it becomes apparent that no one is contributing to them, then kill them.
(that's usually been the policy. gull's proposal would eliminate that option. to me, that's a reason to vote "no.")
I disagree that gull's proposal eliminates that option. See his exception re: conference policy.
Gull's policy would require that every single conference have the exception you state poste somewhere - otherwise someone could fill up the conference and the fairwitness would have no recourse.
I don't think spamming conferences has been that big a problem. I've only seen a handful of incidents of it in the entire time I've been here, and in most of them nothing was done anyway. To the extent it is a problem, retiring the offending items would solve it. I don't really see any evidence that there are legions of spammers out there just waiting to pounce when we revise our item-removal policy.
I think what is REALLY an invitation to spamming is valerie's mass scribbling program. That encourages people to trash conferences with hundreds of abusive posts because they know that at any one time, they can delete all posts with one click. When you could only scribble one post at a time, it was too time consumming to take out everything you posted if you had hundreds of posts. That program should be de-permitted because allowing mass scribbling encourage people to think they can raise holy hell here and not be held accountable.
Wrong. The worst offenders have been those who come in, make a single comment every where they can find, and then disappear, never to be heard from again.
Re#25 Not practical as long as scribble capability exists in picospan. Ignoring the fact that this particular "scribble" has been openly available and (presumably) copied by any number of people in recent days, it's not at all hard to rewrite your own version from scratch. Variations of the "scribble" program have surfaced many times on m-net, arbornet, The Well, The River and grex over the years.
Really, discussion of disabling the mass-scribble command is a non-starter. It cannot be done. So give up.
This response has been erased.
(resp:24 you're right; "retiring" an item is about as effective as "killing" an item in that scenario. thanks for pointing that out.)
You can only retire an entire item, not a single response to an item. So if I post a "Loest Pricess for Viagra" response to every item in coop, the only way to make them all vanish would be to scribble them. Even then users would still see the item come up new. When I did the pistachio interface, I have fairwitnesses the ability to customize the look of their conferences (colors, login screens, etc). Basically, none did, so I eventually added the ability of users to do such customization. I think one of the problems with this policy is that most conferences would announce no policy. Probalby the proposal should include a default policy for conferences who post none.
That's a good point. My first reaction is that the default policy should be "no fairwitness deletions", but I'm willing to entertain other suggestions. I think it can be fairly restrictive, since if a fairwitness actually cares to use their deletion power it doesn't take much effort to post a policy.
Then my suggestion would be the default policy gives conf. fw's to retire and even kill items created for the express purpose of SPAMming the conf. (thus making it undesirable for grexing).
(resp:31 FWs already can't scribble responses in PicoSpan, AFAIK. [I seem to remember it being a feature in YAPP.] I think that this proposal would be too broad if it tried to cover that non-aspect of FWing as well.) (I also gathered from the wording of the proposal that, if no policy [ugh, I'm starting to *hate* that word] were posted in the conference, FWs and staff wouldn't be able to delete items in the conference at all. I don't understand why there would need to be a specific default P-O-L-I-C-Y, unless it's to avoid a hypothetical revival of this discussion in the future.)
Hey, I used the ability to customise the look of various conferences!!1
Re resp:33: My proposal does not put any restrictions on staff retiring items, only killing them.
(Hmm...do I need to clarify that point? To me it seems obvious that retiring an item is different than deleting it, but it may not be obvious to everyone.)
I'm personally not sure what happens when an item gets retired. Could someone clarify?
My understanding is that it still exists in the conference, but is never treated as 'new'. I'm not sure if it still shows up in the item list or not.
If you "set noforget", a retired item shows up just like any other. Try it agora: set noforget <RETURN> browse <RETURN> and then scan for item 49.
So it basically has the same effect as 'forget', but for everyone who reads the conference?
Yup.
I used the web-customization ability of backtalk too, and found it very effective.
Re #24: Again, are you saying that you don't know anyone who would spam the conferences repeatedly, until the disk literally fills up? Maybe someone reading this item right now?
Re resp:44: I don't think it's likely. It's never happened in the past, and the opportunity has always been there. (Staff generally doesn't react instantly to such things.) It would be an exceedingly slow and tedious way to fill a disk compared to, say, 'dd if=/dev/zero of=~/bigfile' I'll consider putting an exception in for that situation, but at the moment I can't think of a good way to word it. I'm not comfortable with just saying "staff may remove spam items" because then we have the problem of how to determine what's spam and what isn't. If we allow staff members to remove any items that they don't think have value, that pretty well guts the proposal.
If someone just created a big file, we all know staff would delete it. So that wouldn't be an effective way to fill up the disk. But your proposal gives people a foolproof way to do it. I know you mean well here, David, but I don't think tying the staff's hands is the answer.
I agree.
I disagree; I think valerie's actions demonstrate that staff's hands need to be tied in this matter.
Here's a revision of the proposal that attempts to address aruba's
objection. I've also clarified the default policy of the first exception.
--- %< ---- cut here ----
Grex staff and conference fairwitnesses shall not remove items from
conferences. The following exceptions are made:
- Fairwitnesses of conferences where item removal is part of clearly
stated conference policy may remove items in accordance with that
policy. If no policy is posted, items may not be removed by fairwitnesses.
- Items that contain information that is unlawful to distribute or
otherwise presents a legal threat to Grex may be removed, IF the less
disruptive method of erasing individual responses is not sufficient.
- Items that adversely affect the operation of the conferencing system
may be removed.
None of this should be construed to affect an individual user's right to
erase ("scribble" in Picospan) their own responses.
--- %< ---- cut here ----
The new third exception should, for example, cover cases where someone
enters an item that uses excessive amounts of disk space, contains
control codes that upset people's terminals, or confuses the
conferencing software.
How about changing that to 'operation of the conferencing system software' ?
That would probably be clearer.
This proposal wouldn't have prevented Valerie from doing what she did. NO PROPOSAL can be made that will protect Grex from a staff member who decides to break the rules. Period. THanks for making the change, David. I still don't believe this motion is a good idea, but I like it better than I did before.
re 51 Yea, it wouldn't need any explanation :-0 .
Re resp:52: From the discussion, though, I've gathered that valerie didn't actually break any rules. Or at very least there's no agreement among staff members that she didn't have the right to do what she did.
(Is there agreement among the rest of grex's members and users that she broke the rules?)
re resp:55: Not complete agreement, no. I would say she didn't act in the best interests of Grex in initially deleting her own items. I think she shouldn't have done it because of her own interest in those items. She should have asked another staff member to do it. There was not a rule that she couldn't do what she did. I'd say once she deleted her own, she established a precedent by which she had to delete mine when I asked her to. There was still no rule that a staff member couldn't delete items. There was some conflict of interest when she deleted my items, but much less than when she deleted her own.
I think it's a good idea, when considering enacting a new rule, to think about just a few things: 1) Will the rule be effective if it passes? 2) Is it necessary? 3) Will it have unintended consequences? 1) Valerie said she didn't think she was breaking any rules. At least one other staff member agreed with her. This rule would certainly clarify that staff members can't delete items in the same way. Assuming she wouldn't break a rule, or more poignantly, that no other staff member would, then this rule would be effective. 2) Would any staff member delete an item if this proposal doesn't pass? I can't imagine that they would, given the fury of controversy this has generated. I don't think many would have before the controversy. I don't think this rule passes the "necessary" test at this point, but I can understand if some people do think it's necessary. 3) There's no way to know if any change will have unintended consequences. You just have to decide what might reasonably happen and hope you don't miss anything. Some potential consequences: Maybe some staff members won't be able to live with the burden of the rule. Maybe one of them will react against it. Maybe someone, some day, will not know about the rule, inadvertently break it, and then get himself dismissed from the staff. (We have no other way to discipline a staff member.) Maybe someone will feel like his hands are tied and not take an action which is necessary. This proposal takes away from the freedom staff members have to use their own initiative and feeling of reasonableness. That is it's purpose. Does that transfer into other areas, too? I don't know that. Maybe others have a better feel for it. My conclusion is that this rule is not necessary, and also that it unproductively counters what Grex expects from it's staff members. David said it's not intended specifically for Valerie's actions. It's hard to imagine this passing, or even being proposed, if it weren't for Valerie's actions. I think if it had been passed a year ago, it would have prevented her deleting any items, but now, as I said, I don't think it prevents anything.
Regarding question 2, yes it is necessary, and you made it so.
> This proposal wouldn't have prevented Valerie from doing what she did. True, given the [software] *power* that staff & fw's have. But at least there would be no doubt that her actions would have violated policy, undeniably, and that consequences and counter-actions could be taken without need for more member debate.
Re #56, last paragraph: "I'd say once she deleted her own, she established a precedent by which she had to delete mine when I asked her to." I don't buy that reasoning. When Valerie stated a non-existent "long-standing Grex policy that users are allowed to delete their own items," in Item 68, I came in very quickly with a correction, well before the divorce items were deleted. At some point in the ensuing discussion, Valerie indicated that she may have been mis-remembering policy. Making a mistake once does not obligate a person to repeat it. (Unfortunately, Valerie's contributions to the discussion are no longer part of the public record, so I can't quote specifically what she said.)
Re resp:57: I think it's necessary because otherwise, as you pointed out in resp:56, valerie's actions create a precedent. Now, without a new rule, there's no logical reason why anyone else's item deletion request should be turned down. (jp2's request that item 39 be deleted, for example.) It's been established that you could have your items deleted just by asking, so there's no reason to deny anyone else that ability. I see this proposal as a way of changing that.
How has it "been established that you could have your items deleted just by asking"?
Well, it worked for jep.
re 60 Her first response was something on the line of "Uhm, willcome and naftee, they were my items and I could do anything I want to them".
Re #63: So "been established that you may find a cooperative staff member who will delete an item even if such deletion violated grex's professed support of free and uncensored speech" would be more accurate, right?
resp:60 I agree-- I don't buy that reasoning, either. And even if Valerie mis-remembered policy, I can't help but wonder-- wouldn't she consider the controversy of it to ask just what the policy was? No "once bitten, twice shy" here? Indeed, as her postings (as far as I know) are scribbled out, it's hard to know. resp:64 I remembered it being something about her name being on the items, therefore making her the author and giving her ownership and control, to be more specific.
I can tell you one thing that she said (in item 68, resp 4) because I quoted it in resp. 11 of the same item: "It's longstanding Grex policy that the person who created an item can delete it." That's simply untrue, and supported neither by written policy nor past practice. I indicated as much as soon as I saw her statement. And I'm a staff member too. I disagree with assertions that her actions created any sort of binding precedent.
re 67 > I indicated as much as soon as I saw her statement. > And I'm a staff member too. Right, and she sent mail to staff regarding this issue. So if you supposedly disagree with her actions so much, home come it took you a full day to respond to the item? You, like the rest of the staff and board, were hiding this information from the GreX public. And then they blame the trolls. pfft.
What a waste of a loyal user to both systems. I'd offer my ear to anyone that could use it. Apparently, others would offer their "professional duty". Mary did everything but tackle John and handcuff him..oh wait..
OTOH, if her actions ultimately didn't harm jep (other than the breach of trust which cannot be remedied by continued deletion) then I seriously doubt there will be any harm ever from reinstating the items.
Some folks feel differently I guess.
Obviously. I just wish they would do a better job of describing exactly what they are trying to say. So far all I've heard is outlandish speculation. The only "harm" I've seen described in any detail is from jep himself, who apparently is concerned about his son stumbling across the item. Of course, his son will quite likely stumble into coop as well, so the cat is out of the bag. Unless the next vote is to delete all the coop items discussing the issue.
Unless the argument is that he couldn't extrapolate as much gory detail from here *cough* (right)
Yup, the cat is out of the bag. You can't unring the bell. Too bad jep and his apologists can't handle the truth.
Last night someone tried to fill up the disk by entering huge items in Agora. I think the staff needs to feel fully empowered to deal with situations like this, and not have to be afraid that if they delete items they might be lambasted for violating some overly rigid rule. I trust the staff to make good decisions in this area.
I agree with that.
Yes, and I believe that exception #3 as stated in response #49 covers the SPAMming of a conference.
No response, no "exception." I'm not even gonna look at it. We should *expect* whoever is on duty to pause the DVD he's watching just long enough to do the least number of keystrokes on the Grex box needed to delete the items and site-ban the account, and never devote another second's worth of thought to the matter.
"Duty"? We have people on "duty"???
Whatever!
I'm not sure where we stand in the voting timeline on this. Could the
voteadmin fill me in? Regardless, to minimize confusion, I don't want
it to come up for a vote until after the results of the current votes
have been announced.
Here is what will probably be the final wording. I realize some of you
are never going to vote for anything like this on general principle, and
that's fine. I'm still willing to entertain suggestions for
refinements, though.
--- %< ---- cut here ----
Grex staff and conference fairwitnesses shall not remove items from
conferences. The following exceptions are made:
- Fairwitnesses of conferences where item removal is part of clearly
stated conference policy may remove items in accordance with that
policy. If no policy is posted, items may not be removed by fairwitnesses.
- Items that contain information that is unlawful to distribute or
otherwise presents a legal threat to Grex may be removed, IF the less
disruptive method of erasing individual responses is not sufficient.
- Items that adversely affect the operation of the conferencing system
software may be removed.
None of this should be construed to affect an individual user's right to
erase ("scribble" in Picospan) their own responses.
Are entire conferences retired, archived, weeded out, to free up space or something like that? If so, I guess that should be covered...
I think that weeding out old items woudl be covered by individual conference policy. (I fully expect, for example, that the 'classified' conference would set a conference policy of deleting items after a set period of time.) Archiving or "rolling over" conferences doesn't actually involve deleting any items, so it wouldn't fall under this policy. I suppose the deletion of a whole conference would be a grey area; if you think it's necessary I could add a specific exception for that.
If this proposal is meant to be "binding" upon bbs administration, then there should probably be something in there about entire-conference item deletion. Or maybe a disclaimer saying that this policy does not apply to that.
After all the debate, both in this item and in the others on the general
subject, I think I understand what this proposal is hoped to accomplish,
but I think it misses the target. I think a much simpler proposal would
accomplish the goal in a much more straightforward manner:
Proposed: An item's author, the person who entered the
item in a conference, shall have the authority to remove
that item from the original conference and any conferences
to which it has been linked. If the software installed
on grex does not give the author sufficient capability,
the author may seek assistance from staff and fairwitnesses.
A single vote, yes or no, will settle the question until someone brings it
up again. If gull does not want to amend his proposal to use this text,
I will hope that his proposal fails and enter this as yet another proposal
on the subject.
NB: Although I am in favour of the proposal as I have stated it, I expect
that it would fail. I think the clarity it would provide worth another
24 days of anguish. I would also hope that the discussion of it would
be informed by the preceding discussions and so not replow infertile ground.
It occurs to me that failed proposals are usually not recorded and so are
often not seen as establishing an affirmative policy. I would appreciate
assistance in re-wording this proposal to permit appropriate recording
of the ultimate result. Unless and until gull accepts this amendment to
his proposal, please use e-mail to make suggestions to me. Note that I
have my mail from grex forwarded to my permanent address,
gelinas@umich.edu
Use whichever address is most convenient for you. Replies are promised,
and I will give credit where it is due, if I enter this proposal myself.
If this proposal is passed, it will do a lot to choke off discussion, because anyone who doesn't like how the discussion in their item goes can just nuke it.
Arguments like that are why I expect it to fail. And also why I would probably vote against it myself.
Weirdo.
And the work-arounds would be really annoying (entering duplicate copies of items, for example).
And the Jews would have a field day.
Items almost invariably attract a bit of drift. This proposal would be inviting abuse by the authors much like Grex staff by not restoring vandalized items invites abuse by popcorn
Re resp:85: The problem with that proposal, as I see it, is if it were in place it would not have made it clear that staff don't have the right to remove items on their own initiative. Therefore, Valerie would still have been able to claim that she wasn't acting against any set policy. I just don't feel voting *down* a proposal sets a clear policy.
I'm going to borrow a quote from janc's response 140 in item 106, about Valerie's deletion of her items, to show why I feel this proposal is necessary: "She thought it was obviously within her rights and expected others to think so too." Obviously this is a point of policy that has to be clarified, one way or another. Valerie believed that, as a staff member, she could delete her personal items and that this was perfectly legitimate. If you believe that's wrong, you should consider voting yes on my proposal. If you believe that this is a power staff should have, then vote no.
I think you miss the point, gull: she thought she had the right AS AUTHOR to delete the items she had entered. AS STAFF, she ASSISTED the author in accomplishing the author's desires. Similarly, she thought that jep AS AUTHOR had the right to delete his items. The only mistake was in thinking that authors had the right to remove their items. My proposal, if properly worded, will clarify the consensus of the grex members. I cannot vote for your proposal because it ties the hands of staff without addressing the real question. If authors cannot remove their items, then there is no reason for staff to think they can remove items for the authors, either.
Unless they're on a power trip
She thought she had the right as an AUTHOR who could use CFADM power and not worry too much about the fact other staff and board members were already telling her to slow down. Let's not rewrite history so soon, please.
In the case of the second deletion, you are probably right, Mary, but not in the case of the removal of her own items. Let's not re-write history so soon, please.
She couldn't delete HER items as the author. She had to invoke superuser power to get the job done. If she hadn't been in meltdown mode I suspect she would have asked herself why that was necessary. Valerie herself has stated she just wanted them gone. Not much else mattered. Of course, the only way to prove that is to republish responses she has since scribbled. Would that be okay for me to do?
At least two staff members and two board members have expressed strong objections to this proposal. While I still feel it's important that Grex set a formal policy on this issue, because I think without it, we're doomed to another repeat of this whole scandal, I'm a bit hesitant to do something that would push Grex in a direction that the staff doesn't want to deal with. The last thing I want to be accused of is contributing to staff member turnover. So at this point I'm reconsidering whether to bring this to a vote. I haven't made a decision yet.
Staff member turnover isn't always a bad thing.
My 2 cents, David. Don't. What happened here with Valerie was an isolated, rogue event. I suspect we could go on for a very long time before the personalities and events would come together in such a way as to provoke a similiar episode. Staff doesn't need more rules. I'd vote any such motion down.
mary: valerie was not "freaking out" when she deleted those baby diary items. Or at least, all the evidence points to the contrary of that being true
I agree with what Mary said.
I agree with what aruba said, but disagree with what Mary said.
Would anyone want to give authors of items the option to delete the item IF they stated in 0 that they might do so? In other words, people could post items that might be deleted later, but only if they gave notice to start with.
It just bothers me that valerie apparently broke no rules by doing what she did. I don't really like the fact that staff can do things like that on a whim. I guess it's "there oughtta be a law" syndrome.
Not quite, David. More, it's unclear as to whether rules would have made a difference in Valerie's actions. I think Grex needs to move on. Joe is looking for a way users can make system policy, giving item authors guidance on what they can and can't do. This makes more sense to me than putting handcuffs on staff.
I'm withdrawing this proposal. gelinas has entered one in item:111 that would accomplish basically the same thing, and has the following advantages: - It's more elegantly worded, and clearer, thanks to approaching the problem from a slightly different angle. - It doesn't explicitly put limits on staff, and gelinas himself is a staff member. This avoids the appearance of ordinary members dictating restrictions on staff, something that was a source of strong opposition to my proposal. Politically, it's more carefully crafted. Further discussion should probably shift to item:111.
You have several choices: