Understanding the Undulating Undeletion Proposals

Feb 5 04:57 UTC 2004

A week ago I thought it might be useful to enter an item giving a concise
analysis of the two item undeletion proposals now being considered.
Unfortunately, the vote happens to have occured while I am up to my gills
with work to do, and I haven't been able to find time to finish it until
now, when only a few days are left to the vote.  I also haven't had time
to read the last few weeks of discussion.  I imagine it is voluminous 
and exhausting, and the number of peripheral issues and sideshows has
risen even higher than when I last looked.

So I think I'll go ahead and post what I drafted a week ago: a 
relatively brief discription of the situation and my biased opinion of
the fundamental issue.

BACKGROUND

The proposals being voted on relate to the restoration of two sets of 
items that have been deleted.  The two sets of items in question are
Valerie Mates' Baby Diary and John Perry's divorce item.  Valerie has
been entering her responses to her baby diary, which was linked between
the parenting and femme confereces, for about six years.  Her responses
covered daily details of pregnancy and child rearing.  In his divorce 
item, John Perry gave daily reports of events when his wife left him.
Both sets of items contained many responses from other Grex users.

These items were unusual in that Valerie and John each exposed a lot 
of their private lives in them, and in that nearly all discussion in
them focused on their lives.  At the time these items were entered, 
doing so was something that Valerie and John felt comfortable with,
but for various reasons both of them now want their items to be removed.

Valerie recently discovered that for the last several years, her baby 
diary had been continously parodied on M-Net.  She does not like her life 
being put to such uses, and so prefers to remove the diary from Grex. 
John has come to terms with his divorce, and doesn't want the angry
responses from a period of instability in his life on permanent view. 
He fears that material from those items could someday be used against
him or his son.

Grex has an established policy that any user may delete their own past
posts.  So if these items were restored, then they would be restored
without the posts by Valerie and John.  They would contain only the posts
by other users discussing what they said.  However it would still be
easy to glean much of what Valerie and John said from the other posts
-- especially the most "sensational" parts which would have been the
most discussed.  Neither John nor Valerie feel this would sufficient to
remotely satisfy their concerns.

THE CORE ISSUE 

The core issue that members are being asked to vote on here is whether
the concerns of these two users are sufficient grounds to justify deletion
of the entire items, including responses by other users.

Free speech has been an issue of traditional importance to Grex.
We don't believe in censoring our users.  But censorship comes in many
shades of grey.  Recently, polytarp entered about 100 copies of Plato's
Republic in Grex's agora conference.  These were deleted and nobody was
upset to see them go.  The case we are considering here is not as clear
cut, but obviously not all censorship is equally bad.

Neither of these items were active discussions.  John's divorce item
has not been active for a couple years.  Valerie's most recent baby item
had been frozen for weeks before it was removed, and the others were as
much as five years old.  If their deletion had not been announced, it
could have been a long time before anyone noticed that they were gone.
Furthermore, it is not systematic censorship of any idea, opinion, 
or person that is being proposed here.  If anyone who gave John advice 
in his divorce item wishs to give the same advice again, they are not
being prevented.  If this is censorship, then it is a form of censorship
that does not interfere at all with active discussions.

In the end, it comes down to a question of what values Grex holds highest.
If the most important goal for Grex is to be an uncompromising bastion
against censorship in any form, then you get one answer.  If our goal is
to be a caring community of people, then you get another.  In practice,
we are probably something of each, and we have to find a balance on
a case-by- case basis.  It's a question of how to balance abstract
principles against common courtesy.

Examine the alternatives:

  If the items are restored, they will be restored without Valerie and
  John's posts.  They will be at best the sad, tattered remains of their
  original selves.  But in the wake of this vote, many people will stream
  over to read them anyway, guessing accurately or inaccurately at what
  exactly John and Valerie said about their personal lives years ago.
  Little of true value will have been saved and the concerns of John and
  Valerie would have been utterly ignored, but we will have stood firm
  against censorship.  Valerie will not begin discussing parenting again.
  John will not begin discussing his divorce again.  No discussion will have
  been restored.  From an ideological point of view, this outcome is fine.
  From a personal point of view, it is mean-spirited and petty to retain
  these old details of people's lives on public display against their will
  just to prove a point.

  If the items are not restored, polytarp, jp2 and others will strut
  around in coop for the rest of their lives crowing about how Grex stands
  for censorship.  However, they've already been doing that for years, so
  it won't be much of a change.  These cases will not set a low bar for
  future deletions of items.  Jp2, who is the author of the proposal saying
  that both items should be restored, has also been asking that one of the
  items he started be deleted.  This won't happen unless he too can
  convince more than half the membership that there is some overriding
  reason why it should go.  Members of our community may, however, have
  a sense that their personal concerns will be treated with a modicum of
  respect and sensitivity.

Once upon a time, the founders of Grex decided that instead of a "policy"
conference like the one M-Net has, Grex should have a "coop" conference.
I think that this was intended to convey the idea that the goal of the
conference was not to hammer out a rigid book of rules which could
be blindly followed to run the system, but to serve as a venue for
cooperative decision making.  Grex does not, in fact, have any formal
policy saying whole items cannot be deleted.  Grex has scarcely any formal
policies of any description, and does not want any.  We have a belief in
free speech and we have a belief in community, and we have the freedom
to balance those on a case-by-case basis in a way that makes sense.
I submit that the restoration of these items would make no sense.

response 2 of 157:

Feb 5 12:59 UTC 2004

It's not his decision to make, Barely.  The members are voting on it.  :)

response 4 of 157:

Feb 5 13:52 UTC 2004

Jan, if you read resp:3, you have a pretty good idea of what you've 
missed by not actively following the other 8 or 10 items in which the 
proposals have been discussed.  There has been a great deal of personal 
attack against me from cyklone and jp2.  The statements you see in 
resp:3 are pretty well polished by this point; they've been repeated a 
lot of times; several times per day without any note paid to my 
replies.  I think the rest of Grex is pretty tired of it and has 
stopped reading for the most part.

Except the "golden words" argument; that one is new.  That there was so 
much of great and unduplicable value that we don't dare to delete those 
items; not because of the circumstances, but because future Grexers 
probably won't be as wise as we were a couple of years ago.  We need to 
teach those future Grexers.  Heh.

response 6 of 157:

Feb 5 14:43 UTC 2004

Yeah, #4 was one of the lowest things yet he has said. It is interesting
how he managed to twist my statement about the value of old posts into a
criticism of new grexers. Especially when JEP HIMSELF commented on the
value of the old posts. 

Jep, I am paying plenty of attention to your replies. I note when you
avoid answering questions. I note when you belatedly answer them and then
claim you thought you answered them before (but hadn't). I note when you
claim I haven't apologized when I have. I note the increase in your claims
of personal attacks the more we press you to be honest and answer the
questions we are asking. I note the way you twist the words of others to
try to make yourself appear more sympathetic. I note the way you sidestep
the issue of censorship by claiming the words of others have no value,
even after you yourself once said they did. I note the hypocrisy in your
statements and I note the utter childishness with which you have conducted
yourself in this discussion. I note your approach, at its core, appears to
be "please do a personal favor for Jep the Victim." 

response 10 of 157:

Feb 5 16:00 UTC 2004

I would like to know what criminal activity you're speaking about. I didn't
notice anything in item 75 that could be construed as criminal. Not answering
your questions in the explicit mannner you may wish is annoying, but I only
saw "personal attacks" after someone (I think it was you, though I apologize
if I'm wrong here) called him a liar and implied that this was what broke up
his marriage, etc. 

And while I may not be a member right this very minute, did it ever occur to
you that I could wire some money to aruba and become a member before the vote
was over? My vote could very well count if I wished to make it do so. Ticking
off potential voters is not good strategy. Ticking off people in general is
not the best way to come off as the one in the right.  All you have managed
to do is annoy people who might have agreed with you if you hadn't been so
abrasive. Sometimes the medium does matter as much as the message. 

response 12 of 157:

Feb 5 16:35 UTC 2004

So those people who reposted verbatim comments in the "agora" conference on
m-net are also criminal? In-ter-esting. And yet Bruce was mocked and told he
was being an idiot when he mentioned that he might speak to a lawyer about
it. How fascinating this all is. In a sick train-wreck sort of way.

response 14 of 157:

Feb 5 16:50 UTC 2004

You know what? I hate to say it but I am finding the attacks on jep to 
be kind of mean. Does it really matter exactly why he doesnt want 
personal sensitive information about himself online? I am thinking 
about changing my vote for that reason alone. I mean, unlike a lot of 
people, I dont think it matters much if the items or restored or not 
since the restored items will be useless after having most of the posts 
in them taken out.  I like the idea of people keeping control of their 
own words even if those words are about someone else. But this business 
is getting on my nerves. 

response 16 of 157:

Feb 5 16:58 UTC 2004

I don't want jep to worry about losing his kid because of what he posted, even
if deleting everyone's responses does tread on a few toes.  Jim lost his kids
through divorce because the legal system is not fair and does not even follow
its own rules.  I think it is appropriate to make an exception to free speech
in order to protect jep and little jep from the divorce courts.  Or even to
keep him from worrying about whether postings made by other people about his
state of mind during the divorce might be used against him.  

response 18 of 157:

Feb 5 17:50 UTC 2004

re resp:14: Lynne, I'd appreciate your "yes" vote on my proposal, very 
much.  It may not matter to you (or anyone else) whether those items 
are restored, but it matters a whole lot to me.

response 22 of 157:

Feb 5 18:28 UTC 2004

Cool!