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| 25 new of 393 responses total. |
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response 203 of 393:
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Jan 8 18:48 UTC 2004 |
I did receive your email. I didn't feel qualified to respond to it as I
didn't know the policy by heart. And yes the tool is new, I'm just mentioning
it because I was under the impression you might have missed the item.
I too want to discuss the policy implications and agree that no rule exists
that doesn't merit some exception from time to time. And trying to craft a
rule to justify the past actions and moderate the new actions is a little more
difficult than I can do right now in the middle of my regular work day.
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krj
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response 204 of 393:
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Jan 8 19:29 UTC 2004 |
So, the new policy is, Free Speech Until Somebody Feels Bad.
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jp2
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response 205 of 393:
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Jan 8 19:30 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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krj
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response 206 of 393:
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Jan 8 19:31 UTC 2004 |
Oh, and the other new policy:
I Own Your Comments About Me.
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jep
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response 207 of 393:
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Jan 8 19:35 UTC 2004 |
I don't think we know what the new policy is, or is going to be.
Things are really mixed up right now, but they won't be forever.
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jp2
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response 208 of 393:
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Jan 8 19:39 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 209 of 393:
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Jan 8 20:03 UTC 2004 |
Valerie's tool only automates the scribbling of your own responses,
something people have always been able to do. Whan Valerie did, and
what jep asked to have done for him, is the removal of entire items,
including other users' comments. That's a different matter. Basically,
it means Grex discussions are now temporary, and can go away as soon as
the item author is no longer pleased with the direction the item has
taken. I find that troubling.
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remmers
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response 210 of 393:
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Jan 8 21:25 UTC 2004 |
In my view, and speaking as a Grex staff member, I don't believe
that "deletion of an item on poster's request" is Grex policy,
despite the fact that a couple of staff members thought that it
was, and one actually acted as if it was.
Albaugh has a point about fairwitness powers. Fairwitnesses have
the power to delete items, and to the best of my knowledge there
is no Grex policy that says they can't. On the flip side of that
coin, there is no policy that says they have to on request, either.
There's feeling among many users, myself included, that in general
it's a bad idea to censor items, but that doesn't make it policy.
So if the FWs of the conferences containing Valerie's items had
killed them on her request, there would have been no violation of
any written policy that I'm aware of.
There would have been some vigorous and in my view highly justified
disatisfaction with the fw's. But not any breaking of rules that I
can see.
My main concern about all this was stopping the idea that "users can
delete any item they've posted" was some kind of system-wide policy.
It isn't, never has been, and in my view never should be.
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gull
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response 211 of 393:
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Jan 8 21:48 UTC 2004 |
It seems to be rapidly becoming a de-facto policy.
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aruba
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response 212 of 393:
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Jan 8 21:51 UTC 2004 |
No, that's not true at all, David.
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davel
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response 213 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:00 UTC 2004 |
Re 198:
Um, Greg, that's pretty extreme. It was an abuse of root privileges, & should
not have been done. But removal of one item making her "the worst vandal
Grex has ever had"? Give me a break. There have been remarkably few really
*serious* vandal incidents on Grex, but I can remember a few.
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krj
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response 214 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:09 UTC 2004 |
It's not the removal of one item; it's the removal of all of her
pieces in all discussions over 12 years. I find the word "vandalism"
appropriate.
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willcome
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response 215 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:12 UTC 2004 |
It really wants to make me cry, and I'm no sissy.
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willcome
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response 216 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:18 UTC 2004 |
(I'm a Tough Texas New Yorker.)
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jep
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response 217 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:23 UTC 2004 |
Valerie's script removing all of her responses from Grex is having a
severe impact on the system. I think it's impacting system speed; the
system has been very slow all day today. It's also wreaking havoc on
the conferences. She discussed a lot of things over the years, in a
lot of places.
According to 'top', the bbs process run by popcorn right now is
occupying aruond 13-14% of the CPU. Hmm, the "bbs" process isn't
constant; it comes and goes.
Her perl script is occupying around 8% of the CPU.
I can't think of Valerie Mates as a vandal or a system abuser... but
her action is having a much greater negative impact on Grex than when
jp2 sent e-mails to a group of users in December.
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mary
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response 218 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:26 UTC 2004 |
So, are we ready yet to actually talk about what to do next?
I'm not sure, but I'll suggest this - one, we not jump into any
type of membership vote to change the way we've done business.
I propose posters still have the opportunity to permanently remove
any responses they've entered. But whole items, with responses
from other users, are not under the editorial control of the person
entering the item.
Two, some text be added, wherever it belongs, advising fairwitnesses
to be very very careful with the kill command and pointing them
toward this discussion or warning them that censorship tends to draw
a lot of fire. No hard rules. It wasn't the lack of hard rules
that precipitated this issue.
A new conference be setup that will be for blogs where it will be
completely upfront that the rules there are quite different. The FW
will, on request, kill entire blogs on the request of the person who
started one. If you enter responses there you do so with the full
knowlege, expectation even, that they could be censored or removed
at any time. The blog owner rules the item. The conference FW is
simply going to follow the blog owner's orders. The conference FW
is still strongly discouraged from removing items they feel are
inappropriate. The items belong to the posters in blog.
As to reinstalling items that have been deleted, I suggest we give
this some time, and allow everyone to cool off. See if in a less
volatile atmosphere some reasonable solution could be found. How
long? Don't know. We'll just have to see how this goes. In the
end they may just be better off left gone and we move on.
I really don't see any place for the Board to jump in with help
here. If folks disagree with that I'd be interested in hearing what
you'd like the board to do.
Valerie should be thanked for all she's done for Grex over the
years. She will be missed.
Anyhow, that's probably how I'd like to see this proceed at this
point. I'd be curious what others would want done. I'm speaking
here as Mary, the user, and not for any group.
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naftee
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response 219 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:49 UTC 2004 |
re 217 valerie, the system administrator and longtime programmer, has yet to
learn of the unix command !nice and the picospan command 'retire'.
She will be missed.
re 218 None of us are really "mad".
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cross
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response 220 of 393:
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Jan 8 22:56 UTC 2004 |
Regarding #218; That mostly sounds reasonable, but I'm personally opposed
to the idea of a `blog' conference. Such things already exist in other
places, and that's Not what grex is supposed to be about.
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jep
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response 221 of 393:
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Jan 8 23:00 UTC 2004 |
I think Mary just jumped in with an entirely reasonable response.
Except for the blog conference -- about which I am ambivalent just now -
- I agree with everything she said.
Actually, I have more comments for the blog conference, too, but
there's another item for that.
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mary
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response 222 of 393:
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Jan 8 23:10 UTC 2004 |
Would you be willing to give it a six months trial run, Dan, just to
see how it goes? I'd hate to think we can't try something new here
just because it's done elsewhere. We're talking one conference,
clearly labeled as different. It would also serve as a bit of an
experiment for those who might feel all of Grex should move in this
direction.
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cross
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response 223 of 393:
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Jan 8 23:15 UTC 2004 |
If done in an experimental manner, contained, and clearly delimited from
the rest of the conferences, I would have a hard time arguing with its
existence. I personally wouldn't use it, but it's hard to argue with
the idea of a forum in which people enter into it volunteerily knowing
ahead of time they may be censored. If someone wishes to submit to that
with their words, that's their decision.
That's a long winded way of saying no, I wouldn't object with the
qualifiers you mentioned. I'm tempted to say it would be better to
build a new conferencing system for things like that, but that'd be a
big undertaking.
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bhoward
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response 224 of 393:
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Jan 8 23:27 UTC 2004 |
Grex is about conferencing and to my mind, that includes being open to
experiments in alternative ways of using this media.
I'd like to see this blog conference experiment given a chance to run.
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jmsaul
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response 225 of 393:
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Jan 9 00:02 UTC 2004 |
Has naftee demanded the removal of this discussion yet?
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aruba
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response 226 of 393:
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Jan 9 00:46 UTC 2004 |
I agree with Mary's proposal.
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gelinas
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response 227 of 393:
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Jan 9 01:28 UTC 2004 |
Not that I've noticed, Joe.
I think "vandalism" is the wrong word to describe Valerie's actions.
I agree that the result is a huge whole in many discussions. But
"vandalism" implies a malicious intent to cause harm. I don't see that
in Valerie's actions. Harm has, and will, result, but I don't think that
was her intent.
Mary is right that we need to figure out where we go from here. I also
think that she is right that we are not ready to vote on a change to
the policy. However, I think she doesn't go far enough: I think we are
not ready to vote on any policy on this subject at all.
So no, I don't think we are ready to talk about where we go from here.
Too many of us are still reacting from emotion, not from thought.
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