response 26 of 424:

Jan 10 02:41 UTC 2004

#17...gull, I advocated closing old confs and archiving them out of the main
bbs. If I said "get rid of them", thats what I meant. I have no problem with
those conferences that are no longer active and haven't been active in some
time, being kept in some other "museum" area of grex for historical reasons.

And Aruba, I would argue that you are being more sympathetic towards valerie
and jep because you see them here in front of you, and you don't see any of
the many many old users who passed through this place.  Users who participated
honestly on this board, and who don't deserve to have their old words
misconstrued and taken out of context just to satisfy the vanity of a couple
of users.  If you want Grex to grow, you MUST create an environment where
people feel safe posting here, and you can't have that environment if you let
old items get butchered like this.

response 28 of 424:

Jan 10 03:02 UTC 2004

And if you go back and look at the old Agoras, Agora1 or Agora12 or such,you
can see that they are in fact read only. Those items are not open and you
can't post to them. But you CAN still alter them if you posted in those items.
What is wrong with saying that if an item is closed and archived, and you
can't modify it regularly anymore, that you ought not to be able to modify
it anymore including scribbling?  If Valerie scribbles a post in Agora15,
nobody can go back and post again there if they felt the need to clarify
themselves.  Not that anyone is ever going to read those items again likely,
but it is just the point.

response 30 of 424:

Jan 10 05:51 UTC 2004

[I posted this first in the item discussing John Perry's proposal, but then
I realized that I should post it here too.  So this is a duplicate response.]

Wow... it occurred to me that I should come back for long enough to
make a proposal for a membership vote on keeping my baby diary deleted,
so I logged in to do that, and found that there are at least two such
proposals on the table already.

A couple of thoughts:

At the beginning of Grex, fair witnesses were given very broad powers to
do whatever they pleased in their conferences.  It was expected that they
could delete items and set up their own set of rules for each conference.
If you didn't like the way a fw ran a conference, you were supposed
to start your own similar conference with a different fair witness,
run it your own way, and if it was better than the original conference,
then people would hang out there instead of in the original.  If that
meant that there were 12 cooking conferences, that was cool.

I can remember plenty of instances of fair witnesses legitimately
deleting items.  In the classified ads conference, the fws deleted
old ads.  In the kitchen conference, the fws (I was one of them) deleted
everything and started over, because the conference had gotten big and
we wanted it to stay manageably small.  In the Enigma conference, John
Remmers would change the decor from time to time by deleting old items
and adding a "new western look" or whatever style he wanted to try out.
Nobody objected.

In conversation this evening, Jan said to me that he thinks that the
recent discussions about people being allowed to scribble their own
responses changed people's ideas of what the role of a fair witness is.
I don't know about that -- I sat out from those discussions -- but it
could well be true.

However, if the definition of what a fair witness can do has changed, I
think it is wrong to apply the new rules to old items.  My baby diary ran
for over six years -- that is, it started long, long, before those recent
discussions.  Misti says that for sure she would have deleted the baby
diaries from the femme conference if I had asked her to.  Grace sounds
less certain than Misti, but she says that she thinks she would have too.

What I'm asking is that if people want a rule that says that fair
witnesses can't delete items, don't retroactively apply it to items that
the fair witnesses would have legitimately been allowed to delete --
such as my baby diary items or John Perry's deleted items.

----------

Also, I have to say, I thought that the title "Valerie's Baby Diary"
made it clear that I owned those items, just like I own the files in
my directory and my books in my home.  Other people could post to those
items, but I viewed them as my own.  The title made that clear.  I had
no idea that people thought that any item in PicoSpan was the collective
property of the Grex user community.  I'm not sure if this is something
that was unwritten and reasonable people made different assumptions,
or if it is something that got decided on during the big discussion
(that I didn't read) about scribbling items.  But to me the idea that if
"Valerie's Baby Diary" is in PicoSpan, then it belongs to the community
and not to Valerie -- that idea was a surprise to me.

The first volume of the baby diary originally had another title, which
was changed later, so maybe some case could be made that this does not
apply to that volume.  But the other five volumes were named "Valerie's
(pregnancy/parenting/childbirth/whatever) Diary" from the time when they
were entered.  If the Grex community decides to make a policy that says
that Grex, and not the item author, owns all items, I hope the policy
won't be retroactive back to items that were entered before the policy
was defined, back when the ownership of items was ambiguous and people
came to different interpretations.

----------

Hm... I should post this response in the other proposal item too, since
it's much more relevant to that one than to this one.

response 32 of 424:

Jan 10 12:46 UTC 2004

*sigh* (I am wondering why you're back... not sure it helps matters)

response 34 of 424:

Jan 10 13:57 UTC 2004

As per Val's post, since there isn't any policy, I was fairly within my
rights.

response 36 of 424:

Jan 10 14:31 UTC 2004

34: As I understand it, mynxcat, even if you were "within your rights", this
would supercede.

response 38 of 424:

Jan 10 16:02 UTC 2004

Not really, as per val's post, it seems that fw's had every right to delete
items they thought appropriate and if that had to change now, it should not
be applied retroactively to all conferences and items. Theres fore when I
deleted the items I was perfectly withing my rights.

Also she says that when she created those items the general idea was that the
author was the owner and it wasn't a grex collective owned iece of work.
Agian, if that were to change now, it shouldn't be applied retroactively. And
she says her diaries were named "Val's baby diary" etc. If we were to go with
these arguments, then my fat item should be deleted, ang with my piano item
and any other item I've ebtered over the last couple of years.

response 40 of 424:

Jan 10 17:18 UTC 2004

Re. 37: FWs are at least quasi-staff members.

response 42 of 424:

Jan 10 18:14 UTC 2004

I agree with you. Let's just say that my post is valid if it is ever agreed
that val's post is valid.

response 44 of 424:

Jan 10 20:52 UTC 2004

And they wouldn't be put back with Valerie's and John's comments
still available.  

response 46 of 424:

Jan 10 22:14 UTC 2004

re 43 But they would never get around to doing that!  They'd stall on purpose!

response 48 of 424:

Jan 11 02:05 UTC 2004

I think jep's divorce item has too many valuable insights to disappear. 
Even if his posts are deleted (which I certainly understand and do not
oppose), I believe the benefits others provided in terms of their own
opinions and experiences far outweigh the "benefit" of deleting the
entire item.