response 280 of 393:

Jan 10 04:46 UTC 2004

Seems reasonable.

response 282 of 393:

Jan 10 09:47 UTC 2004

  IIRC, one of the arguments used in the great censor-log-closing
debate was that the entity Grex does not own anything posted here, and
therefore cannot force authors to continue publishing their material
here if they decide they want it removed.  It seems to me that a
corollary of that is that item originators do not own the posts of
others in the items they start, and therefore cannot force those
authors to stop publishing their material here if the authors want it
to remain visible.

response 284 of 393:

Jan 10 13:48 UTC 2004

I'm sure the paino item would not be of as great loss to the system as teh
baby diaries were or jep's divorce items. They wre definitely items I would
return to if I ever found myself in those situations, and I'm sure many people
related to them. On a much broader sense than the piano diary. Or the fat
diary.

response 286 of 393:

Jan 10 14:08 UTC 2004

Come on.  That's why you parodied her in the first place.  It's the most
obvious and provocative trait that comes through in her posts, especially
if you were ever around when someone entered a response that didn't fit what
she wanted people to say.  Her item was the Singapore of conferencing.

I have some sympathy for jep, but I would have had more sympathy had he done
it sooner to keep them out of his ex-wife's hands.  By now, I'm sure Mary
Remmers or someone has already given her copies, so the only purpose deleting
them served was to annoy everyone else and help Valerie burn more bridges.

response 288 of 393:

Jan 10 17:03 UTC 2004

[Actually, valerie deleted them.  Detail, counsellor!]

response 290 of 393:

Jan 10 18:50 UTC 2004

Valerie and I were talking yesterday about how it came about that she
and I had such different ideas about what the rules for item deletion
were.  Valerie started the baby diary almost six years ago.  Since then,
for various reasons, she has reduced her conference participation until
in the last few years those items were about the only conferencing she
did here. In particular, she was not involved in the coop conference
very much during the big debate about the closing of the censored log. 
I think the long discussion surrounding that proposal crystalized Grex's
policy about deletions in the minds of many of us in ways that extended
far beyond the actual proposal.  The proposal just said the censored log
is not permitted any more, and clearly implied that it is OK for people
to delete their own past responses.  The implications that it is NOT OK
to delete other users responses is not at all clear in the proposal, but
certainly was clear in the discussion.  So those of us who were in that
discussion probably have a much sharply focused idea of Grex's deletion
policy than those who weren't.  Probably this is an argument that Grex
staffers should all be active participants in Coop.  However, it is also
true that with my active participation in discussions this week, my
actual work on Next Grex has ground to a complete halt.  So forcing
staffers to be part of these discussions isn't exactly going to improve
their efficiency, and a few would resign from staff rather than have to
involve themselves deeply with periodic frabbles like this.

response 292 of 393:

Jan 10 18:59 UTC 2004

I wonder if it really makes sense to keep everything around forever as
we do.  Maybe Grex should just always automatically delete every item
that hasn't had a response for a year.

Yeah, the old items have value.  There were, as others have said, some
very intelligent and thoughtful responses to JEP's divorce items, and if
you were going through a divorce, looking back on that might be helpful.

But you know, you could probably get as good advice or better by
starting your own divorce item.  Oops, no, I forgot.  We all know today
that we would never be so stupid as to do that, especially considering
that our item could never ever be deleted if we had second thoughts
later.  So I guess we'd better keep JEP pinned to the wall for future
reference.  Discussions of that quality aren't going to happen again.

response 294 of 393:

Jan 10 19:50 UTC 2004

Sometimes it's history, and sometimes it's deadwood, and sometimes it's
historical deadwood.

Eric:  It would be hard to make that work.  All staff knew what the
conclusion of that discussion was - the closing of the censor log.  But
the whole discussion caused a shift and clarification of the Grex
community's outlook on several related issues.  Who's going to be
insightful enough to recognize those shifts, figure out who didn't know
about them, and accurately convey the right message to the right people.
I had no idea that Valerie didn't have the same understanding that I
did, and I talk to Valerie much more than I talk to, say, Marcus, and
know her much better.

response 296 of 393:

Jan 10 20:17 UTC 2004

Perhaps an ongoing policy discussion in the Staff conference would be 
in order.  The idea would be to discuss practical implications of 
policy changes, and perceptions of implicit changes could be discussed 
and validated.

One of the strengths of Grex is that the policies by which we operate 
are not vast and complex, but one of the weaknesses of our system is 
that the fluidity of our policy sometimes results in controversial 
judgement calls, and over time, resolving those controversies has 
become a more difficult and noisome process.  So the logical responses 
are either to increase the degree to which our policies are clearly 
codified, or take steps to insure that there is broad and clear 
understanding of those policies by those charged with their 
implementation.

response 298 of 393:

Jan 10 22:01 UTC 2004

I think automatically clearing old items is a bad idea.  The info conference,
for example has a lot of "old" info that is still useable.  In fact, I really
hope valerie can later be convinced to restore her responses in that
conference.