response 321 of 424:

Jan 30 14:44 UTC 2004

I'll sometimes announce how I intend to vote, but I rarely announce how
I *have* voted.  And I always reserve the right to change my mind.

response 323 of 424:

Jan 30 16:01 UTC 2004

I don't announce my vote for candidates for Board seats, or endorse 
candidates.  I don't have any similar reservations about proposals, 
though.

response 325 of 424:

Jan 30 18:47 UTC 2004

(That is a different perspective on yard signs.)

response 327 of 424:

Jan 30 18:51 UTC 2004

I've been told it does.

response 329 of 424:

Jan 30 21:15 UTC 2004

That's the vibe I've gotten from listening to Bush...

response 331 of 424:

Jan 30 22:22 UTC 2004

No, he joined the Reserves and then skipped out on the meetings.

response 333 of 424:

Jan 30 23:52 UTC 2004

> Date: 29 Jan 2004 05:45:09 -0000
> From: valerie@unixmama.com
> To: xxxxxxxxxxxx@cyberspace.org
> Subject: a request  

> Hello.  I'm writing with a request that is very important to me.
> I deleted my online baby diary from Grex.  There is a vote that has
> just started, to undelete it, against my wishes.  Please, even if
> you haven't used Grex in a long time, I urge you to log in and vote   
>to leave the baby diary deleted.  The vote also includes John Perry's
> divorce diary, which I deleted at his request, and which he wishes
> to also stay deleted.  I encourage you to log in and vote to leave all
> these items deleted.  My baby diary items contain lots of personal
> information about me and my children that I no longer wish to be
> posted on the Internet.  Even if my items are restored without my
> postings, my baby diary items are still all about me and my children,
> and the other people's postings are full of my personal information
> that I no longer wish to have posted.
>
> Here are the details of what happened: Back in 1997, I started
> keeping an online baby diary on Grex, logging many personal details
> of pregnancy, the births of my children, and many details of raising
> them, and about my personal life.  I originally posted it because
> I thought people who hadn't experienced pregnancy and childbirth
> might be interested to read about these things.  I figured that
> since it was located in a back corner of Grex, the only people who      
> would wade through my baby diary were people who were interested
> enough in parenting to wade through hundreds of postings about messy
> diapers and other topics of interest only to people who were truly
> interested in parenting issues, and also to people who were very
> patient friends of mine who wanted to keep up with my life.
>
> A few weeks ago, I discovered that a parody of my baby diary had
> been running on M-Net for the past 2 1/2 years, without my knowledge.
> (If you would like to see it, it's item 39 in the "Agora" conference
> on M-Net.)  Some of the postings there are funny, some are nasty.
> Finding the parody explained a lot about why the real baby diary
> had, in the past 2 1/2 years, acquired a number of people who didn't
> really seem to be interested in parenting, as you could tell by
> their postings.  They were visiting my baby diary to acquire
> material to parody on M-Net, or better yet to post my words verbatim
> and laugh about how outrageous or personal the information was.      
> The rules of the parody game in M-Net's Agora conference say that
> anything posted anywhere on Grex is open to parodying.  There is
> no way to opt out of being parodied.  That is, if you post anything
> on Grex, the people in M-Net's Agora conference take it as an open
> invitation to parody you.  I wished to opt out.  So I deleted my
> baby diary.  I used my Grex staff access to do it, just as I would
> have done for any user of Grex who asked staff to delete an item that
> was full of his or her personal information that they no longer wanted
> to have online.
>
> When I deleted the baby diaries, someone started a discussion
> in the co-op conference, claiming that my deletion of the baby
> diaries was "root abuse".  User jp2 started a vote, this vote that
> I am writing to you about, to undelete the baby diaries.  His
> reasoning is that since there were other people's words in the baby
> diaries, he claims it was censorship for me to delete their words    
> without their permission.  I find this claim bizarre.  The information
> in those baby diaries is all about me and my children.  If someone
> else had posted my credit card numbers, it would clearly be appropriate
> to delete that posting, because it contained my personal information.
> Most of the postings in the baby diaries are likewise all about my
> personal information.  I no longer wish to have this personal
> information online.
>
> So, if you would log in to Grex and vote "no" on proposal "A",
> I would very much appreciate it.
>
> To vote, log in to Grex, and, type    !vote    from a menu, or
>    vote    from a shell prompt.  Then follow the menus from there.
>
> -Valerie                                                           

response 335 of 424:

Jan 31 00:27 UTC 2004

And she doesn't even mention my username.  I'm just a "someone".


What a bitch.


(btw Thanks, cyklone)

response 337 of 424:

Jan 31 07:44 UTC 2004

resp:333 Again and again, the message seems to be-- cyberspace is 
pretty open, so be wary of posting personal information; people can and 
will exploit it.  Be knowledgable of how secure the forums are that you 
post to.  Can you trust the folks you're sharing information with?  And 
who might those folks be?

Of course, a lot of those ideas and questions seem moot... moot to be 
asked or applied, at least to that particular situation.  Yes, the 
issue at hand now is policy.  But that's just a matter of symptom... I 
think the concerns described above probably are matters of prevention.

Policies do guide decision-making.  But people have to put thought in 
those choices-- and should, each and every time.

response 339 of 424:

Feb 2 17:22 UTC 2004

I vote no to the restoration of deleted items or posts from tape.

I feel perfectly okay with the risks I take posting on Grex. One of the
risks is that the item could be deleted at any time, including all of my
posts. If I write something I particularly care for, it's my
responsibility to keep a copy of it. Not Grex's.
I also reserve the right to delete every post I ever made on Grex,
without regard to the "damage" that action would cause to the context of
other people's posts. 
I have no expectation that my posts on Grex are guaranteed against
anything, including deletion. Same with anything I write anywhere
online, unless I personally signed a contract giving me that guarantee. 
I posted a great deal in Valerie's baby diary and don't care one whit
that my posts there are gone. If that item is restored, with or without
her posts, I request my posts there be deleted.

response 341 of 424:

Feb 2 19:59 UTC 2004

(sarahlee is not a member, BTW)

response 343 of 424:

Feb 2 21:52 UTC 2004

 !members >> fags.on.GreX