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Author Message
25 new of 357 responses total.
albaugh
response 33 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 22:31 UTC 2004

If this (jep's) item went to a vote, I would vote no.  I think it has to
succeed or fail based on the vote for jp2's proposal.  If it never comes to
a vote, or gets voted down, then jep's proposal is not needed.  If jp2's
proposal is passed, and someone on staff actually carries it out, I think that
jep will just have to deal with it, and work with staff and other posters to
scribble stuff individually, sufficiently.

richard, we have read your "proposal", rehashed several times.  We understand
your point of view.  We just disagree.  It's not going to happen.  scribble
is scribble, it's what it is, it doesn't know about date ranges, what
"oldness" means.  Give it up.  Forget it.
albaugh
response 34 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 22:36 UTC 2004

Re: #12: >>Also, if any posts not made by the users who removed them or
 requested their removal are restored, any quotes of a full sentence
 or more from the properly removed text should also not be restored,
 but should be replaced by something along the lines of:
    [quotation removed by request of original owner/poster] <<

I totally disagree (BTW, that text is not part of any proposal, it's just
someone's opinion at this point).  Quotations from another item are "hearsay".
Since the original post isn't around, no one need believe the quoter that it
is what was originally said.  It has no weight.  You will surely argue that
since the original item isn't around, people are just going to assume that
the quote is accurate.  That is their problem for assuming that.
willcome
response 35 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 22:57 UTC 2004

(WHAT do we do if both jep's and jp2's initiatives pass?)
jep
response 36 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 23:21 UTC 2004

re resp:33: Jan Wolter suggested I make this proposal.  Without it, 
it's always possible some staff member might decide to restore my 
items, or that the Board would order that done.  With a member vote, he 
thought, that wouldn't be a possibility.

re resp:32: I understand your misgivings.  I have some of that type, 
too.  General system policy should be up to the Board or the users, and 
specific policy should be up to the staff.  I have until now been very 
comfortable with leaving specific decisions up to whatever staff member 
happens to make them.  This time, though, it's controversial among the 
staff.  I hope the items never get restored, even if this initiative 
fails.

re resp:31: You're writing as if you're very hostile to me, but in the 
discussion item, you're seeing more and more what I did, why I did it, 
and I think, why it was reasonable for me to do.

I don't want to mess up Grex.  I don't want to cause problems.  I don't 
want to be part of a controversy.  I want to be reasonable.  I want the 
right thing, too.

I dispute that the right thing for maintaining a policy is always the 
right thing for Grex, the Board, the staff, or an individual Grexer to 
do.  Individual people matter, too.  Feelings, concerns, they matter.  
I ask you to consider that what is good for me, in this case, might be 
more important that maintaining Grex's immaculate policy.
tod
response 37 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 23:53 UTC 2004

This response has been erased.

bru
response 38 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 23:57 UTC 2004

Now that is just so silly, tod.

I support jep on this.  Leave them deleted.
naftee
response 39 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 00:07 UTC 2004

I'll keep this short:  Undelete those items.
tod
response 40 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 00:39 UTC 2004

This response has been erased.

gull
response 41 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 01:12 UTC 2004

I think he's within his rights to delete his own comments.  Deleting 
other people's comments crosses the line, though.
happyboy
response 42 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 01:15 UTC 2004

restore the items!
richard
response 43 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 02:47 UTC 2004

Albaugh don't speak for every user on this board.  I think Grex's reason for
existing is conferencing and you can't expect this place to grow if staff
doesn't show its willingness to protect old items from being butchered. Why
should people post here if they know that years from now, long after they've
left, their words could be still be floating around, taken out of context by
other users who have butchered the items they posted in?

This goes directly to whether Grex has a future, because if Grex doesn't
protect its past than it HAS no future.  Don't let the needs of one or two
users outweigh the big picture and how it affects the rest of us.

JEP, I understand your concerns and I would have had no issue had you deleted
those items the week, the month or the year you posted them.  But there has
to be a time when the item, and the conference are considered closed by Grex,
and the staff should then move to preserve everything in those items and confs
as they then exist.

krj
response 44 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 03:03 UTC 2004

Richard, you're just making noise to hear yourself talk.  
M-net grew up regularly destroying the contents of conferences that 
were more than a few months old, and FWs on Grex were routinely expected
to delete old, inactive items to save space in the early days, when 
disk was scarce.
richard
response 45 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 03:21 UTC 2004

krj and look whats happened to mnet.  Its not worth crap anymore.  You want
what happened to mnet to happen to grex? It will unless staff takes care of
its history
albaugh
response 46 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 04:18 UTC 2004

"butchered", "taken out of context" - what histrionics!  How many people have
actually said they agreed with you richard.  #44 is right on.
jmsaul
response 47 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 04:52 UTC 2004

Re #45:  Hang on.  You're arguing that M-Net is in trouble because FWs have
         deleted too many inactive conferences?  Have you looked at M-Net
         ever?
anderyn
response 48 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 04:52 UTC 2004

I have no objection to anything I said in the past being taken away, deleted,
whatever. I actually thought that old agoras were deleted after a certain
time, up until this big controversy.
richard
response 49 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 05:24 UTC 2004

#46...no #44 is not right on.  Albaugh you are not a mind reader and you don't
speak for anyone but yourself.  So leave it alone.
valerie
response 50 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 05:49 UTC 2004

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.
richard
response 51 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 06:48 UTC 2004

Interesting.  In fact I don't think most confs need fair witnesses at all
anymore, except for those like coop and agora that get restarted periodically.
The more active a fair witness is, the more a conference becomes a place that
seems to exist at the whim of the fw, the more the fw seems to be
asserting "ownership"  I don't believe a fairwitness owns a conf.  I fw
several confs and I don't consider that I own any of them.  Really the
only fw function I do is linking items every so often from other confs.
Otherwise I see my role as fw as simply being a cheerleader for the conf.
Not to act in place of cfadmin and delete items at users requests or such,

I don't think that the fw of the femme conf owns that conf nor that it
would be right for that fw to unilaterally decide to remove an item that a
lot of people valued, like the "valerie's baby diary item"

I think what this whole incident shows is that the role, the concept, the
function of a fair witness needs to be re-considered.  Particularly in
light of new functions and programs.  I think you could argue that the
only fw commands an fw really needs are those to link, de-link, freeze or
thaw an item. I think staff should take away the kill command, only
cfadmin or staff need have that.  Just my two cents though.  Its worth a
separate item.............
happyboy
response 52 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 11:43 UTC 2004

re50: welcome back, vandal.
jaklumen
response 53 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 13:22 UTC 2004

The drama and scandal continues.  *sigh*

Hindsight is apparently 20/20.  At the risk of beating a dead horse, 
again and again, I see that discretion on the Internet should have 
been a rule of thumb here-- in regards to the big scandals that are 
raging.

I realize John was having some struggles at the time-- again, I'm not 
sure if seeking advice from an online group might have been better 
served by a listserv (with an archive locked away from the public if 
it had one, most people may be thinking of Yahoo! Groups) but he did 
choose Grex, I guess, because it was convenient, I am guessing.  
Starting something like I mentioned might have been a hassle-- but 
then, I think it would have been away from the prying eyes of the 
public.

My gut says to restore the items and let John scribble his responses, 
although I know that will leave the items looking very awkward and 
stilted.  The more these debates rage on, the more I am thinking that 
users should consider carefully before posting sensitive information.

I will comment on Valerie's situation for a moment-- I suppose weblogs 
were not a big thing six years ago-- but from what I know now, if I 
were in her situation, I would put a baby diary there, say to a site 
like LiveJournal-- and I would lock it to friends only... or more 
specifically, a certain group of friends.  Again, I am guessing maybe 
these tools weren't around then... but... I think you understand what 
I mean.

I am empathetic to John and Valerie's feelings.  It is hard to see 
sensitive material misused... or to worry that such might be misused.
But... I was lampooned too.  I'll deal.  Sorry, they don't know the 
real me, I can always change and I can be more careful with what I put 
out in cyberspace.  I'm not real happy with the actions that were 
taken.  Some definite lines *were* crossed, some bad precedents do 
seem to be forming in my opinion, and it's not the usual bellyachers 
that are in heated debate over this.

naftee
response 54 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 17:16 UTC 2004

valerie is trying to ruin these two items by posting the same response twice.
gull
response 55 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 18:25 UTC 2004

Personally, while I'm not all that happy with the scribbling that's gone 
on, I'm not particularly concerned that a scribbled response will make 
one of my responses look ridiculous.  I haven't gotten that impression 
in any of the items that have had responses scribbled.

I think richard's suggestions to treat old items differently are 
impractical, unreasonable, and unfair to people who have a lot of old 
responses.  I also wish he wouldn't keep repeating the same argument in 
every item.  We get it, already.
richard
response 56 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 21:31 UTC 2004

gull, how it is UNFAIR to people who have a lot of old responses to suggest
that those responses be protected from being taken out of context?  And if
you don't want me to keep making the same argument, then stop posting that
you disagree with me.  You want to drag this out fine.  You want to let it
be fine.  Its up to you.  
naftee
response 57 of 357: Mark Unseen   Jan 10 22:15 UTC 2004

Wow, that first sentence is quite...the sentence.
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