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Grex > Oldcoop > #76: member initiative: do not restore two items | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 357 responses total. |
bru
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response 38 of 357:
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Jan 9 23:57 UTC 2004 |
Now that is just so silly, tod.
I support jep on this. Leave them deleted.
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naftee
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response 39 of 357:
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Jan 10 00:07 UTC 2004 |
I'll keep this short: Undelete those items.
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tod
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response 40 of 357:
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Jan 10 00:39 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 41 of 357:
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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.
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happyboy
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response 42 of 357:
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Jan 10 01:15 UTC 2004 |
restore the items!
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richard
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response 43 of 357:
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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.
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krj
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response 44 of 357:
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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.
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richard
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response 45 of 357:
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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
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albaugh
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response 46 of 357:
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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.
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jmsaul
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response 47 of 357:
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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?
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anderyn
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response 48 of 357:
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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.
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richard
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response 49 of 357:
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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.
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valerie
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response 50 of 357:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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richard
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response 51 of 357:
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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.............
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happyboy
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response 52 of 357:
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Jan 10 11:43 UTC 2004 |
re50: welcome back, vandal.
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jaklumen
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response 53 of 357:
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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.
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naftee
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response 54 of 357:
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Jan 10 17:16 UTC 2004 |
valerie is trying to ruin these two items by posting the same response twice.
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gull
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response 55 of 357:
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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.
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richard
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response 56 of 357:
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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.
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naftee
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response 57 of 357:
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Jan 10 22:15 UTC 2004 |
Wow, that first sentence is quite...the sentence.
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janc
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response 58 of 357:
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Jan 10 22:20 UTC 2004 |
Well, we could "protect responses from being taken out of context" by
deleting the entire item. (smiley face, OK?) The idea that everything
a person says has to be kept on display forever in context to preserve
freedom of speech is an interesting. In fact, when the moment has
passed, so has most of the context.
But getting to the point of this item....
I disagree strongly that this is an inappropriate subject for a member
vote. Many people here seem to want their rules simple and absolute.
We make a rule, and we stick by it, without even taking into
consideration whether certain rare circumstances make the enforcement of
the rule pointless or harmful. Grex's system of laws is minimalist. It
consists of a very few written rules that weren't really very carefully
written, and some unwritten rules that are even more vague. What JEP
wants is in violation of a rule that has never been formally written,
that at least a few people heavily involved in the system didn't know
existed.
In the real world, we have a very complete set of very carefully written
laws. And you know, they aren't enforced in a totally rigid and
absolute way. We routinely find cases where the rules seem to conflict,
where different considerations seem to come to bear on the situation.
We have a system of courts that can deal with those, where everything
that seems to bear on the case can be presented, where the arguments pro
and con can be weighed, and where a hopefully consistant and sensible
interpretation of how the rules should be applied in different cases can
be set forth.
Grex lacks any such thing as a court. We have before us a situation
that will likely never be exactly repeated. We don't need a policy to
say what Grex should do when a particular sort of item is deleted by a
rogue staffer. That would be pointless. What we need to do is to
decide what to do in this specific case. To make the specific
situation, there are two ways it could be done. The board could make
it, or the membership could make it. I think the membership is the
better choice.
That's why I suggested this to JEP. When I did so, I suggested that he
keep it very narrow. Just about his two items. Not about Valerie's
items. Not about general policy. I thought it would be useful to make
a decision on a specific case without having to worry about what we
should do in all other vaguely similar cases. That gets the most
emotionally charged issue off the table and allows us to consider what
our general policy should be in a calmer manner, if any changes in
general policy are actually need.
The only precident it sets is that it says that when people think that
for some reason there general policies of grex are inappropriate in
their specific cases for specific reasons, then this can be used as a
mechanism to make an exception. I don't see anything wrong with that.
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gull
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response 59 of 357:
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Jan 10 23:28 UTC 2004 |
Re resp:56: I think it's unfair to people to tell them that just
because of when they came here and started posting stuff, they're not
allowed to scribble their responses. I think this is far *more* unfair
than the minor risk that someone else's response will look odd out of
context.
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gull
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response 60 of 357:
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Jan 10 23:31 UTC 2004 |
Re resp:58: But wouldn't a yes vote on this proposal suggest that people
supported removing individual items in general? That's one thing that
concerns me. If this passes, it lends a lot more legitimacy to the idea
of removing whole items in general, whether or not it sets a formal
precident.
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cyklone
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response 61 of 357:
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Jan 11 02:08 UTC 2004 |
Items should not be removed. Individuals should be able to scribble their
responses. The "context" argument is extremely weak. This is not complicated
stuff, people.
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jp2
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response 62 of 357:
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Jan 11 02:11 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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