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Grex > Oldcoop > #106: Understanding the Undulating Undeletion Proposals | |
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| 25 new of 157 responses total. |
aruba
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response 39 of 157:
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Feb 6 03:05 UTC 2004 |
Re #37: Speak for yourself.
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cyklone
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response 40 of 157:
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Feb 6 03:40 UTC 2004 |
If you really think you've never been an asshole then I would suggest you
simply lack sufficient self-awareness. Or maybe you're admitting you've
been an asshole but disagree with how to handle it ;)
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jp2
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response 41 of 157:
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Feb 6 03:58 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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gelinas
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response 42 of 157:
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Feb 6 04:04 UTC 2004 |
That's an interesting idea. An ensign is a commissioned officer, and so
a "public figure", e'en though just graduated from the Academy, but the
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy is not.
I find myself once again marveling at jp2's ability to blow smoke.
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jp2
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response 43 of 157:
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Feb 6 04:13 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 44 of 157:
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Feb 6 04:15 UTC 2004 |
Right now, logging on to Grex either costs me money or sleep, as
work time and sleep time are the most compressible things I've got.
I'm behind on work and I'm averaging five hours of sleep a night.
This is an important issue to me, but that doesn't mean I have time to
post anywhere near as much as some other people do. I hope people won't
weigh people's sincerity by their free time.
What is valuable on Grex is active discussions. I know some people do
read agoras from years ago, but I can't imagine why, unless it's fierce
boredom. The best items are active items, where you can interact with
other people. These two sets of items are among the rare items that
retain any interest at all when no longer active, but that interest is
much less than it was at the time. Further mangle them by deleting key
posts, and I think they can fairly be described as nearly worthless.
Yes, there might be a few sterling words left that were posted by other
people to Valerie's baby diary, but who is going to read through six
years of people responding to deleted responses to find them? The
damage is done.
I don't know what JEP fears. I don't remember his items well.
I don't know him well. I think I've met him two, maybe three times.
If I ran into him on the street, he'd have to introduce himself,
assuming he remembers what I look like. I respect him as much as it
is possible to respect someone whose fundamental values are frequently
in absolute opposition to mine. Many of his opinions make my jaw drop.
Doesn't matter. He's one of ours, and I'm willing to stand up for him.
Heck, I've recently argued against blocking polytarp's IP addresses.
John is much easier.
I wouldn't dare speculate about what he's worried about. However,
I find it perfectly plausible that a person might be unhappy about
having something like those items lingering around in public. I don't
need anyone to map out precise risks in gory detail for me to be able
to recognize that this is a more serious and plausible concern than,
say, Jamie's desire to have item 37 deleted. The shear amount of abuse
John has stood up to here might be taken as a measure of his sincerity.
Does he appear to you to be doing this for fun?
Cyclone (does he have a name?) thinks I should argue with him point
for point for weeks. Probably he thinks Valerie should be doing that.
Valerie left coop years ago because she was sick and tired of doing that.
She now thinks that was a mistake - she should have left Grex entirely
rather than pretending she could disengage from this endless circular
debate. Do you really have to sink as much time as John has, and take
as much abuse as John has to be counted as sincere? Do you have to
restate your position over and over again everytime someone thinks they
have refuted it?
As it happens, nobody has. My point is that to me, people matter.
I have done a lot of work for Grex and M-Net over the years. I did
about 1% of it for lofty ideals - really just the ACLU thing, and that
wasn't really for Grex. I do it for the people here. For Mark and
Mary and Michael and Joe and John and Larry and Ken and Steve and Eric.
The names have changed over the years. I did party mostly for Meg and
lots of stuff for Mike. There's a huge number of software modifications
I could put individual names on, features I implemented because they
would be enjoyed by particular people. This is what it all means to me.
Probably some response to this is going to say something about
cliquishness. When you do so, please define the difference between a
clique and a community.
I won't do anything inethical for them, but that's rarely a real issue.
Caring about people *IS* ethical. To steal a lovely turn of phrase from
Anna Quindlan, an ideology that does not have care for our fellow humans
at its core is like the discarded skin of a cicada - an appearance of the
actual thing with the living being lost from within it.
The claim is being made that the principle of "never delete" is so
important that John and Valerie's feelings must take second place.
To further strengthen this claim attempts are being made to portray them
both as evil people, deserving of any harm they might suffer. Or if
not that, then to argue that their feelings make no sense - they haven't
presented formal proofs of the validity of their feelings, now have they?
Or if not that, to blame them - they were stupid to ever post this stuff
and if they've gotten smart now, well, it's too late. When have those
kinds of arguments ever been missing from this kind of debate?
By the way, many of the same people were putting forth the exact same
arguments for why Valerie's feelings can be legitimately ignored when I
challenged the appropriateness of the parody of Valerie's items on M-Net.
The issue has changed but the self defensive dismissal of people's
feelings remains.
I've been arguing that, in fact, feelings are worthy of respect.
That these two sets of items are not so precious as they are being
made out to be, or at least not nearly as infinitely precious as
real live human beings.
The suggestion has been made that my judgement is clouded because I'm
biased. The notion is that since I care for some people involved my
opinions are tainted, whereas if I only cared about high principles
they would be pure. That is precisely the point of view that I am
disagreeing with.
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keesan
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response 45 of 157:
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Feb 6 04:31 UTC 2004 |
Would it be possible for one or several staff members to look over the
responses of the few people who want them restored (Mary, Cyklone, JP2) and
slightly edit them to omit anything that might reveal the sorts of things jep
did not want to remain online, submit the altered versions of these responses
to both jep and the authors for approval and then restore only those few
responses?
This is in case it is voted to restore jep's items. Did I miss anyone who
wants their responses in jep's items put back online?
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naftee
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response 46 of 157:
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Feb 6 04:37 UTC 2004 |
It's a little tough to decide whether or not jep cares more aobut GreX
than valerie. I'm inclined to lean towards jep because he does have more
guts.
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twinkie
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response 47 of 157:
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Feb 6 05:22 UTC 2004 |
re: 45
(I'm not sure if you've filtered me, but...)
I think revising history is potentially more offensive, and certainly more
dangerous than ourtight censorship.
It's much too subjective, and it's unfair to make the staff (or any person)
be the arbiter of what is and isn't acceptable.
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jp2
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response 48 of 157:
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Feb 6 10:55 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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cyklone
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response 49 of 157:
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Feb 6 11:49 UTC 2004 |
Janc, you toss around phrases like "My point is that to me, people matter"
and later make essentially the same statement about the feelings of others.
Great. So what the hell does that mean? Are you saying that my feelings
*don't* matter, or that you don't consider me a "person" because I think what
Valerie did was appalling? Your phrases are empty of meaning or else you are
subtly implying that some people (valerie and jep) are "more equal" than
others (ie. me). Guess what? You are right back to doing personal favors for
favored persons. If that's your philosophy, fine, but don't expect me, as one
of your "unfavored persons" to sit idly by while you seek favors for those
you prefer at the expense of *MY* words, which contained a tremendous amount
of *MY* thought, time, effort and "feelings."
The way to balance and give equal treatment to valerie and jep's feelings,
versus mine and others, is to simply permit each of us to exercise
autonomy over our own words. What is so hard to understand and accept
about that? Each of us gets a little something and each of us loses a
little something. That is what life and principled compromise is all
about. I'm sorry you seem to have such difficulty accepting that.
Keesan: Just so you know, I have already offered to make minor edits to my
posts to delete verbatim quotes. I am not willing to commit to any more and
I do not believe it is appopriate for staff to make editing decisions over
my posts.
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davel
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response 50 of 157:
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Feb 6 15:35 UTC 2004 |
Hmm. A few days ago, I think, I heard a news snippet on the news about the
lawsuit against Snoop Dogg. A man claimed that his rights were violated
because Dogg used, in a track on a CD, a message left on his answering
machine. (An earlier decision that the man had no claim was upheld.)
I don't know what planet jp2 lives on, to claim that no one may quote,
without his permission, material he posted in a public forum. His normal
strategy of argument seems to be that saying something often enough makes
it true, & that citing sections of the law by number makes them somehow
applicable to his claims. (He's been known to do this in Jellyware, citing
things he himself wrote as evidence supporting himself, of all things.)
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gull
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response 51 of 157:
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Feb 6 15:56 UTC 2004 |
Re resp:0: "Little of true value will have been saved and the concerns
of John and Valerie would have been utterly ignored, but we will have
stood firm against censorship. Valerie will not begin discussing
parenting again. John will not begin discussing his divorce again."
And so, perversely, we'll have encouraged SELF-CENSORSHIP. It will
create a "chilling effect" on people posting items like that again.
It's not clear to me that this is a moral victory.
Re resp:14: In fact, it's the incessent personal attacks and cheap shots
against jep that caused me to rethink my original decision to vote
against his proposal. At first I thought the opposition against him was
logical, but lately it's become obvious that a lot of it is simply a
mean-spirited personal attack. I don't want to support or encourage that.
I'd also like to point out, in general, that use of words like "crap",
"asshole", and "pussy" is generally unpersuasive and poor debating
technique. If you use them in your arguments, people are going to
assume you're talking out of your asshole and that your position is crap. ;>
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jp2
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response 52 of 157:
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Feb 6 15:57 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 53 of 157:
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Feb 6 16:04 UTC 2004 |
Cyklone says that the he will feel hurt if the postings he made under
an pseudonym two years ago to John's divorce items are not restored.
John says that he will feel hurt if a discussion of the intimate details
of his feelings during his divorce is restored.
While I don't utterly dismiss Cyklone's concerns, I think the suggestion
that Cyklone, or anybody else, has as much at stake in that item as John
does is pretty far-fetched. If I give more weight to John's argument than
Cyklone's, is that necessarily an indication that I have an unfair bias
toward John?
Maybe Cyklone can try to remember his words of wisdom and say them again
in another item. John has no such simple option to assuage his concerns
if that item is restored.
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jp2
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response 54 of 157:
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Feb 6 16:42 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 55 of 157:
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Feb 6 17:34 UTC 2004 |
I don't think it's been demonstrated that the absence of an couple old
items hurts us all.
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albaugh
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response 56 of 157:
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Feb 6 18:10 UTC 2004 |
To me, the biggest issue with this whole affair is HONESTY. If "grex" - that
being its founders, its baff, its braintrust - simply do not wish to have
documented policies, want to run grex casually / "loosely", do what seems
reasonable on a case-by-case basis, do what is "best for people", that is all
fine. JUST COME OUT AND SAY SO EXPLICITLY, so that grexers will know what
kind of system they're using.
P.S. And please don't say that stating that "grex has no / few policies" is
itself a policy statement you don't wish to codify or post. :-)
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cyklone
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response 57 of 157:
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Feb 6 19:41 UTC 2004 |
Re #56: All good points
Re #55 and #51: As I mentioned elsewhere, I apologized for the name-calling
and intend to re-focus my discussion on the issues at hand. I worry you may
not however. To say "I don't think it's been demonstrated that the absence
of an couple old items hurts us all" misses the point I made to janc
yesterday. Do not assume that a given post can be replicated when the next
time it is needed rolls around. Users can die or stop logging on for many
reasons. One of the reasons I keep coming back to grex despite the
incredibly annoying attitudes of certain users is because there is a
COLLECTIVE wisdom that far exceeds the sum of the individuals. When you
begin to make value judgments such the one of yours I just quoted, then I
think you are way out on a limb. You're perception of the value of a given
post may not at all correspond to the value another person gives it. If
you want a "demonstration" if what I am talking about, re-read my posts
about the hypothetical addict item.
Incredibly, janc makes a very similar mistake in #53. If I die tomorrow,
or next week or next year, and someone comes along after my death
searching for help the same way JEP HIMSELF wished the same item existed
for him, then the damage is quite clear. Arguing "replaceability" (1)
misses the point that it is still censorship, and (2) misses the point
that such an assumption of replaceability is false.
Janc makes a similar value judgment when he says "I think the suggestion
that Cyklone, or anybody else, has as much at stake in that item as John
does is pretty far-fetched." How can I respond to that when you've already
made a value judgment about what I perceived the stakes to be at the time
I posted? In fact, if I were to use a religious analogy, I was posting as
if I was fighting with Satan for the soul of a loved one. I have stared
into the face of the jeps of the world when they are almost drowning in
their woe-is-me, how-dare-that-bitch, full-blown victimhood and I was not
about to allow jep to take that long slide down without one hell of a
battle. So to me the stakes were pretty high then. And if someone comes
along with a similar problem, the stakes will still be high for me. So how
dare anyone assuming I was pouring any less into my posts then jep was
into his.
As for the argument about self-censorship, I'm not sure if there's a real
point you are trying to make. I think everyone agrees people should be
careful about what they post on a publicly accessible bbs. So in that
sense, self-censorship is exactly what we do want to encourage. On the
other hand, the flip side of what you say would in effect be saying "let's
discourage self-censorship by allowing additional items like Valerie's and
jep's and then lets give them full control to do a mass-censorship once
they realize there may be negative consequences for their failure to
self-censor." So like I said, I really must be missing the point you are
trying to make.
And I think you are taking a term with very specific meaning ("chilling")
and misusing that term to make your point, whatever it may be. In
particular, government is not allowed to act in ways that discourage
("chill") people from exercising their rights to free speech. I am not
aware that allowing others the free speech rights to respond to an initial
exercise of free speech has ever been construed as "chilling" the original
speaker's freedom of expression.
I hope these thoughts help divert the focus from the emotional back to the
logical. I also hope they remind people that when arguments are fraught
with value judgements like "little value" or "doesn't mean as much to X as
it does to Y" you are slipping into the exact trap that free speech
advocates seek to avoid by opposing censorship. It is a trap best avoided
by making sure that each person has the sole right to control their own
words. With that right comes the sole responsibility for how those words
are used, at least until such time as copyright or other law permits
otherwise.
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jep
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response 58 of 157:
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Feb 6 21:17 UTC 2004 |
re resp:29: You said I (and valerie) scoffed at warnings about posting
personal details on the Internet.
I admit that I ignored any such warnings that were posted in my divorce
items, e-mailed to me, or otherwise given to me. However, as I've
explained, I just plain didn't care about anything like that at that
time. I do care now.
You asked what I have learned from all of this? Uh... is *that* the
point? Teach me a lesson? I have learned not to... to not care...
when I am under great stress? Is that what you mean? I don't
understand what you think is Grex's interest in impressing a lesson
upon me for what happened 2 years ago.
Doesn't your response, taken as a whole, imply a philosophy of "never
give anyone any breaks, ever, no matter what"? Is that how you live?
I sure hope I never get to that point.
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jp2
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response 59 of 157:
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Feb 6 21:41 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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jmsaul
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response 60 of 157:
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Feb 6 23:47 UTC 2004 |
My issue with leaving the items deleted is that Valerie didn't have the
authority to delete them, so what she did should be undone.
I'm fine with leaving Valerie's and John's posts deleted, because they did
have the right to remove their own material.
Yes, I know both of them have argued that there would be a lot more interest
in the items now, and people could infer things from others' posts -- but
that's life. People could start posting about the contents of those items
in depth now, if they wanted to. They could probably reconstruct some of the
more embarrassing stuff, maybe not verbatim, but close enough to make both
Valerie and John very uncomfortable. So?
It shouldn't have happened, so fix it. Simple.
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boltwitz
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response 61 of 157:
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Feb 6 23:48 UTC 2004 |
Of course, that doesn't make any sense. Because let's say Einstein didn't
have the authority to publish E=mc^2 (THe MSOT IMPORTANT FORMULA IN THE WORLD)
are you going to unpublish it!?
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aruba
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response 62 of 157:
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Feb 6 23:57 UTC 2004 |
Gull is exactly correct that insisting that Grex must keep publishing
things like John's divorce item against his wishes will have a chilling
effect on free speech here. cyklone tried to weasel out of that by saying
that "chilling" has a specific legal meaning, yadda yadda yadda. I think
it's a very good description of the situation.
Free speech is not as simple a concept as cyklone would have us believe.
I, for one, think that John's divorce items were one of the best uses of
Grex *ever*. During the time they were active, I was proud that I had
helped keep Grex running so that it could be available to John when he
needed it.
It should be very clear to everyone by now that John badly wants those items
offline. It seems likely that other people in John's position might feel
the same way; not everyone, but John is far from an abberation. It
follows, then, that if we decide John's items must be put back online to
satisfy someone's notion of free speech, those people will be discouraged
from ever seeking help on Grex in the way John did. THey will think,
"Well, if I ask for help, then I have to give Grex permission to publish
the answers forever. I don't know what the answers may be, I don't know
how personal they'll be, I don't know how hurtful they'll be. And they
will be easily available to the whole world *forever*. I think I'll
pass."
That kind of self-censorship is the clear result of voting to put jep's
items back online. It might mean that no one would ever again use Grex to
get help the way John did. You can talk all you want about who has the
right to delete whose text, but those are the consequences, and we'll have
to live with them.
Maybe cyklone really believes that kind of censorship would be good for
Grex. I don't. The slogan on our homepage says "A public service
promoting free speech". I want people to feel free to say what they want
here.
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jp2
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response 63 of 157:
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Feb 7 00:13 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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