Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 10:32:31 06/20/98
Go up one level in this thread
On June 19, 1998 at 18:00:14, Amir Ban wrote: >On June 19, 1998 at 12:37:08, Christophe Theron wrote: > >>On June 19, 1998 at 02:02:06, Bruce Moreland wrote: >> >>>2) Does anyone really really want to see this stuff, and if so, should we ask >>>Steve to set up a "censored" mailing list, so people can get a chance to see >>>what is being culled from the group? I assume that we all have enough integrity >>>to respond properly if someone brings up a good objection to deletion of >>>something, and would put it back. >> >>This seems absolutely necessary to me. >> >>I'm pretty sure moderators will do their job correctly, and no post will go back >>from recycle bin to CCC, but the recycle bin has to be archived somewhere. >I disagree with this idea for two reasons. > >First, it undermines the whole purpose of deleting posts. Whatever the reason >that any of your moderators want to do such a thing, you will agree that putting >it on a mailing list or moving it to a special place for "bad" posts achieves >the opposite purpose. It will be more like: "Hey everybody, take a look at this >!". To make it clear where this leads, I think that if I knew that to delete a >post, I first have to put under a spotlight in this way, I would probably prefer >not to do anything. Christophe's idea doesn't bother me at all. The mailing list doesn't exist as a "hey, should we delete this" group, it's a "here, we deleted this" group. If someone wants to start a discussion because we deleted the wrong thing, this is no big deal either. Hopefully we won't delete the wrong thing. And if we do delete the wrong thing, we deserve to come under scrutiny. And if it's a marginal case we'd tell them, sorry, that's how we reacted, maybe you can be the one doing the job next time these jobs come open. >Second, the way you put it, it sounds like the newsgroup is going to debate >deleted posts, and maybe decide in some way to override the moderators. I wonder >what kind of procedures you would have to make this work. Even if you do, I >don't think it should work this way. As long as you have elected moderators, you >should accept their decision. If you don't like what the moderators do, fire >them and elect others. Ways of firing the moderators can be arranged. If there was something in the post worth debating, then by all means let's debate it. If someone wants to go into ultra- civil-libertarian mode about our deleting a "f--- you" post, and start a big thing here, well, that's a risk, but I'd rather deal with that than deal with someone writing in r.g.c.c. about how their perfectly logical and reasonable post was deleted without a trace, boycott CCC, blah blah. And with a mailing list, perhaps some of this sort of discussion would get off-loaded to there, which would reduce the need for this kind of thread here. >I see the need for transparency and accountability in the way we act. There's >something sinister in posts vanishing completely, sort of like Orwell's "memory >hole". On the other hand "deleting" posts by sending them to many people and >putting them on debate is nonsense. I'm in favour of not physically deleting a >post but replacing the subject by "Deleted by ... on ...", and making it empty >or unreadable. Your first two sentences are exactly why I started this topic. I figured that people might become unnerved if they saw something nasty, then looked again later to see if anyone responded and it was completely gone without a trace or mention. But I don't think it is worth cluttering up the group with little black X's where something nasty used to be, either. I figured that setting up a process wherein those of us with cast-iron stomachs and/or paranoid tendencies can guarantee that they could see *everything* would save us from these problems. bruce
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