This is long, but it's a long story with many details.
To start out, spandiv (formerly burr) has been visiting the forums for some time—he is Member No. 26!—and has contributed a fair amount. Much of that activity is gone now, however, as he has a habit of deleting the content from old posts that he has written—even those that people have responded to. His explanation is that his posts "didn't contribute." Well, I did some math... His post count currently reads 364. Of all the posts that he has made, now only 104 exist. 260 are missing. The worst part about all this is the fact that his low user ID grants him a specific privilege: Whenever he deletes a post, it doesn't get moved to the Trash Can. It's gone for good.
I know for a fact that in the month of May, 2006, many of these posts had nothing in them except for a single ellipsis and an "edited by burr" message. The "Find member's posts" link basically revealed a desert of dots, and several members' replies were to things that can no longer be located. Noticing all this, I asked Brazucs for some recovery assistance (not knowing about the trash can at the time), and he directed me instead to DarkerLine, who could only find traces of posts in the database. Needless to say, nothing really transpired.
Recently, spandiv made a massacre of all the posts that he had edited the contents out of over the years. Only, he used Delete as a tool this time instead of the conventional Edit button. (The only post left that shows his editing habits is at the start of a topic, found here; it's a closed topic.) Now, it's not even apparent that there was something to respond to in many places where people did, but more on that later. In the meantime, here are some IRC examples showing his attitude toward deleting old content (kungfoobar = burr):
Quote: [02:33:51] <kungfoobar> How long do you save the logs for?
[02:34:12] <Weregoose> As long as I'm logged on.
[02:35:16] <kungfoobar> No, I mean how long do you save past logs?
[02:36:00] <Weregoose> I don't delete logs.
[02:36:13] <kungfoobar> You don't? Why not?
[02:36:57] <kungfoobar> Most of the conversations aren't really that important to keep.
Quote: [21:15:29] <p2b|wants_site> I remember seeing one topoic where tehy were talking about when old topics are about to be deleted, they will go to some kind of collection
[21:15:51] <Goose|Notepad> UTI topics?
[21:16:07] <Goose|Notepad> Those are never deleted.
[21:16:17] <kungfoobar> Why not? Some of them should be.
[21:16:26] <Goose|Notepad> *Sighs*
[21:16:44] <Goose|Notepad> For the purpose of this argument, topics aren't just deleted.
[21:16:52] <Goose|Notepad> And, they certainly aren't deleted when they get old.
[21:18:17] <kungfoobar> I think the topics should be gone through, and they should be deleted if they don't pass the quality/useful litmus test.
Quote: [02:04:15] <burr> If only you could just poof it into existence 
[02:04:28] * burr remembers Goose post
[02:04:31] <Weregoose> Waves your arms, yep.
[02:04:42] <Weregoose> Wave*, even.
[02:05:01] <burr> I remember that post was in response to my post 
[02:05:06] <burr> Good times.
[02:06:42] <burr> Are you enjoying being a staff member?
[02:07:37] <Weregoose> The added PM storage space was a life saver.
[02:08:03] <burr> Why not just delete the old PM's?
[02:08:12] <Weregoose> That'd mean deleting them.
[02:09:10] <burr> Notice the word "delete" in my sentence
[02:09:27] <Weregoose> I say what I mean to say.
[02:09:34] <burr> You could copy and paste them to a text document.
[02:10:03] <burr> Do you still have all of my PM's I sent you?
[02:10:14] <Weregoose> All of them.
[02:11:10] <burr> If you decide to delete some PM's, you can delete them.
[02:11:21] <Weregoose> True.
[02:11:53] <burr> It's your call.
[02:12:02] <Weregoose> Indeed.
Read the first five lines in that quote again.
The reference was to this post. His post, the one that I replied to, doesn't exist anymore.
In the same thread was another post of mine, a reply to another one of his that is also now gone.
I'm guessing that my disagreement with one of his ideas was enough for him to label it as unimportant, and therefore deletable. I'm supposing further that this has been commonplace throughout his whole stay at the forum. Nobody just loses 5/7 of their posting history. So, what I set out to do was prevent any more wanton removal of good content, partially so that others don't have to suffer the bit of sanity loss that I did by finding myself talking to a ghost. Basically, AlienCC was informed of this, and he put a lock on burr's editing/deleting privileges.
Last month, Burr contacted AlienCC: burr wrote: I noticed a while ago that I only have a limited time to edit a post, after which I can't edit it anymore. I was wondering if I could get my editing privileges back? It's a hassle to have to delete a post and then create a new post if I just want to add some more information or update the post. I also don't like cluttering up a topic with unneeded posts. Thanks.
Steve Hartmann
The reply was: AlienCC wrote: Steve, a while back we noticed you were deleting the content of old posts, not adding to them, that is why the restriction was placed on your account.
I'm willing to remove the restriction in good faith under the assumption that you won't be doing that anymore.
Penitence? There was none. He got back to his old habit, still without regard for any replies. In the context of that thread, the post did linger for more than an hour until he realized his mistake(?) and then deleted his post. (There are more occurrences to be found.) Plus, what's more is what I learned while I was preparing to write this, which was the aforementioned "massacre" of all the posts that he wrote in the past but ended up not liking in the long run. Once set free, he went back and stamped out his history all the more. As this concern was brought to AlienCC a second time, the restriction was put back in effect.
Soon after, this ended up in AlienCC's inbox: spandiv wrote: I don't mean to bother you about this again, but it appears that my editing privileges have been removed. I didn't delete the content of old posts, so I'm at loss for the reasoning behind this. I was wondering if you could fix it? Thanks for the help.
Steve Hartmann
At this point, I was asked to send a reply in AlienCC's stead. So, I sent: Weregoose wrote: spandiv,
I'll refer to the message that AlienCC sent you when last time this was brought up:
AlienCC wrote: Steve, a while back we noticed you were deleting the content of old posts, not adding to them, that is why the restriction was placed on your account.
I'm willing to remove the restriction in good faith under the assumption that you won't be doing that anymore. It's been an observation since then that three or more of your posts have suddenly vanished, and so the latter term will ensue.
I'll be speaking with AlienCC in an attempt to dissuade the disappearances of your posts on their ways to the trash can, but this is trusting that you'll candidly use the Delete button upon removal each time, rather than utilize the Edit button to kill the same information. But, in all, it's an aggravation to peers who have witnessed some content in the forum being cleared, and then a confusion to the staff members who can't return it for some odd reason (which is the factor that I intend to eliminate). I hope that you'll cooperate so that this doesn't continue to be a problem. As for now, the restriction remains.
–Goose
Note that this was before I became aware of the rampant deletion of posts; I changed my mind about setting up a compromise once I found out. spandiv wasted no time in replying back. In fact, he was surprised that the message made it at all into AlienCC's inbox (read on for why): spandiv wrote: Quote: I don't mean to bother you about this again, but it appears that my editing privileges have been removed. I didn't delete the content of old posts, so I'm at loss for the reasoning behind this. I was wondering if you could fix it? Thanks for the help.
Steve Hartmann
If you don't mind me asking, how did you get that PM? I sent that to AlienCC, and actually deleted it from the Message Tracker utility before AlienCC ever read it. Does this mean that if you send a PM to an admin and delete it, they still receive it? I should mention that the reason I wrote that PM in the first place was because my Internet connection was running extremely slow, so the Edit and Delete buttons weren't showing up. I should have simply waited some more, that was an oversight on my part.
Concerning the decision to remove my editing privileges, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Think about it, I didn't actually edit the posts, I deleted them; there was no editing involved. And actually, the only posts that I deleted that were worth keeping were from the Two Dimensional Menu on graph screen topic. I do regret deleting those posts, but the other posts added no or little relevant information to the topic at hand. For instance, I made a post in the topic with the discussion on gun laws, about how I could imagine seeing JBirk as a PC ninja. I was just messing around when I wrote that post, so I didn't see anything wrong with deleting it. Are you trying to say that any and all posts should be kept? Needless to say, I think the right decision is to reinstate my editing privileges.
Steve
Normally, I'd find it odd that he didn't mention the post that Harrierfalcon replied to as worth keeping, but history does repeat itself. I haven't yet responded to this, but it was sent only a few hours ago. I intend to maintain the restriction. What AlienCC proposes as a broader solution will have to wait until the next forum upgrade. Here are the details, make some judgments, and please post with whatever thoughts or feelings you had while reading this; I'll be sure add more as it comes up.
–Goose
Last edited by Guest on 24 Apr 2007 09:27:48 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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