Post deletion request

I think you have some good points, but this summation goes too far and ignores some of the messy realities of forum moderation.

Moderators aren’t omniscient, we often don’t see posts outside the rules until long after they’ve been posted and many others have responded to them. If a post derails a thread, and several other posts continue the discussion that the derailing post creates, it’s not unfair or irresponsible to split that conversation out rather than to delete the derailing post and all that follow.

Similarly, it seems like overkill to suggest that an acceptable OP should be deleted if the title isn’t OK. Better, it seems, would be to change the title, inform the poster, and ask if they’d like to change it. Isn’t that responsible and fair?

Ideally, split threads would link back to the thread they’re split from, and mod edits to posts would be acknowledged in the altered post. But we’re human and sometimes we’re in a rush (or just sloppy). So perhaps that is irresponsible, but knowing that we will do things poorly on occasion, I don’t think that all-or-nothing is the most responsible alternative.

In a case where, when asked for a new title, someone says, “if it can’t have the title I gave it, remove it completely”, I’d be open to removing it completely.

Carleas, my word is enough to say she has caused me significant hardship, and I still have that PM.

And Magsj, don’t you fucking start in defaming my character, you did those actions, you’ve admitted to it, shown no remorse:

My word is good enough, I already gave you permission to look into my PMs to find that comment. She was acting arbitrarily and irresponsibly, I did ask for the thread to be deleted as it is now completely out of context. Ill send you a PM Carleas of the text tradition I was writing from, I took it from a Canadian Philosopher, who dealt far more in depth with criticism of regional political personality tendencies that effected how different regions process and accept information. It sits as a central influence to my works dealing with the mindset centering from Lord Dunmore’s war to the conquest of Detroit by Maj. General Brady. I said I couldn’t rename the thread because it wasn’t supposed to be a independent thread… I’m still to this day not in a position to title it as some concepts simply aren’t named yet, I’ve done alot of original work on it, regarding spatial concepts and mapping, that simply doesn’t exist in modern philosophy.

Your claim for defamation is defamation in and if itself. I gave done everything I am required to do. You are defaming me Magsj, and Carleas has prejudiced me, caused unreasonable hardship to my works. Furthermore, changing the nature and structure of a text, including adding a false title, does most definitely effect the copyright… do you know anything at all about the history of copyright law? Its akin to the Patent courts, it doesn’t behave like the rest of our legal system. The Librarian of Congress annually adjusts technology related copyrights (Congress gave him the authority). However, my text still falls under normal copywriter, as it is a written text. Your quoting from the wrong Bible carleas.

I’ve asked several times for that thread to be deleted, it exists in the wrong context, and she has allowed massive amounts of similarly off topic, tangential discussions to go unmolested, within their original context.

Deleting a thread is unfair in a moral sense, but isn’t illegal. Changing someone’s text, moving it out if context, changing the title and thus morphing the character of the work is, and repeatingly requesting for it getting changed, getting a fucked up reply like Magsj has written back in reply to me is deeply tucked up.

I am a philosopher of history, and she has completely warped my own words, making it appear I choose those lines. It contradicts the spirit and intentions of the larger works I present, and sullies the works of two hundred years of philosophers in three countries and two continents, unifying psychology and history together, analyzing intentions and historical narratives covering these wars, to fit her own prejudices.

She didn’t present her theory in reply, she placed her prejudices ignorantly in place of my own words. That is fucking disturbing, and it’s 9/10th of the reason I’ve been so hard on her to be decommissioned as a moderator. She us shamefully unethical and irresponsible in her actions, and has been nothing save a source of infinite distress to members of this forum. She was causing problems with members even before this occurred, before I had issues. Mist of them had to quit the site. Only reason I returned was your statements about the Nazis/Fascism issue on this site.

And for your information Magsj, defamation cases by the British have to be dealt with in the US, due to past British and Australian abuses suing overseas in cases that violated first amendment rights of American citizens. You’ve already admitted to your behavior, it’s wide open now, and I’ve kept records… best of luck, and know a counter suit would be a Cakewalk, given I can back my claims. You can’t, you’ve already discredited yourself by admitting to your behavior. I’ve done what us required by the law, I’ve repeatedly asked you to stop, in PMs and in public, sought the site administrator to fix this clear injustice. You did wrong, no getting around this.

Until I see the thread reincorpirated, or deleted, or allow me to modify the op and retitle it, explaining what you have done, thus will not cease to be a issue. This website doesn’t focus on teen makeup and style, but rather, is heavy on authors and aspiring writers. When you do stuff like this, just because the software allows you to, doesn’t mean your in the legal right. You still violated the day lights out of my copyright, and made it look like your words, which contradicts my intentions, are my own. Its not my responsibility to come up with a title to a thread I didn’t start, I was writing in response to a long term evaluation of mindsets by Gib and Von Rivers (who I call Dirty Girty, a fighter who started in this war, moved to Canada after the war, but killed children, burning them alive during war times). I was making aquisations of mudsets and a willingness to overlook certain ways of thinking cognitively… the idea has it’s origins in Vancouver, Canada in the 80s… titling it that way throws it off for everyone, and it’s furthermore a contradiction of Stoic categories. I can’t logically even make sense of that title, it’s a contradiction. You had no clue what you we’re doing, acting impulsively and just against me. You didn’t pursue a similar course against other threads, just mine out if bias and prejudice, completely clueless in regards to the later effect of your actions. I use place names, but have to highly qualify them on a proper name/spatial basis for each and every more of thought used… take for example the Virginia-Pa border conflict… I had to develop a few months back a completely new form of mathematics to explain the issues regarding geometry, proper nouns, and historic rights to explain how Virginia and Pennsylvania we’re making legal claims to one another’s territory in the court system. I have to bring up colonial era and early continental congressional reports to explain the drift of enclave claimants, and go all the way back to international law definitions and modern studies on violence.

For you to walk in, and start a thread, with that massive of a blunder, causes me considerable distress. You really don’t grasp, future war colleges, whenever they are dealing with enclave issues for the next 10,000 years, will see my name listed with one of a dozen who wrote on this subject in the past. Their will craft their strategy off of insights gained by me, and people will live and die on that basis. I put emphasis on die.

Its how our research in war colleges currently work, it’s why colonekd aren’t promoted to generals without producing well researched books. Any future researcher at any university viewing this thread YOU created in a few hundred years, annotating my text, writing a forward, will become very confused, noting how careful I always am with the Categories, and will quite likely enter into a heurmeunetic flaw, revaluating my entire work to fit your way if thinking. So instead of resolving situations peacefully, or with minimal casualties, he will say I was talking about another set of feedback loops, and really mean think in style X instead of Y.

I am that careful in my writings. I focus on a very hard area of philosophy, extremely hard. I have more than enough posts to point at here on this site to show I’ve been working on these subjects, just uncomfortable discussing them in full threads (due to categorical mistakes arising from improper use of language… see the Stoics or Wittgenstein).

No way in hell will I forgive you for this, but I will accept you made amends by changing the thread back, or deleting it, or allowing me to amend the title op and title. You likely won’t like the title though, as I will refer to it being your fuckup… which admittedly, it was. I think your best off deleting it. If you don’t, I promise to continue my press for just action. If I’m completely silenced here, I still have the court option… and unlike you, I can still sue from here. You’ve caused me immesuarable harm in your careless, rash actions. I have not stopped trying to get this resolved. Its very wrong what you’ve done, and so very, very, very easy to fix in getting me to stop.

We wouldn’t have these issues to begin with if we had the right to enforce our own copyright claim in this forum. I’ve been denied this. My work has been modified, I’he been informed I still have it, but have been denied all reasonable avenues to correct modification, despite the forum being set up to allow this. If she didn’t like my ideas, she could of deleted it, or commented on it, but instead took it out of context and added words that are not my own. I don’t feel comfortable coming up with a title for it… cause IRS not my thread. The thread she took it away from is mostly off topic discussion. Heck… the forum itself us mostly off topic discussion. He position isn’t justifiable.

Its why I’ve said I’m more than willing to have Satyr switch with Magsj as moderator, he is just as destructive, already has it out for me, so I’m equally at peace with him moderating. At least I know he won’t change my name to The Lollipop King or something crazy like that, just because a few forum trolls with moderating powers disagree with him. You do have the right to choose who stays on your forum Carleas, but you most definitely do not have the right to allow your moderators to act like this. And I’ve been very sympathetic to other moderators like Dan (who is Canadian btw, but doesn’t exhibit the characteristics I target as destructive) or Uccisore. I get on Only Humane for being a thoughtless dick who doesn’t read the threads he move, but that’s criticism. In regards to Magsj, she does actual harm. Its why I’ve repeatedly asked for her to be removed as moderator… she is easily Satyr’s equal. I’m probably defaming Satyr in saying that, he never changed threads up to make it look like someone was saying something they didn’t say. He is a dick, but doesn’t violate people’s rights or common decency.

And I need to point out nobody has a right to post, this is a privately owned webframe, but it’s still public space. Regardless of what I posted in the post just before this, there are ethical and legal limitations on what you can do…

This being said, you have normally the right to delete a thread. A limited right to move them (as long as it isn’t a aggregious insult, made to look like they wanted it done. Say you had a website on the philosophy of sexuality, and a well known writer on pro- chauvinistic masculinity wrote threads on it. It wouldn’t go down too well in court of it was shown a moderator pulling a Magsj moved the thread from the masculine sexuality to teabsgender dysphoria section, implying he was sexually confused. On the one hand, every word is his, but it is made to look like he meant something else. It may not be illegal, but us unethical, and definitely has a solid chance of setting a legal precedent in a court, as it is a obvious form of harassment. Hence changing Satyr’s name to The Lollipop King with location in ‘The Sugar Factory’ was noted by me as being funny, yet unethical. Denying him access to request it being returned is definitely a wrong on your last, and makes for a excellent case for a lawsuit, one he would more than likely win. Satyr’s whole philosophy is bizarre, but he inserts his meaning and sense of self into it, and expects his philosophy to be understood as such. You don’t have to like him, or allow him to post, but what this forum did to him in this regard alone is unethical. This being said, if Carmina is shown to be his account, you might wiggle out, given it’s a illusion to something similar to what you implied. Still unethical, but in a different category of law altogether.)

Simply pit, you don’t have infinite rights. You can thank Second Life for that, we had many philosophy groups on it, the legal rulings changed considerably what moderators and sum owners could and could not do. There is definitely a major degree of difference between philosophical discussion and normal discussion, and the off topic banter us connected to the deeper discussions as it involves insight to our person as and outlooks. Its why we have legal immunity to write satires and critiques, even offensive ones. Poor Volitaire had to write under psudynoms half the time. Though your not required to in all area of ethics to enforce ethics, just what is law, your expects to be a little more ethical in your behavior Carleas. At least Satyr shows remorse if he is pointed out to of done wrong in the past in administration. Not enough to make me want to post on his site, but enough to recognize he shows strengths and consistency in areas of logic and ethics this forum hasn’t. I returned to debate against the Nazus and Nietzscheans. You more or less run a neo-nazi website (however involuntary on your part) when guts like me aren’t around, the bulk of the threads go that way with little comment or counter point. I had to quit the site from Magsj’s actions in the past. These problems arise from your administrative style, you scare away the people most capable of debating, and instead it’s the lowest crud of philosophy who slink in and take root. Only they flourish under your system.

Rethink who gets to be a moderator, what your policies are. Fix Satyr’s name, take away Magsj’s moderator powers (don’t ban her) and give it to someone else (not me). Make some new rules which encourages plurality of discussion of opposing views, not just fascist ones, unless you really do want me and anyone else willing to debate them, keep them in check away. We should have a lot more kinds of philosophers here than the current crop.

You guys get really upset about this stuff huh?

God forbid a Caribbean female speak with authority and moderate likewise :icon-rolleyes:

I shall leave this thread in the capable hands of Carleas, as there’s no reasoning with those that dislike you… because you will both always see innocent actions as malicious acts, so please reply to Carleas.

Clearly no more upset than those who wish to maintain the 24hr boundary.

It’s not a big issue. But when a kind of simple request, and one that fits the culture, this one in this instance, is denied on what seem like weak arguments, sure it gets irritating.

[i]Hey, can I borrow this chair, since no one is sitting in it?

No, perhaps some old friend of mine will come in the restaurant.

Wow, does that happen much.

No, never, but it might.

Well, gee, we are here and we need an extra chair.

What if I get hot, need to take off my sweater and I can’t put it on the table without risking it gets stained?[/i]

At this point one starts to wonder what is really going on, why the other person cannot grant a simple request.

I am sorry I do not think it is in the name of truth.

I do not think cohesion is valued here remotely compared even to other online philosophy forums. Hell, KT forum is more cohesive, let alone some of the tighter run forums. Cohesion problems created by open ended editing also after 24 hours would not be noticed or one could take back the policy after 6 months. In fact requests come so infrequently they could be handled on a case by case issue. Carleas has already expended more effort defending a random boundary than he would have granting all requests during a whole year.

Just let arbiter borrow the fucking chair for his table and if the restaurant catches on fire because of this we can slide the chair back.

The why is it so important to you reaction makes no sense when asked not also of those who dig in and refuse to change for whatever the real reason is. Or were you also asking Carleas why he cares so much?

No, it does not make your point. I took into account that this would require labor on our part . A natural consequence of having posted and not changing for so long is that people will quote you, possibly. If it could happen automatically, sure, but then you are by definition upsetting the minor cohesion of that other poster who quoted you. That one can remove one’s own posts could happen automatically as it does in the first day. I do not think moderaters should have to go in a clean up these natural consequences that are specifically tied to the delayed removal. That is asking for labor. His request does not.

Which you already allow up to 24 hours. Plus what is the compulsion to report a true event. It would be reporting true events to include all our editing and early removals. Are you really trying to argue that you are making this rule in the name of truth and some sort of completeness?

Suddenly ‘true’ is latched onto. How could we argue against the showing of a truth. Why allow editing at all? Isn’t this eliminated the true events of our poor formulations, spelling errors, immediate reactions, perhaps real feelings? Why should we allow this suppression of truth.

TRUTH IS BEING RESTRICTED BY ALLOWING EDITING.

I mean seriously, it’s like you just hired a PR firm.

I don’t think I mentioned anything about rights, but this just seems like a hallucinated buzz word introduction.

  1. I mentioned that I do not think people go through threads with the kind of attention to detail that means that cohesion is lost in those few instances when someone wants to take back a post after 24 hours.
  2. If people have cared about the post in question and cohesion, then they have quoted from it. So cohesion is maintained.
  3. I also mentioned that I do not see the intention to produce threads as cohesive units that are reread later. a)whatever efforts moderators are making are not creating threads where I imagine someone getting upset or losing the thread because a quote has been removed. I just do not see this. This has a care of reading I do not see present here. Philosophy forums, where people more carefully make philosophical points, reference philosophers, cite in detail the points they are responding to and make specific point for point arguments more as a rule, sure, there some cohesion might be lost, because detail is important. There what is not quoted would take on more value - iow the responded to poster can may have made points missed or not understood and not quoted. Posts that do not cite and argue one single point might serve as key juncture there. Some smaller detail could make a cohesion difference. Not here. Here posts are generally broad strokes, pro or con, there is a lot of noice despite whatever efforts are being made by mods and frankly I see little cohesion efforts made by them just hockey ref behavior - do you really see mods trying to keep people on topic much? do you really see them suggesting people make clear whom a poster is responding to or to otherwise eliminate confusions? - I see a loose playful, floppy, hey you are the bad guys kind of discourse here, and any loss of cohesion will be minimal in the extreme.

Try it for 6 months and see if you get any complaints. Oh man I was reading that thread on David Bowie and I could not understand why 101philosophy said to Turd that thing about being a genius and why is he so fixed on poop?

If you have concerns about cohesion then try to create some cohesion.

If you want to try to maintain cohesion to such a high degree that people participating here will actually notice and be displeased with those few poster who take away a post after 24 hours, you are going to have to take a very, very active role, and this would be a very complicated set of proactive measures.

Whatever reasons argue for allowing 24 hrs of removal editing time, reach no practial or moral boundary at 24hrs. I see no practical or moral reason to stop there.

And I see the ‘true’ event argument as disingenuous.

I would say that AoC has asked for this request (knowing full well that ILP does not allow for deletion of posts) to make ILP look like bad guys, and to cause posters to form a rift and go visit KTS… such a transparent move, but he knew it would (somewhat) work.

This is an ad hom and thus utterly beside the point. And the discussion came up before from a request by Von River with no such irrelevant dark designs. Hell, half the posts here are made by KT people or immigrants from there. So the ad hom issue is nearly moot apart from being a no no (from a moderator no less).

There are too many ‘unstable’ posters. Unlimited editing and deleting would almost certainly result in threads being damaged or destroyed.

You don’t give a chainsaw to a toddler.

Moreno… I’m sure that AoC is a big boy who can handle himself and refute it, if that be the case - our exchanges have always ended in laughter and in my never taking anything personally. Such a serious response… I didn’t realise that lives were at stake here :confusion-shrug: I guess you have read every single one of our exchanges before you stated that my claim is out of line?

Mr R / Phyllo… stating the obvious never goes down well… what were you guys thinking #-o

I actually do get pretty upset about this stuff. In light of how the web works, I don’t understand the request to continue to control what one has said after one has said it. I get upset because, more and more, there seems to be a consensus around the idea that people own their past actions, and that to me is a ridiculous and dangerous idea. The Right to Be Forgotten enshrines in law this strange notion that unflattering facts have a shelf life, and that someone else gets to decide whether or not the information is useful to me.

This question, whether you can delete posts you regret making, seems to turn on the same foundation. I’m arguing for the larger point, but drawing the line in the sand on this small, administrative question.

Moreno, you seem to be making a ‘be-a-mensch’ argument: there’s no right to have the post taken down, and there’s no moral duty to take it down, but taking it down is going above and beyond to be a pal to users who regret their past actions. This seems a different argument from the “he said it, he gets to unsay it” line of argument that we started on.

To this new line of argument, I will again point out that other users are hurt by the removal of a post. The value to other users is low, but it is not zero. There are many more users negatively affected than positively affected, and since the site persists through time, that negative impact continues on indefinitely (if ever-decreasingly). And the future value is currently unknown. If one of our esteemed users matures into the next Hume (or, more likely, Nietzsche), their posts here could be quite valuable for posterity. That likelihood is low, but again, it is not zero.

Which is to say, we can’t write off the cost of removing a thread, we can’t just assume that a user really wanting their post to be removed is the greater good, and that the greatest good is to be-a-mensch to the squeaky wheel. It is a not-insignificant problem that the people who are hurt by the removal will likely never be hurt so much as to complain, even if their collective cost far outweigh’s one individual user’s benefit.

In the face of the uncertainty, I fall back on truth: it’s not wrong to continue to repeat true statements, and I’m skeptical of any argument the gist of which is, “the greatest good is to stop saying something true.” In the face of uncertainty, I reject all such claims; I’m not convinced that the mensch-y-est thing to do is to take the post down.

I’m sorry if this seems disingenuous and PR-y, but it’s actually a core part of my moral and political worldview. Information is good, the truth is good, and any assertion that we should refrain from spreading a truth has a very, very high burden to meet.

I PM’d with AoC to discuss the situation, and I can testify that he was not trying to provoke trouble. It was a special case.

Many thanks for confirming that Carleas, so my apologies for thinking the worst of AoC, of which he can make up for any time he so wishes to… if he’s still around. I do enjoy the banter AoC :slight_smile:

I have split 2 or 3 topics, changed 1 thread name, and only ever deleted only the profanities from posts with the full content intact (which the other mods have also only ever done) since being a moderator, so do please bear that in mind.

I believe a moderator should NOT be able to participate in discussions on a Forum, let alone voice their preferences for particular posters.

Their sole purpose should be to keep the chaos down to a minimum and this should be used sparingly.

To actually change a poster’s words is immoral and as I see it, is an attempt to destroy rather than rationally discuss views.

It’s not immoral to change or to delete text which does not meet a set standard.

Which is why we as mods try to please most of the people most of the time, but we cannot please all of the people all of the time.

We respect you as members, and we expect the same in return.

We act in accordance with our members wishes and not of our own accord, so perhaps we need to reflect this in (a more concise) new ILP posting protocol rules… a 5 point plan if you will, so I hope that Carleas will consider this…?

No. I wasn’t even aware that ILP didn’t delete posts, as I never requested it before in my 2500 or so posts. I thought it won’t be a big deal. Admittedly I was kinda surprised when my request was declined. My reasoning would be the same as Moreno’s, although he probably expressed it more clearly and eloquently than I would. I don’t agree with the reasons Carleas provided, but as we concluded in the thread about banning Lys (Lyssa), in the end it’s Carleas’s site so he can do whatever he wants.

Who would agree to be a moderator if this were the case? Even if volunteers could be found, they probably wouldn’t be the kind of people we’d want deciding what counts as legitimate philosophical discussion.

Being a moderator is a thankless job, it’s already pretty alienating, and it would be unbearable if it meant no more philosophical discussions on ILP. Keep in mind, every staff member here is a volunteer.

And for the record, this isn’t a reason and I hope I don’t come across as saying that. I mean to act for reasons, and I mean to shape site policy rationally. I engage in these discussions because I value the feedback, I find the criticism useful, and I hope that I have the strength of character to change my mind when I’m wrong.

Carleas wrote:

I see your point and agree.

I have no objection to posts being deleted if the poster has resorted to serious abuse, albeit there is the possibility of the inability of recognising the difference between philosophical argument and abuse.

I do have objection to a Mod who actually rewords another person’s post. If this sort of bastardisation takes place, an explanation saying why they thought the comment was erroneous, should be forthcoming. To re-arrange or reword a post to suit the inside of someone else’s head, is an audacious act and I think not to be encouraged.

I do believe in moderation, but then in a most unbiased way, just getting the discussion where it needs to be in a philosophically correct way.

Too many ‘go to jails’ can become stifling.

The edit rule came in after a (couple of?) incident(s) in which a user took the trouble of going through deleting every single one of his posts, rendering some threads pretty much unreadable. It’s very rare, of course, but it is not an unreasonable risk. And 24 (or 48, or 168) hours is a reasonable timeframe to allow reasonable editing while mitigating the risk.

Another solution would be to allow editing, but to keep a record of the edit, such that with an additional click the original post could be seen. This might be the most mutually-satisfactory arrangement, but would require a complete revamp of the site software, with associated risks.