Post deletion request

I request that mods delete the post, or the contents of this post of my: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=189410#p2579977

Much obliged

Our policy is not to delete posts. Deleting posts from the middle of a thread disrupts the thread and removes context necessary for other users’ posts to make sense.

In this case, several users responded directly to your post. Some quoted your language, but not all, and even those that did benefit from the additional context your post provides for the language they are quoting. Removing your post would remove valuable context from their posts.

As such, your post cannot be deleted.

Well, could you pretty please then edit out the content?

If I make a post and then 10 people reply to me, I can still edit that post within 24 hours and delete all of its content, even if I can’t delete the post, right?

So if I can remove context myself within 24 hours, why wouldn’t you do it now? Does it really matter that a few more hours have passed?

You are able to remove all the content from your post, but it is against board rules and it is an abuse of the edit button. The edit button is for editing: clarifying, fixing typos, linking, etc. It’s not for deleting a post.

I’ll PM you.

Carleas is of the false belief he owns your copyright.

That post is copyrighted?

Under US law it is. As is yours.

I think individuals should have permanent edit, deletion rights.
Generally it is argued that this might, in some hilariously rare scholarly incident, lead to a thread lacking the cohesion it might have. First, I think this might fit certain forums, where posts are very rigorous, very point for point focused, and do indeed bring in outside scholarship regularly. There you have a high degree of thread cohesion, and missing steps in an argument/discussion might lead to a reduction in comprehension by some very driven reader. But this is not the case here. And I see little attempt to move discussions and threads towards cohesion. So we have a high degree of defense and nothing proactive, and the threads will show little wear if we allow people to remove posts. Second, on a more general level, not thinking of the specific case of ILP: he said it, he should get to unsay it. The forum benefits, to whatever degree it does, from the free work of its members. Free work. If there is value, it is given without compensation. If there is no value, well then it does not matter if that value is removed. If there is value, then it is part of a giving that is not paid for or compensated for. Arbiter posts things here regularly, now he wants to take one back. He is thus choosing to take a small portion of the value he adds, if he does, to the site. If Carleas wants to say that he puts in value by creating a space, he retains value, donated by posters, regardless, in compensation for that. A sea of posts are coming at his space. That people posting here care about what they write, and identify with and value their posts is consistant with wanting control over that. Respecting that control improves the product Carleas provides by treating posters like free adult citizens who provide him with value. I cannot see a moral leg to stand on. And as I said in my first point, I see no practical leg to stand on. In fact in practical terms people will be more likely to provide value freely and generously if they know they can take it back on those rare occasions they decide to after 24 hours.

Let him take back what he wrote.

I don’t own the copyright, but I do have a perpetual license to display the work on ILP.

There’s a reason most sites have ads on them. Hosting a website isn’t free, maintaining it isn’t free. Members at ILP don’t pay anything, they don’t even have to look at ads. They contribute something of value, and ILP provides them the value of worldwide, public access, and a built-in audience for their work. It’s a fair exchange of value.

Once something is said, it’s said, the event is a truth of history. We can lie about whether he said it, or refuse to repeat what he said, but we can’t change the past. Besides, what if someone quotes him (as they did here)? Can he unsay the quotes? If not, why not, if we’re already committing ourselves to the idea that ILP has to stop repeating his post? And if they can quote him, why can’t ILP continue to trutfully represent that on such date at such time, so and so said this?

That’s one hypothesis. Alternatively, people who know they can’t take their posts back will take the act of posting more seriously, and think more about their posts before they make them, and so the policy will improve the quality of posts.

Since this comes up infrequently, I would guess that the effect in either direction is negligible, and likely insignificant.

I mentioned that you provided the space. The thing is the vast majority of posts will not be taken back. So there is a positive flow of value into the site. There is no payment per contribution. That portions of this flow might be taken back leaves a large flow of not compensated for value. IOW it is not asking for the apple back that someone got paid 20 cents for. You provide, lets say, a soup kitchen where people can come and eat without paying for it. Other people provide the carrots and potatoes, etc. So ARbiter wants to take back one sack of potatoes he contributed. In this situations some people even got to eat his potatoes and at the same time he can take them back. He has still provided the soup kitcken with uncompensated for potatoes in the past.

Sure, thouhg with saying, things are not written in the air. The sound dissipates. With other media, it is harder to recall. With online media we can recall. I see no reason not to use the option this medium provides, which is the recall of the said. People will have read it perhaps and to this extent it cannot be recalled. It may continue in quotes in the posts of others. But he can no longer perpetually have it written there in stone, since it is not stone, and as a more flexible medium, offers the option of removal. Given that it seems to me the onus is on making this more flexible medium less flexible.

No, and so this cuts against thread coherence arguments. If it was valued, then it will live on to that extent. I think in general what I wrote above rebuts this. Yes, he cannot make it completely flexible, but he can choose to no longer have the words under his name as part of his post.

I think the act of taking down the post is not simply eliminating the act of having said it. YOu write here as if it is binary, perhaps following my binary formulation. The effects of having spoken and being heard need not be eliminated for the elimination of the post to have value for the person who made it. Even if it is not a total erasure.

It shouldn’t, I think, because he no longer wants it to be there, under his name, as a post. It can remain as ripples, ripples held up by other people on their plaques (under criticism or acclaim) but he is no longer holding it up. Note: by saying holding it up I am not saying he should not have some burden of effort, but need not have the burden of asserting it.

Because there it is an assertion he is making on and on. ’

He can retract it or modify it in retrospect in later posts, but I see no reason why he should not be allowed to use the available options of hte medium.

In specific I do not think it will have this effect on this forum. In general, I don’t this fits an online forum where the strong points are being off the cuff and exploring nad reacting, while other media provide outlets for this kind of careful communication.

Me too. I was actually trying to counter a neglible objection with a neglible counter-phenomenon.

OK, so, quotes remain. Let’s say I hired someone, or created a bot, or someone very ambitious just decided of their own accord (and this may be an important distinction) to respond to every post immediately, quoting the post in its entirety. Then we let everyone edit or delete what they write, but not the quotes. 1) is this permitted, and 2) what’s the difference?

In my time in tech policy, I’ve frequently found that people don’t see websites as operated by people. They see users who post as being people, as the actor. But when you access ILP, Arbiter isn’t involved. You come to contact my server, you ask for documents, and my server provides them. Your computer turns those documents into web pages. Your interaction with a web page is between you and me (or my property), Arbiter isn’t a party. When I return a document that when turned into a webpage states “on such date, at such time, so and so said this”, I am effectively relating an even witnessed by my server (which has been set up for the purpose of witnessing such events). The page returned is my server quoting Arbiter.

And for my part, I would say this is true for all websites, though I recognize that for sites run by corporations the connection between the site and the person is more complicated. But here, it’s really just me running the server, I pick the software and I decide whether or not the server will return documents at your request, and to which events it will bear witness.

As I read your criticism, you’re framing it as me forcing Arbiter to repeat himself perpetually when he would like to stop saying what he wrote. That framing doesn’t seem like the only one. I think it’s more accurate to say that I (through my server) repeat things that users say to me (through my server), and it is moral and just (or perhaps merely morally neutral) for me to continue repeating those things – especially given that users are saying things to me specifically for the purpose of me repeating them.

False, it’s not moral or just to deny us our control over our creative works, when your software easily allows for it. You’ve made a effort to come into conflict with our ownership rights.

You own the software and hardware, but this is legally, in the US, publically accessible space, however much you own it. Your making a clear effort to screw up over, and your rules cause a lot of duress and drama.

And no, we haven’t stopped protesting you acts for years, I’ve repeatedly lodged my complaints over the years, and so have others.

And the level of professionalism in posts is pittifulky low, don’t ask like it’s all a bunch of Rhode Scholars here. Its 90% dick banter.

Your putting undue hardship on us. Forums are designed to allow for this, it’s built in. Its not like Cicero’s era where authors we’re advised to hold on to their work for 10 years, so they can make adjustments and revisions. They send a scroll out, that single scroll could replicate mistakes to infinity, now way of stopping it… you get all the copies fixed in Rome, Antioch continues to use the old system, and you didn’t even know your work was sold there.

Its always been a pain in the ass, forum design developed in response to this. We should be able to update our stuff as we see fit, however far in the future.

I doubt most will ever sneak through, changing every past post to make it look like something else was said, and it would still be labeled as modified on that date. If a post from 2005 was changed in 2016, and every post was modified by one user on their end, it would be obvious, cause it would say “Date Modified”.

If you trust us enough to be on your forum, you shouldn’t have any reason not to trust us to care for our own data. Its ours.

I honestly don’t mind archiving the old stuff, preserving version changes, but I don’t know if forums like this allows that. Obviously we want the updated version to be the one read first, Id have no issue if the grey bar noting each time a post was changed showed earlier versions.

You’ve never given a rational, fair reason for why you do this. Your arguments always have fallen flat and weak whenever we bring this up, which doesn’t make sense for a lawyer who should know better… it wouldn’t be a problem had you not adjusted the site so as to make it so. Its not a justifiable hardship to place on us.

You recognize we own the copyright, so meet us halfway… in knocking the craziness off on your end. You’ll undoubtedly see spelling mistakes, grammar, and clarifications increase, actually qualitatively improving posts. No explanation you or the mods have even given justifies carrying on as you have, we have the higher priority. Why you gotta keep everyone perpetually pussed and bound to this is beyond many of us… as we have said time and time again.

Talk about conflicting goods!! :wink:

Is this like when people say we have a right to privacy? Like someplace someone decided that and at first glance it seems to be the law, but on further reading it turns out not to be the case?

You have complete control over your creative works, and by posting them here you’ve exercised your control by granting ILP a perpetual license to display them.

Not true. I can (and do) deny plenty of people access to the server. If those people circumvent the blocks I place on them, I have a cause of action under the CFAA (which in reality I’d basically never do, but if you want to talk legally, that’s the legal reality).

Our policy is to allow for corrective edits, we just do them manually. And since we aren’t talking about scrolls, but conversations, the proper response for errors of fact in a post is to acknowledge them in a later post.

It really isn’t. You gave it to the server with knowledge of what the server would use it for. You own the copyright, but the data belongs to ILP (I said earlier that it belongs to me, which is misleading: ILP owns the license, and I own ILP, but if I transfer ownership of ILP, the license would go with. Which makes sense because the license is only for the purpose of displaying the content on ILP, which wouldn’t be worth much without ILP).

I agree with you that this would be best, but it’s not available out of the box and it would be nontrivial to add. I also still think that it could be abused in ways that should be restricted; going through and deleting every one of one’s posts from a 20 page thread would be a pain in the ass, even if the deleted version was still available.

My reason is, as it has been, that posts are context for each other, and removing them deprives replies of context. That’s rational, it’s fair. We can quibble about the size of the interest being protected, but then we’d also have to quibble about the size of the interest being deprived. Neither is large, so a rational, fair, yet small justification is all that’s required.

No, this is an explicit law, though I can’t recall which one. I believe it was added to bring US copyright law in line with international treaties forbidding formalities to the granting of copyright. Copyright rests with the author from the point a work is put into a physical medium.

That said, a perpetual license is perfectly valid under copyright law.

That’s right, privacy was inferred by the Court based on the “no soldiers in your house” bit, but it isn’t actually stated in the constitution.

I said to one of my attorneys the other day, “I’d like to ask a panel of law enforcement officers this question. At what point must you stop what you’re doing because a person’s right to privacy is in the way of what you want to do?” One of the attorneys said to me, “you don’t want to hear the cops answer to that question.” It’s a sad world we live in.

Bern convention.

Its not the perpetuality at issue, it’s the inability to control our copyrighted material, locking us out of it.

If we are two farmers, and there is a spring going through both our properties, and you cut me off from the water access, there will be trouble. If I don’t just shoot you and bury you as fertilizer as they do in Arkansas, there will be a court date. Judge isn’t going to be accepting of your position Carleas.

Your claim to contract (as you once put it) isn’t enforceable. Your treating a involuntary contract to merely speak in response as evidence you own our thoughts, have the ability to dictate how it is to be expressed, and rule yourself the supreme authority when to move, splice, rename threads, misleading the public regarding our intent.

Lets say Richard Dawkins posted under a fake name, to someone posting on this site. Magsj got it in her head he was being offensive or trolling, because she is being her not witted self… changed the thread make up, gave it a new false title and context. Richard Dawkins already gave the key quites to professor green in Chicago… their internet troll following reblogged it 1000 times (they do this by the way, hit the SF philosophy group hard).

Richard Dawkins now has a false thread, not titled by him, nor started by him, lacking a OP, and when he cries out to MAGSJ what the fuck did you just do… she replied back vindictively she can do whatever she likes.

This evil twisted act has happened to me. Your policies allow for it Carleas, it’s caused me great distress, because it effects my work on 18th and 19th Century British Colonial and Early Revolutionary War thought.

I’ve likewise had a title to a essay on Freud’s Anal stage logic banned and dragged through the mud by her. I wrote a real essay on that, was plunged into merk by her actions. I don’t publish my collected essays once I write them, but down the road… I want my internet writings to time stamp and preserve Easter Egg insights to what I was doing for future readers looking it up on a way back machine… seeing a phrase or idea pop up in a more humorous setting.

Bring dicked over hard doesn’t work. I should have the right to delete threads I never started, or name misleading people into thinking I wrote it.

By your own logic, your system is creating the very abuse you claim to be trying to stop, and my request for her to delete it in the chimera thread was rejected. It’s still there. I never started it, didn’t write a opp, torn out of context, so is causing considerable damage to my other writings.

I own my copyright, you fucked me over with your policies. I do not have creative control over it. You continually express this site in terms if a business… is your licence enforceable in a court under such duress and abuse? Absolutely not.

Give us our own control back, and straighten your bad mids out. You can look in my PMs for the Magsj post (last one she sent) for proof of evil intent. I doubt Im the only one, we have pointed out the unfairness of your policies and certain miderators for quite some time. It shoukdnt be a one off struggle, of years long aggravation and banning to get stuff fixed. If you ceased screwing us over, allowed us to maintain our posts integrity, we woukd have no issue. Your not going to wake up to discover the entire website quit and every member deleted every post. Your arguments are absurd… give us back control. I reakly do gave to go back and fix some of her fuckups and manipulations, its put me in a falsified light. She obviously cant be trusted to do it now. If I choose to keep the faje thread, I need to write a op explaining her stunt to future readers googling it up in reference to my other offline material, give it a legitimate titke (impossible to name it at the time, I was caught off guard it was even made into a thrwad with a title).

My works reside in a larger spectrum of other authors, some of them Canadian who I took from in formulating my ideas. i dont know how future researchers will read into a legitimate sociological tradition of psychology pioneered by canadians to express regional differences, us duddenly anti-canadian on this forum, but not in my works. Do you have any clue how much confusion this will cause in 1500 years? The area of philosophy I work on, Political and Military philisophy… be it diplomacy, statecraft, military science… they never get rid of our works. Even very minor theorists are preserved, and studied long, long after their era has passed. This will cause very, very long term confusion.

My rights and priorities therefor triumph your claims to inertia. Im not writing on foucault… someone forgotten in 500 years, I write on topics war colleges pilfer through a good thousand years after it was written down, and millions of lives are put on the line for. Magsj shoukdnt gave the determinung say on what my udea is, nor you, but me. You can keep that pist for eternity, but let me correct it, and make certain it is legitimate, which it is not, so a colonel writing a thread on regional mentalities in the year 4000 doesnt get stumped by a commentator in 2557 who noted in a wayback machine that I wrote something contradictory, and what I really neant was what Magsj decided I meant.

This is what happens when you play around with people’s posts. In a sense, we are all dead, and all our internet play is on some future hard drive. They wont read through the forum linerally, wont know who Carleas is, or his policy, or care about MAGSJ… they will just see a post, full of mispellings by a youth in their twenties, who went on later to win a nobel peace prize at 80, forever unable to go back and correct a typo in his math, or explain his views in a addendum. Threads get locked, spliced, moved. Miderators decide on the spur of the moment, and are vindictive in holding their course, not realizing what they have done.

I niw have a hustory thread on this site who’s titke conteadicts my other works and effirts, taken far out of its original linear context. Its deeply unethical and fucked up. Its because of your bad policies.

Stop making excuses, stop making us fight, flip the switch, give us our power back. It shouldn’t of been taken away in the first place. A philosophy has a higher order of creativity, we need to be in a position to preserve our creative product, make certain it’s representative. Some of the antics here stop this from occurring, and the excuses for continuing this evil is far greater than the evils you profess to be saving us from.

So what if Sauwelios goes back to change all his posts to make him look more manly? Or History boy updates a tract to better reflect a important philological oversight. Or Mr. Reasonable starts sneaking philosophical content into his past posts. Its hardly the end of the world, and we can see if the post has been modified, and when.

Your issue seems to be one of defamation rather than copyright. Dawkins’ claim in your hypothetical would be in defamation, as we’d be saying “Dawkins said this” even though we know that statement to be false.

And I agree we shouldn’t be doing that. What post are you talking about, and what did it originally say?

Turd, you can control your posts without deleting them. You’re able to add a footnote in a subsequent post, you can clarify or retract something that you said, you can simply post that you changed your mind and you disagree with your prior self, you can start a whole new thread with the title, “what I would have said if I were able to edit post x”.