A Fresh Start

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A Fresh Start

Postby Matthew Notch » Fri Apr 08, 2016 2:00 am

I guess this is just one of those things I don't really get. Why won't we let users delete their accounts, but we will let them go through and erase enormous pieces of content from the forum when they:

A) get nervous about who might be creepin on them

B) start to have ideological differences with the forum at large

C) do something embarrassing and just can't live it down

D) feel like taking a wrecking ball to the community and its enshrined conversations for some other bizarre reason I can't fathom?

I get it, we all have things we regret saying in our lives. I have lots of things I regret saying right here on TCS. Usually in those cases I just avoid those THREADS and move on with my life. But there are places now where entire conversations don't make any sense anymore, and it's unbelievably frustrating to me. The posts we make are not just for ourselves, but for everyone's benefit.

If I could make a suggestion, how about place a time limit on edits, and after that make it to where additional text could be added to the post, but original text could not be deleted? That way, if you just can't stand the thought of someone reading something you said at one time hoping someone would read it, you can slap spoilers around the whole thing and just ask users politely to not read it, thanks. And in cases where you absolutely have to make a hard change (case in point: Ambi pointed out that I actually used Mrs. Notch's first name in a couple of my early posts here) you could just ask a friendly mod to do it for you.

It's not something I'm asking because I want to poo poo all over our God-given freedom to retract things we say ever. It just, frankly, feels a little insulting when it looks like someone decided I'm not good enough any longer to be allowed to read his or her musings on ANYTHING. And before we so quickly jump to "So yeah, Notch is a fascist then," I ask you to reconsider what would happen if you did ask a friendly mod to replace every one of your posts ever with ".". Would they do it? Would they like it even if they did? I wouldn't know because, bless my soul, I'm not a mod.

Anyway just tell me to go to hell if this is a bad idea.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby Kate » Fri Apr 08, 2016 2:27 am

I would never be on board, personally, with a time limit on edits. I would leave. After editing all my posts out before it happened.

" It just, frankly, feels a little insulting when it looks like someone decided I'm not good enough any longer to be allowed to read his or her musings on ANYTHING."

People editing out what they said are not doing it to personally insult you. It's not about you at all. It might not even be about anyone who is currently on TCS. They do it for their own reasons.

In my opinion, no one is entitled to make someone else feel less comfortable saying things because the conversation will make less sense at a later date. If you walk into the middle of a conversation in person, you don't need audio recordings of everything that was said before in order to participate and if the context is so disrupted that it is literally impossible to discuss the topic, then...so? This is especially true of older conversations; they happened. They're done. We can't have perfect clarity on our irl conversations, why is anyone entitled to that in an online conversation that has been over for awhile? And if it hasn't been over for awhile, then would it be preferable for people to never say anything than for them to say something and then later edit it out? We might just disagree on that.

Mods do not replace things for people specifically because we have given the people the freedom to do these things themselves if they want to. If someone would like to leave TCS, that is their right and we will not stop them, but in general, we also don't delete accounts.

Yes...on the internet you should always think twice, post once, because once you post it is out of your control. But we have the ability to give members some slight control over that; why restrict it?
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Apr 08, 2016 5:09 am

This is really just a technical question. w00 originally didn't like deleting users because he was concerned primarily about data hygiene. I think his concerns about data hygiene were somewhat exaggerated (deletes can leave hanging references in the database, but they needn't). However, for someone reading the site, it's odd if posts are suddenly dropped; old threads may look disjointed for no clear reason. So it really is disruptive to the experience of other users.

Of course, this is at least as true when users go back and edit all their old posts. I think a time limit of a few days, or even weeks, on an edit would be appropriate, and the forum does have an option to configure that, but I can see why that would be limiting in some circumstances (e.g., I may have a thread where I want to regularly update information on the first post). So there's no technically straightforward way to handle that without really getting into the guts of the code.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby SandTea » Fri Apr 08, 2016 6:41 am

I assume it's already against the rules to edit your post to mean something opposite of what you posted for trolling purposes E.G. editing "I hate cats" into "why do you all hate dogs?". Then all the respondents who were originally defending their position of why cats are cool are now looking like they are supporting the "dogs suck" accusation. If not, get on that lol.

I don't have a problem ethically with anyone trying to erase their existence online. I'd probably make all sorts of assumptions about 'why' because that's what we humans really love to know (just watch any crime story, fictional or not, "why" is always what we want) but it doesn't really matter to me since I can't read minds of people I can't make eye contact with. As for myself, yeah there are things I post that would probably hurt a chance at mayorship or something but I'm not running so it's not a huge problem. There's so many reasons someone would want to just wipe away all posts ever that I just stick with bigfoot is gangstalking their microwave and *gasp* it's been in the house all along! It's much more fun to assume crazy than rational.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby D-LOGAN » Fri Apr 08, 2016 12:14 pm

Well I oppose it! You put something online, you stand by it. You wanna play with the big buys, you gotta abide by the rules. It's no different than putting a rubber on the end of pencil, it's steering away from the stride towards perfection. It's leading the flock off a cliff!

I suppose, the option to edit, to remove spelling errors and whatnot is acceptible, FOR I AM MAGNANIMOUS!!! But, yeah, I think their should be a time-limit. AN IRON CLAD ONE! Being adult enough to post your thoughts online should come with consequences, Terrible Consequences! But that has to be the price, and there must be a price. Otherwise, what the hell are we? Pigs in the sea? Wallowing about, constructing our fortress on houses of cards and feet of clay?

If we can't be expected to trust ourselves, who can we trust?

I'm Chamberlain S. Kevins Sr. and I approve this message.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby Marcuse » Fri Apr 08, 2016 12:31 pm

Personally, I feel like if we're going to err on the side of a "think twice, post once" mentality that holds the user responsible for their posts, then it's consistent to allow the user the ability to edit or alter their posts as well. That empowers each person to make their own choices about their posts and have a way to affect that decision that doesn't overtly disrupt the flow of conversations when they're read back in the same way missing posts would. At least when there's a blanked post there, it conveys the message that there was a post there and that's what subsequent posts might be replying to. So I suppose I support us allowing people to edit their posts perpetually.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby CarrieVS » Fri Apr 08, 2016 12:39 pm

One could easily argue that it's inconsiderate to drastically change or blank your posts with no explanation. Do we require people to be nice on this forum? It's hardly a personal insult or hate speech. (Of course you could edit personal attacks into posts, and I'm sure you could come up with a scenario where you could blank a post in such a context as to attack someone, but it would be quite contrived. In either case, that specific edited or blanked post would be against the rules/guidelines and could be reported.)
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby iMURDAu » Fri Apr 08, 2016 12:46 pm

Unless the edit is done for trolling purposes then I don't have a problem.

And wait... we're not required to be nice? *begins flame war*

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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby DanteHoratio » Fri Apr 08, 2016 1:13 pm

I don't think that we should have a time limit. That way, we can delete or edit a post and our life will not be ruined by a post.


iMURDAu wrote:Unless the edit is done for trolling purposes then I don't have a problem.

And wait... we're not required to be nice? *begins flame war*

[ Image ]


*Throws water on the flames*
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby cmsellers » Fri Apr 08, 2016 4:00 pm

DanteHoratio wrote:*Throws water on the flames*

*Replaced Horatio's water bucket with kerosene while he wasn't looking*
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby Kate » Fri Apr 08, 2016 6:55 pm

Something else about this has been niggling at me and I didn't really know entirely why until now. And I'm still getting a grasp on it, so bear with me.

I don't think it should be up to mods to decide whose reasons for editing posts are valid and whose aren't.

I don't want to be in the position of having to say yes to one person, and no to another, based entirely on what I and the other mods deem worthy. Ultimately, it doesn't matter why someone wants to edit something. It's a bit dramatic to say that people who edit their posts out are taking a wrecking ball to the community, and it's also unfair. What if a user doesn't want someone irl seeing their posts? What if they have a falling out with someone on TCS and leaving it up is too painful? What if they really needed to talk at the time, things are resolved, and they're no longer comfortable leaving it up? What if they, yes, said something they regret, and it's been long resolved but the constant reminder of it is painful? If Susan is afraid her ex-husband will find her on TCS and use something she said against her in a custody case, does she wait for mod approval and hope they give it to her? If John is afraid that he's built up his internet presence and a poorly thought-out joke made three years ago could tank his career if people find it, does he get mod approval? And why does he get it whereas Joe made a similar joke and just plain regrets it, or does Joe get it too? If Linda was on painkillers after surgery and a year later comes across that old post and sees it riddled with typos, does that get edited? If someone says, "I feel I can't be a part of TCS as long as this post is up as is," is that a compelling reason in and of itself? Or are mods saying "Nope, I need more than that. If you don't have a stalker, sucks to be you."

Why should mods be in the business of being the gatekeepers to a user's own posts? There are times when a post gets locked from editing because it is in the interest of the site. We don't allow articles to be pulled by their authors, for example, without going through the mod staff to do so (this is one reason why author approval is such an important part of the articles process; we don't want to put anything up that the author doesn't approve of and have them feel like their words were twisted and they have no recourse to remove it).

But does it really serve the site's interests to make every post a restricted post after a certain amount of time?

I get that it's annoying to a lot of people when people edit out old posts, but is that a compelling enough reason to turn editing old posts over to mod discretion? And what happens if we lean on the more lenient side; aren't we left with the same problem, except now the responsibility has shifted from users to mods? Does approval from authority suddenly make it okay to edit things out where it wasn't okay before, or would that just make it not okay in a whole different way? Would mods be required to disclose the reasons why we allowed it, or would it be taken on faith that we determined that the reason was good enough?




And just to make it harder for people to figure out whether to agree with this post or not, I'm doing a break instead of double posting ;)

I can tell you that personally, I have a few things that would make me go back and edit out certain posts, and I wouldn't want to have to go ask for permission to do it just because I don't think it's worth someone else's time to go do it. I have been pretty open on TCS about a lot of my life, at times specifically because of the stigma about talking about them. Mental health is treated by much of the outside world as something that is shameful and I talk about it openly partially because of that, in the hopes that other people will feel comfortable reaching out about it and less like there is something wrong with talking about it. I do irl as well to an extent, but not to this extent. That said, my mother does not need to know the extent of my abuse. My mother-in-law does not need to know how much I struggle with being alive. I have sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law who are teenagers and on the internet, in 10-15 years I'll have to worry about my son finding my online fingerprints (it's not like I hide them well). Do I regret posting that stuff? No. Especially not since I have been told that it did help someone else, and it has led to being helped, and it has led to friendships that I highly value. That doesn't mean that I don't see a day where practical needs will mean it becomes more important to pull it than it does to leave it up. And if I'd never had the ability to edit, I would not have said it in the first place simply because I have always known that it is risky to say it but felt at the time that it was a risk worth taking, and that I could control it to a very limited extent if I felt the need to.

And I know I'm not the only one who has posted things that they felt were risky but knew they had that edit ability so took the risk. I would hate to see people become less open for the sake of keeping things enshrined. Conversations and friendships and interactions don't need to be enshrined to be meaningful and respected. A community is not a thing to put on a shelf and admire. It is to be lived in.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby Qinglong » Fri Apr 08, 2016 7:37 pm

How about setting a time limit on editing, but no time limit on deleting, assuming it's technically possible? That would prevent arbitrary changes, but allow a user to erase posts they no longer want to have around.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby 52xMax » Sat Apr 09, 2016 1:05 am

You're all overthinking this. It's as simple as WWJPD. What would Jason Pargin Do? "Just look at how things run on PWOT and do the opposite" should be a rule of thumb for any forum that has no aspirations of becoming a fascist paradise.

People should be free to say what they want provided they are not breaking our community guidelines, so I think it's only fair they have the right to take it away as well. If someone later edits a post in a way that's disingenuous, or untrue to the original meaning, the rest of the thread will contrast and give it context, not to mention the edit stamp will be a dead giveaway, so I don't think that should be a concern. Besides, there are ways of retrieving older versions of anything on the internet if you know your way around the proper tools, so it's not like people can just will something they said out of existence. That doesn't mean we have to highlight it on a hall of bad posts either, though.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby Kate » Sun Apr 10, 2016 7:42 pm

That's right, if PWOT uses text-based communication, we need to switch to interpretive dance!

But in seriousness, I don't think it's fascist to want people to be held to their original word, or to be frustrated at losing context. I do agree that people should be able to edit their posts, and I do agree that the edit timestamp makes it harder for people to abuse this when it's visible. And it would be uncomfortably close to the hostile end of PWOT to not allow edits, I think. That always bothered me about PWOT, when people treated others with scorn for wanting to edit and basically said "Too bad, so sad." It definitely contributed to me staying away. It also kind of bugged me that you can't edit your own posts but mods and administrators blanked out things they said all the time. It's not like I feel that this would happen here and I guess this is kind of me saying there's hopefully a notable difference between PWOT and TCS; that even if there was eventually a limit on edits, it would not be for the purpose of shaming people or abused by people who necessarily retain editing privileges.

So I guess I am saying I can see how locking posts like that contributes to a certain environment at PWOT, I just don't know that it necessarily does everywhere or would here.
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Re: A Fresh Start

Postby 52xMax » Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:35 am

*dances about architecture*
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