Question to David1967: Should the moderators lock a thread because one member complains about some posts in it? If not would that leave the member who doesn't like what was posted no choice but to take advantage of a software bug to hack in to the system and delete other members' posts? Do you think if you decide to post something you write in a new thread instead of an existing thread that means you own all the subsequent posts other people write and you're entitled to delete them all any time you feel like it??? Um ... there seems to be some confusion here....
You own the posts you write. No one can delete your posts unless they are determined to violate the agreed rules of a moderated forum, and even then you are entitled to disagree and raise heck about it -- and to repost them on some other forum where they will be allowed. Everything you write is your property and no one but you is allowed to destroy your property.
Likewise, you are not allowed to destroy the property of other people.
Lucky Dog: I thought I already said what I would do, didn't I? But I'll amplify ... or better yet, let's look at what actually happened first. You deleted the thread -- now all traces of the four posts you thought were offensive are gone. We don't know who posted them or what the content of the posts was, we have no way to determine whether they fit the rules we've agreed to for this forum or not, and if they didn't we have no way to explain that to the authors and ask them not to post things like that again, and no way to take action against them if some action is appropriate (such as banning them from these forums, temporarily or permanently, going to their ISPs and getting their accounts yanked, etc.)
Merely canceling posts accomplishes nothing because they can post more or repost the same ones as fast as we can cancel them. That approach to fighting spam and other abuse has been abandoned in favor of more effective methods -- remember the big controversy when the cancelbots were shut down? I guess you don't....
If all the replies consisted of nothing but bigotry ... even bigots have rights; if we didn't allow them any rights it wouldn't be very clear we're any different from them, would it? Even bigots are entitled to be told when their posts are deleted and why and have copies sent to them so their posts are not lost forever (they may not have kept copies when they posted, that isn't particularly easy to do on web forums). They're entitled to raise heck if they think they've been unjustifiably censored, and entitled to post those messages somewhere else, or edit them to meet our standards here and repost an edited version.
They might not allow us the same rights if we post on a forum they control, but that doesn't mean we have to sink to their level, or that truth would be served by us turning into censors just like them....
If all the replies were commercial spam on the order of "Get Rich Quick by Sending Me Your Money" and "Get the Raunchiest Porn on the Net Here" -- okay, I admit informing the spammers their posts have been deleted and sending them copies accomplishes nothing, we only do that pro forma, but we have to find out who they are in order to DO anything about it!
Deleting a spam is like taking one bullet from a machine-gunner and throwing it away. The machine-gunner is still spraying 600 rounds per minute, but you feel good -- you threw away one of his bullets.... We needed that bullet to identify the machine-gunner and stop him!
I think there's more I want to respond to, but this post is long enough; I'll start another one.
-Cougar Allen :{)
P.S. I only edited this to fix a typo, but as long as I'm here in the edit window ... I see a new post from yet another member who has no clue what freedom of speech is. Frankly this whole thing infuriates me violently. I'm beginning to understand better why it was so easy for Hitler to take over Germany and so many of the people put up no resistance when he took away all their rights ... it seems many more people than I had thought have no clue at all what freedom is, even people with net access who should know better, IMHO....
Or maybe they do understand what freedom of speech is and they want to take it away from other people ... maybe it hasn't occured to them that if they can arbitrarily censor other people's writings, other people can do the same to them -- maybe they're not so much sheep waiting to be made into slaves as they are wannabee slaveowners ... very stupid wannabees, but still just as evil in intent....
I don't know ... I would like to believe everybody here just hasn't thought it through, and nobody has any desire to take away other people's freedom of speech. Maybe I can convince myself of that, if I really work at it....
-Cougar Allen :{)
[This message has been edited by Cougar Allen (edited 18 November 1999).]
