Proposed policy: Inform members when deleting their posts

Website Policy and Announcements
21

You’re kidding, right?

No, I’m not kidding. Seeing someone have a post deleted without being informed made me sit up and take notice.

Let’s say a mod goes back and deletes post #52 of yours. What is it about a rule, per se, that will force them to notify you?

Why have any rules at all, if that is your attitude?

Besides, if someone is not informed of a deletion, how are they to know their behavior is unacceptable? If they don’t know it’s been deleted, then they will assume it was acceptable, and continue the behavior.

I don’t like how I am insulted (“whining” and “making Inspector feel better”) by JMeganSnow and now greeted with incredulity (“You’re kidding, right?”) by you for what is a very simple and easy request that I thought was already policy and should have been from the beginning. This thread was even locked, for some reason. I don’t understand why… is this idea so troublesome?

22

For the record, KendallJ, I deleted a post of yours in this thread that appeared to be a duplicate. Check the trash can.

Don’t say you weren’t notified. :stuck_out_tongue:

And the post I just posted also duplicated itself, so I deleted one of them.

Excuse me while I notify myself.

(The comedy is just flowing today.)

23

Inspector,

First off, my last post was a bit emotional (yeah, sarcastic) and for that I apologize. However, I still think that your argument goes far beyond what the actual incident would lead one to even suspect is reasonable.

No, I’m not kidding. Seeing someone have a post deleted without being informed made me sit up and take notice.

I’ll ask again. Do you believe that this instance shows a systemic abuse by our mods? You’re argument rests on the possible / probable distinction. Yes, the fact that a post was deleted certainly gives you a context where it is probable. But that does not mean that the argument from possibility holds any water. As an Objectivist, you ought to know that distinction pretty well (and is where my incredulity comes from). It certainly is possible that a mod would go back and delete a three year old post, just as it is possible that there are green headed men on Mars, but where is your evidence.

Why have any rules at all, if that is your attitude?

Besides, if someone is not informed of a deletion, how are they to know their behavior is unacceptable? If they don’t know it’s been deleted, then they will assume it was acceptable, and continue the behavior.

Well, my criteria for considering if a rule is necessary was contained in my question, but I’ll phrase it within this distinction. That is, you have rules to set expections against contextual behavior that is a. probable, and b. if occurs, will damage the functioning of the board.

You do NOT set rules because something is possible, that list is amost infinite, and mostly useless. Nor do you set rules even if something that is probable really doesn’t hurt the function of the board, given it’s contextual level of probability.

And especially, you do NOT make the rule more general than it needs to be if it creates a ton of extra effort on the part of our volunteer moderators.

The real litmus test is that if you propose the rule, given the context of what actually is probable do you end up bounding it so much that it becomes a “special case.” Write the rule in context, and see how special it is. If it is exceedly special it probably applies to a small population, and fairly infrequently, so why have the rule? That’s my point.

Look, I personally think that Jen may have exercised poor judgement in this case, but if I look at what this particular contextual rule that addresses the probablye that would be required to fix it, it would be something like “in the event that a post, by a regular member, is deleted, for bad behavior, the mod shall take extra care to notify said member.”

My experience here just comes from the standpoint of having to negotiate agreements at work. You know you’re starting to run afoul of the basic trust required in a contract negotiation when you see things like “In the event of a., b., c., d., e., and f., notwhistanding the occurence of g.,h.,i.,j.,k the seller shall be required to x, y, and z.” You don’t write terms for every possibility. The lawyers would have you there for eons. You write terms for those things which are probable and essential to the proper function of a relationship. The same goes for charters, expectation lists, etc.

24

I will add an observation about the irrationality / disfunctionality of always automatically notifying people that their post was deleted. First, a considerable number of posts that get deleted don’t even deserve 1 second of extra attention. People who mistakenly duplicate-post should clean up their own mess and should not expect special treatment in the form of a sweety message saying “Oh, I’m so sorry that I had to delete your post, but you see, it was a duplicate and I just didn’t think it bore repeating”. Same with null and nearly null posts, and spam. Second, too many people get flamingly angry when there precious but lunatic words are deleted, and by sending a PM to the offender, you facilitate their further attacks against you, which is not a good idea in my opinion.

I have no objection to an automated and anonymous message of the type “Your post was deleted; look in the trash”. I object to the presumption that I owe a couple minutes of my life to the miscreant who clutters the board with trash that needs deleting. I do, of course, send messages to deletees when I consider it worthwhile to do so.

25

First off, my last post was a bit emotional (yeah, sarcastic) and for that I apologize.

Thank you. I’d prefer a little less hostility in a situation like this.

I’ll ask again. Do you believe that this instance shows a systemic abuse by our mods?

First of all, there has been no accusation of abuse - let’s be perfectly clear about that. I’m in hot enough water as it is. I checked the trash can after I saw the events giving rise to this topic and saw two things:

  1. It only goes back about a month or so. At any point in the past few years, any of my posts could have been deleted by a mod and that mod might not have seen fit to inform me. If I didn’t notice it happening at the time, the trash can might have expired and now I wouldn’t know about it. Since I wasn’t aware that that sort of thing was done around here, I had never before checked the trash can for my posts. Since the board policy does not at all forbid this sort of thing, it would not have been abuse.

  2. The last month or so only has a handful of messages that have been deleted - and only a smaller fraction of those are not spam. The ones that are not double posts or where the poster requested it be deleted is only a tiny handful. The task I have proposed would not be very hard for the moderators to do. I don’t know what the big deal is.

As for probable vs possible - I had previously thought that this sort of thing was not probable and so never raised the issue. But then - and this is the critical part - it happened. I am not talking about some imaginary fear here - one of Ifat’s posts was deleted and she wasn’t informed.

This is not about setting a rule versus the infinitely possible. This is about setting a rule against something that has demonstrably happened!

And especially, you do NOT make the rule more general than it needs to be if it creates a ton of extra effort on the part of our volunteer moderators.

A ton of extra effort? That is hardly the case.

“in the event that a post, by a regular member, is deleted, for bad behavior, the mod shall take extra care to notify said member.”

I don’t know if “bad behavior” would cover it, but if it did then that would be what I was asking for. Except that I don’t think it should be limited to regular members. So long as it isn’t spam or the guy isn’t banned anyway, they should be informed.

…okay, I checked and saw the trash can goes farther back if you set the menu right. That’s a bit of a relief. Now this is nothing more than an annoyance.

But I still say this is a good idea. As I illustrated above, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds.

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My experience here just comes from the standpoint of having to negotiate agreements at work. You know you’re starting to run afoul of the basic trust required in a contract negotiation when you see things like “In the event of a., b., c., d., e., and f., notwhistanding the occurence of g.,h.,i.,j.,k the seller shall be required to x, y, and z.” You don’t write terms for every possibility. The lawyers would have you there for eons. You write terms for those things which are probable and essential to the proper function of a relationship. The same goes for charters, expectation lists, etc.

I wanted to add something on this last. This basic trust has a name in business circles: it’s called “acting in good faith”. That is, among rational men dealing with one another, it is believed and generally accepted that when disputes arise, that the intent of both parties is to continue to abide by the agreement, and so benefits of doubt are extended, and disputes are resolve reasonably, unless cause is given over the long term to believe one or the other party is not acting in the mutual interest of the agreement. For example, if I have paid my bills on time for the last 2 years, and my last bill is late, it is not acting in good faith for you to write me a letter cancelling a contract, without attempting to resolve the issue. This is because we’re a bit fallible, sometimes simple misunderstandings occur and reasonable actions serve to clear through the knee-jerk emotional reaction, and drive toward resolution. You can’t really enforce this in a contract (except in limted cases) but agreements require this sort of behavior to survive. This is a great way to look at any sort of personal relationship.

One question I also ask of any rule or term proposed is, is this necessary or is it a crutch to prevent one or the other party from having to act in good faith.

Inspector maybe some of the emotion (including Jen’s) that you see toward Ifat is because those of us watching this public (through her choosing) discussion do not have a sense yet that she has acted or is acting in good faith. She does not appear to have PM’d a moderator, nor have I seen her yet admit that the mod was well within her judgement to pull her post, which is obvious to everyone who has looked at it. (If she’s done this soemwhere I would stand corrected.) But yet she wants the issue dealth with, when it’s not clear yet that this whole thing is isolated and could have been resolved withouth getting the whole board population involved. Now, I know Ifat can be a bit impetuous, so I am assuming that she probable is acting so, but just being a bit hot headed. What she needs to realize is that point blank her actions may appear mixed to many, and garner such responses.

Again, I have always found our moderators to be very reaonable people, and as a result, it is the general population’s responsibilty to act in good faith toward them (and vice versa). This is because they aren’t robots, they also may have emotional responses, (frankly I’m sure there is plenty of steam venting back channel) and they are attempting to control themselves to a higher level of rationality for the success of the board. This behavior toward them has been earned by them, and until they give us reason over the longer term to revoke it. This rule to me also violates that principle in that, in that it doesn’t function in any way except to allow the general population to have reason to feel mistreated and not have to act in good faith to deal with the problem.

27

First of all, there has been no accusation of abuse - let’s be perfectly clear about that. I’m in hot enough water as it is. I checked the trash can after I saw the events giving rise to this topic and saw two things:

As for probable vs possible - I had previously thought that this sort of thing was not probable and so never raised the issue. But then - and this is the critical part - it happened. I am not talking about some imaginary fear here - one of Ifat’s posts was deleted and she wasn’t informed.

I acknowledged that it happend in a particular context, but you must admit that you brushed aside D’s assertion that members ought to mind their posts by bringing up the fact that watching all 3000 of your posts (i.e. implying that it was possible that a mod would delete one) was onerous.

I don’t know if “bad behavior” would cover it, but if it did then that would be what I was asking for. Except that I don’t think it should be limited to regular members. So long as it isn’t spam or the guy isn’t banned anyway, they should be informed.

You’ve got no evidence that non-regular members are NOT notified, and that this was not simply a case of Jen saying “Ifat ought to know better and when she checks back she’ll PM me if she has any question”. If we’re sticking to what is probable based on the context of what actually did happen, then I would argue that that rule I proposed is superfluous. Regular members know the rules, if they violate them it is most probably becuase the discussion is getting heated and they might be letting themselves get out of control, i.e. they care about the discussion. In that case Q’s assertion is perfectly valid. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that a regular member who is skirting the edge of the rules on a post has reason to care about the post, and so follow it and the discussion which it is in.

You haven’t made a case to me to expand the context of the rule because there is no evidence it is probable, and in its current context, it doesn’t do anything. Ifat’s argument that poeple (regular members) will leave, is refuted by her own behavior, and your argument that the rule needs a broader context is unsubstantiated by what was actually shown to be probable, a regular member not getting notified.

Do I think Jen should have PM’d Ifat out of courtesy? Yes.

Do I think there should be a rule to that effect? Not on your life.

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Inspector maybe some of the emotion (including Jen’s) that you see toward Ifat is because those of us watching this public (through her choosing) discussion do not have a sense yet that she has acted or is acting in good faith. She does not appear to have PM’d a moderator, nor have I seen her yet admit that the mod was well within her judgement to pull her post, which is obvious to everyone who has looked at it. (If she’s done this soemwhere I would stand corrected.)

Yes - she did admit that, right here, in this very thread. Furthermore, it was never about the appropriateness of the deletion! This is very frustrating because she has said it several times but you and others still seem to think that this is about the deletion rather than the notification.

But yet she wants the issue dealth with, when it’s not clear yet that this whole thing is isolated and could have been resolved withouth getting the whole board population involved.

It’s quite clear in fact that it was necessary. There is no way to address the whole moderating team without starting a thread. If she has a question about whether it is board policy to delete without notification - which she did - then it is entirely appropriate to ask in a post in that forum. The answer was given - the policy is that the mods may inform but they aren’t required to.

(I mean it was answered by Greedycapitalist. David Odden completely missed the point - he posted a section of the rules which didn’t mention notification and started talking about warning levels which was not the question.)

This rule to me also violates that principle in that, in that it doesn’t function in any way except to allow the general population to have reason to feel mistreated and not have to act in good faith to deal with the problem.

Nobody would feel mistreated unless their post was deleted and they weren’t notified.

By the way, I see the mods have already turned on auto-notify

Well, problem solved then.

, which is disappointing to me. Also, I now have my inbox filling up with delete notices (5 so far due to this double post issue I’m experiencing) which is going to get annoying pretty darned fast.

Then stop double posting. :stuck_out_tongue: I showed you how.

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I want to add that I’m still testing automated notifications. So, everyone (mods and others) can assume that it is not yet deployed.

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But you do plan on deploying it sometime soon, right? I ask because, if true, that should alleviate the need for any further discussion on this topic.

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Yes - she did admit that, right here, in this very thread. Furthermore, it was never about the appropriateness of the deletion! This is very frustrating because she has said it several times but you and others still seem to think that this is about the deletion rather than the notification.

I’m not suggesting that it was about the deletion. I’m suggesting that any emotional response you get may be knee jerk and due to an misunderstood action. I think its rude to begin a discussion publically that could easily be solved privately. You are right, she did say it. I must have missed it because the actual admission was buried in a parenthetical aside, while her whole first paragraph basically said she didn’t think it was inappropriate and she thought the wording was fine.

It’s quite clear in fact that it was necessary. There is no way to address the whole moderating team without starting a thread. If she has a question about whether it is board policy to delete without notification - which she did - then it is entirely appropriate to ask in a post in that forum.

Well,

  1. One can PM all the admins. A list is easily found in the Members search section, so yes, she did have an option.

  2. PM’ing one admin gets the job done anyway. I’ve done this about an issue, and if the particular admin is not involved, they can forward the PM, which results in your issue being adressed. The immeidate response is, “I don’t know about this, but I’ll find out for you.”

  3. As a question of policy, she certainly does have a right to make this an open discussion. As a first step to air her grievances for a particular infraction, maybe this isn’t the best way. If she hasn’t done the latter, then claiming she’s just doing the former isn’t really correcct, because she’s doing both. Shoot, you’re upset at us for chiming in, but your the one who is claiming it must be handled publicly. That’s why beginning in a private manner usually is more effective.

Nobody would feel mistreated unless their post was deleted and they weren’t notified.

I’m suggesting to you that maybe experience members ought not to feel mistreated even if they aren’t notified.

Then stop double posting. :stuck_out_tongue: I showed you how.

My point was that if we are all to receive notification of every time an administrative deletion is made, maybe it’s more hassle for the whole population than it worth to soothe a few bruised ego’s, in a very few cases. The admins already made the point that the vast majority of deletions are due to administrative reasons. I’m just concretizing the fallout of this beaurocratic rule.

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But you do plan on deploying it sometime soon, right? I ask because, if true, that should alleviate the need for any further discussion on this topic.

That’s it for me. Admins, do what you like, but I hardly think the case has been made.

33
  1. One can PM all the admins. A list is easily found in the Members search section, so yes, she did have an option.

Someone remind me if members are allowed to add cc’s onto their PM’s? I’ve had moderator priviledges so long that I forget. If so you can just cc everyone on the admin or moderator list. Given, some of the mods aren’t really that active any more, so if you send a message to Felipe or Capitalism Forever you may never get a response.

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I think its rude to begin a discussion publically that could easily be solved privately.

Again, if you read the initial post, it was entirely a policy question and entirely appropriate to have publicly. Furthermore, note that it was Dan_Edge and Jennifer who ignored the wording of the initial thread and instead talked about the reasons for the deletion, where the thread was explicitly about notification.

You will also note that Jennifer was rude (“whining”) even before Ifat said anything besides that. The only thing Ifat did which was rude was to talk about her post deletion in my thread about post notification. Although you might not blame her considering that Jennifer had brought it up first.

Someone remind me if members are allowed to add cc’s onto their PM’s?

Yes, we can.

35

Someone remind me if members are allowed to add cc’s onto their PM’s?

After a new member recently sent PM-spam to a whole lot of others, I changed the settings slightly. As of right now, all “Regular” members can send upto 5 cc’s – this list should include all folks who’ve been active here for a few months. Newbies (“Members”) currently cannot cc.

36

I’m suggesting to you that maybe experience members ought not to feel mistreated even if they aren’t notified.

And I disagree. Having to check the trash can every single time I log in is a hassle.

My point was that if we are all to receive notification of every time an administrative deletion is made, maybe it’s more hassle for the whole population than it worth to soothe a few bruised ego’s, in a very few cases.

First, again you insult me by saying this has something to do with a “bruised ego.” How is that the case?

Second, having every single member have to check the trash can every time they log in is a bigger hassle then a half dozen PMs per month. I remind you that I have reviewed the entire deletion record for the board and there just aren’t that many deletions here. There were only 20 deletions for the month of April, and only 10 of which were not spam or auto-deletes of blog posts. Given that the time to check the trash can is about the same as the time to check your PMs, I log into the board many more times than 10 per month. I alone would have to waste a great deal more time checking the trash then everyone combined would have to waste clearing their PMs.

I can’t fathom why you’re resistant to this automated notification, except to spite me.