APPROVED TEXT
Privacy Policy
Article 3: Rangers (Administrators)
¶4: Routine Powers
......Rangers may not:
• Edit or delete posts or lock threads without permission of the originator unless the originator has engaged in conduct justifying an immediate ban;
WILL BE CHANGED TO:
• Delete posts or lock threads without permission of the originator unless the originator has engaged in conduct justifying an immediate ban, or edit posts except in the circumstances specified in paragraph ¶5;
Article 3: Rangers (Administrators)
¶5: Special and Emergency powers
• Edit Posts if they contain objectionable content, for example: abuse of another poster, defamatory remarks, pornographic, violent or distasteful content, or advertisement of products.
WILL BE CHANGED TO:
• Edit Posts if they contain objectionable content (for example, abuse of another poster, defamatory remarks, pornographic, violent or distasteful content, or advertisement of products), or if they reveal personal information that compromises another poster's privacy or contain any personal information about a minor.
Article 5: Dispute Resolution
¶9: Offenses That Merit a Penalty
......Offenses for which the maximum penalty is a temporary ban if this is not the first offense and the problem appears to be persistent
WE WILL ADD:
• Deliberately posting personal, real life information about another member such that their privacy is compromised, or posting any personal information about a minor.
Article 2: Member Rights
¶1: Rights and responsibilities enforceable by procedures and penalties outlined in the Charter
A. You have the right:
WE WILL ADD:
• to be protected from revelation of personal information about yourself that would compromise your privacy, and to have such information edited from any post at your request;
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Original Post:
In the Bike Racks discussion it has been suggested that we empower the Rangers to edit out RL names and/or personal information that appears in threads.
There was objection to doing this routinely, and agreement that for registered members it should be done if the member requests that their personal info be edited out. Although I will point out that the member so named might not be aware for some time that this has happened.
For people who are not members and cannot object to the breach of privacy, the Rangers need power to edit out personal info on their own recognizance.
In order to do this, we would have to amend Article 3 of the Charter. It says nothing about personal information there.
I was looking at the Routine Powers of Rangers (¶4) and it seems to expressively forbid the action we would like to add:
Rangers may not:
• Edit or delete posts or lock threads without permission of the originator unless the originator has engaged in conduct justifying an immediate ban;
• Delete smilies or change the style of the board without allowing members to express their opinion beforehand in the proper forum;
• Change the permissions of a poster at the poster's request, except for routine changes of permission in the Jury Room, Archives, and Thinking of England Forum; nor can they ban members for any reason other than those listed below.
We could add a separate clause entitled "Privacy Policy" in which we outline exceptions to the above, and ratify that addition separately.
Or, we have:
¶5: Special and Emergency powers of Rangers
• Edit Posts if they contain objectionable content, for example: abuse of another poster, defamatory remarks, pornographic, violent or distasteful content, or advertisement of products.
But everything in that ¶5 has to do with violations of the by-laws, and I don't believe that personal info falls into quite that category. We would not call someone to a Hearing for addressing me as Pat instead of Jnyusa ... however, you might ask yourself whether we would call someone to a hearing for posting the names of a member's children and what school they go to .... that is something we would definitely want a Ranger to be empowered to edit immediately and without anyone's permission.
(things we did not foresee)
Anyway, I want to open this to discussion.
1. Do we agree that it is a necessary addition?
2. Is there more than one category of personal information, requiring separate handling?
3. Should we handle this as a Routine Power, a Special Power (for some cases perhaps), or add a Privacy Clause?
Jn