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Amend Article 3 for RL names: VOTE CLOSED

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Jnyusa
Post subject: Amend Article 3 for RL names: VOTE CLOSED
Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 10:10 pm
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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;
_____________________________________
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

Last edited by Jnyusa on Sun 17 Jul , 2005 3:13 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Faramond
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Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 10:26 pm
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There is precedent for deleting personal information, isn't there? On what basis was the thread with people's addresses deleted?


1. Yes --- Though I'm leery of giving Rangers more power to fiddle around with things, yes I agree this is necessary.

2. Yes, there is more than one category of personal information. There are benign revelations of personal information, like refering to someone by his or her first name, and there is malicious revelations of personal information, such as Jn's example of naming of children and schools.

3. Routine Powers: We could establish a "do not name list" on which people could request that no one refer to them by RL name, or that first names were okay but nothing else. If a Ranger saw an RL named used of someone who was on the "do not name list", then as a Routine power they could excise the RL name and replace with username.

Otherwise a Ranger would only be allowed to edit personal info upon request of the affected poster.

Special Powers: Malicious breaches of personal information need to fall in this category. Clearly addressing me as Pierre does not fall in this category. (Especially as that's not my name! ;) ) But a revelation of sensitive personal information should be treated as least as strongly as a revelation of sensitive information from the ToE forum.


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 10:38 pm
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There is precedent for deleting personal information, isn't there? On what basis was the thread with people's addresses deleted?

Yes. As a committee, we have a precedent of sorts. It's the same kind of precedent we had when we started out the convention with Article 3 -- some things were already traditional, others had had been voted on ... there was a sense of culture, implicit or explicit, that we used as our starting point.

There is, however, no formal precedent concerning personal info. Generally, people have posted it here and often refer to one another by RL first names. We've only been open for two weeks so I really don't know whether people have given sufficient thought to their privacy or the fact that bots are scanning us as we speak ... well, not in here, but out there.

Jn

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truehobbit
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Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 11:08 pm
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For routine powers it also says that admins can make "beauty edits", like repair page-stretching, delete multiple posts if they notify the poster beforehand.

Maybe that's something where we could add giving personal information of non-members.

However, I think this should be limited to non-members, who can't be expected to read the board, after all.
Of course, even a member might miss this info posted about them, but someone else might and could tell them or a Ranger, who could then contact the person and ask whether they are alright with it.

I think we should not assume that members do not want their info to be published!

Yes, we deleted the address thread - I was more doubtful about that than about our "problem"-threads, I must admit, but saw that there was unanimous support for deleting it, and in a way understood the problem.

However, I do think that every grown up here should be free to post as much of their personal info as they want!

If we know someone is a minor, then, yes, Rangers should be allowed to edit out such info, I guess (not sure about all the minors-protection laws, but it seems reasonable).

But certainly not with adults.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 11:17 pm
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However, I do think that every grown up here should be free to post as much of their personal info as they want!

Yes, I agree. People posting their own information should not be edited. It's people posting other people's personal info without permission that the Article should address, imo.

If we know someone is a minor, then, yes

I completely forgot about minors. That issue should be included as well.

I think we should not assume that members do not want their info to be published!

We have to make an assumption one way or the other. If we do not assume that members do not want their info published, then we have by default assumed that they don't mind. I doubt that the latter assumption is as realistic as the former.

Jn

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truehobbit
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Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 11:24 pm
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Ok, I see - I mixed up posting your own info and posting other people's info - good point!

Still, I think we should differentiate between sensitive info and more harmless info.
Using someone's RL first name can't do much harm, I think.

Of course if someone sees it and doesn't like it, they should be able to ask the poster to edit it (and if they refuse, go to a Ranger).

But I wouldn't want Rangers to edit posts just because some member's real first name was used.

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Faramond
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Posted: Mon 11 Jul , 2005 11:24 pm
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Why do we have to assume? This is why I suggested a "do not name list". Those who want to stipulate that others may not divulge RL names or other information can do so.

Or maybe the list could go the other way, and people could give permission for using first names or whatever, and otherwise we would assume that any personal information was a no-no.

I realize this is all very complicated and makes things difficult for Rangers. So maybe it's not the answer.


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Impenitent
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 1:48 am
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Faramond, I don't think it's the answer because it means

a) a list has to be maintained (no one is going to scroll through pages and pages of posts declaring "yes, call me Ike if you want" or "never refer to me as Shirley!" )

b) the list's existence has to be generally and widely known and that is less and less likely as we grow and the number of threads multiplies.

c) it adds even more work for rangers.


I think we should add the privacy clause suggested by Cerin in the Business forum thread:

¶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),
or if they reveal personal information that compromises a poster's privacy.

The thing is, IMO it does no harm at all if a RL name is edited out/amended to the screen name, but it may do harm if a RL name is allowed to stand. Even moreso in the case of minors! names, ages etc of minors must not be allowed to stand. I think providing discretion to the rangers in this case is sensible and innocuous.

Last edited by Impenitent on Tue 12 Jul , 2005 6:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Faramond
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 3:03 am
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Okay, Imp, I'm mostly convinced by what you say here.

I do think, however, that in general Rangers should not go around editing first names unless asked to specifically by the poster named.


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laureanna
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 5:44 am
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Why don't we just have a policy of not naming real names, and asking people to abide by it and self police. There are a few of us, of course, who would be at a loss for how to handle the exclusion of our own names. My real name, for example, is Laure, with a slightly different spelling. I assume Rebecca would have similar concerns.

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*Alandriel*
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 6:45 am
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That was my initial view also laureanna but then reading and re-reading the posts in here made me change my mind. Especially
Hobby wrote:
I do think that every grown up here should be free to post as much of their personal info as they want
I'm all for personal freedom :) but of course we need limitations for under 18 year olds.

I'm with Impenitent, only perhaps to add the suggested text to 'routine powers' rather than emergency powers.

We could add some 'guiding' blurb into the Ranger's handbook by the way. Perhaps that would be the way to go without compromising on the 'discretionary' level of the Rangers.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 8:02 am
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Actually, I think Cerin has given us an excellent start. I would only add to what she wrote the additional provision regarding minors.

Her suggestion in full:

Under ¶4: Routine Powers

CHANGE:
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;

TO:
Rangers may not:
• 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 para 5.


And Under ¶5: Special and Emergency powers

CHANGE:
• Edit Posts if they contain objectionable content, for example: abuse of another poster, defamatory remarks, pornographic, violent or distasteful content, or advertisement of products.

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.


Considering that the revelation of personal information might be done not-so-innocently, I think that we will need to amend Article 5 as well to include this in offenses that merit a penalty. All the other “objectionable content” by-laws fall under “Offenses for which the maximum penalty is a temporary ban ..." Here is the whole paragraph:

¶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


• Persistent posting of objectionable content:
1. abusive language toward another poster;
2. attacks of a personal nature;
3. defamatory remarks targeting nationality, ethnicity, native language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or age;
4. advertisement of products for personal gain.

• Persistent posting of offensive pictures:
1. pictures a reasonable person would find pornographic;
2. pictures a reasonable person would find gratuitously violent or distasteful, that is, designed to shock and/or dismay other posters.

• Using the board to solicit the participation of members in illegal activities.

• Repeatedly exposing the members to viruses through negligence.

• In the Bike Racks, repeated interference with other members’ thread.

• Use of PM or Email to:
1. harass another member;
2. make defamatory remarks targeting nationality, ethnicity, native; language, religion, gender, sexual orientation or age.


I think that we could add a bullet point to this paragraph to the following effect:

• Deliberately posting personal, real life information about another member such that their privacy is compromised, or posting any personal information about a minor.

Jn

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Impenitent
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 8:13 am
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Yes, I like that. :) Yay Cerin! :clap:


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*Alandriel*
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Works for me :D

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truehobbit
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 12:20 pm
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I like Cerin's idea, too, I'm just wondering how careful we need to be in defining what "compromises someone's privacy".
For me, for example, using someone's RL first name does not compromise their privacy to the degree that using it should be considered an offense - even if it turns out the person didn't want that, and asks for an edit.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 1:46 pm
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Th - we could put guidelines into the Ranger Handbook to clarify.

I too do not think that calling someone by their first name in normal conversation compromises privacy, and if the person asks to have it edited out, it just would be edited without further consequence.

In the Handbook we can list things to wary of ... first + last names, names of family members, addresses, phone numbers, place of business and for minors any identifiers like first + last name, city + state, school, parent names, etc.

I think it would have to be pretty blatant to become an offense that merits a penalty, or to be done several times indicating chronic non-compliance ... the article does require that in fact.

Does anyone think that Rangers should not be left to make the final judgment on their own?

Jn

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*Alandriel*
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 3:31 pm
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Quote:
Does anyone think that Rangers should not be left to make the final judgment on their own?
No! The majority of Rangers are more than able to decide someting like that I trust. :)
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Faramond
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 5:25 pm
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Well, we have to trust the Rangers at some point, right? It's us, after all.

This is okay by me.


But there is one thing we may need to think about here.

Consider the following scenario:

Poster A reveals private information about himself in a thread. Poster B comments on private information in a later post. Poster B has effectively restated the private information in commenting on it, but this is okay because Poster A revealed the information first and put it out there.

But a few days later poster A decides that he doesn't like having this information out there, and edits the information out of his post. But the information is still in poster B's post! Does poster A have a right to demand poster B edit this information out? Does poster A have a right to have the information edited out by a Ranger?

This situation has happened here, by the way. Not necessarily to the point where poster B wouldn't edit information out later and things got confrontational, but this could be a question we have to face at some point.


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 8:33 pm
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Does poster A have a right to have the information edited out by a Ranger?

Yes. I think that any poster should have the right to demand that their own personal info be edited out of any post.

I had to ask Hobby and Berhael to edit comments about my somewhat unusual RL last name when we deleted things from the address thread. They did so immediately of course, without question. But if they had not, I would have wanted a Ranger to do it for them on my behalf.

Maybe we need to add a short clause to Article 2: Member Rights to make this enforceable ... e.g.

• 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;

Jn

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Impenitent
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Posted: Wed 13 Jul , 2005 12:44 am
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I might re-read member rights before commenting on that.


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