board77

Dear Members (and especially our newest members),

Here come the last few pieces of our Charter for ratification.
HERE IS HOW THE PROCESS WORKS

All registered members may discuss and vote in this thread.

The text we are voting on is given below. In this case we are ratifying additions to three existing Articles to reflect a Privacy Policy. The full text is given here, with a link to the Article that is afffected.

Before voting, we discuss in this thread for a minimum of ten days. During those ten days, you should state bluntly in this thread anything you don’t like.. If enough people dislike certain provisions, we will remove them from the text before the voting begins and allow the committee to work on them again until they are more acceptable to the membership.

At the end of the discussion, the vote opens and remains open for ten days, two weekends inclusive. The vote takes the form of a poll in this thread, where you vote either yes or no to approve these pieces of the Charter.

The vote will remain open until Monday, August 8, 11:59 pm Greenwich Mean Time.

(Translation: voting from July 29, ~8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time or ~5:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time until August 8, ~8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time or ~5:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time. )

PRIVACY POLICY

Member Rights
In 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;

Rangers
In Article 3: Rangers (Administrators)
¶4: Routine Powers
......Rangers may not:

We will CHANGE:
• Edit or delete posts or lock threads without permission of the originator unless the originator has engaged in conduct justifying an immediate ban;

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;

where ¶5 then refers specifically to the editing out of personal information that might compromise a person’s real life privacy

In Article 3: Rangers (Administrators)
¶5: Special and Emergency powers

We will 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.

Dispute Resolution
In 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.

Guidelines for the enforcement of this policy will be added to the Ranger Handbook to make it clear that adult members are not prohibited from giving information about themselves, nor are other members prohibited from responding to personal information revealed by the member who has the right to reveal it. The use of real life first names is not automatically prohibited because this does not compromise real life privacy, but if a member does not want their real life first name to appear on the board they may request that it be edited.

A member can only be called for a Hearing for violating the privacy policy if they are doing this persistently and have not complied with requests to stop. We have placed this offense in the same penalty category as inappropriate behavior in the age restricted forum.

In order to ratify this Article, 39 members must cast votes, and of those who vote, two-thirds (67%) must vote in favor.

I think those are necessary changes, both in terms of doing what's right and in terms of protecting the board from potential liability.

I would prefer my first name to be deleted from all posts.

That's 820 of them - around 1% of all posts on this board.

Thx

Steve



Oh...bugger. 821.

Hey, Steve, wouldn't it be simpler just to delete all the posts that—

822.

Or maybe all the threads themselves.

Or maybe we should just start over? I'm sure Jn would love to help us write another charter. . . .

Having only discovered the "let's rehash the wilko thread" thread after having posted here, I'll quote below a portion of what I said there (although in view of TheCluelessMind's post above, perhaps "STEVE" should be substituted for "BOB" [especially since that was the real-life example I was think of when I originally typed it]:

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TORN wrote:

I STRONGLY SUPPORT THE IMMEDIATE REMOVAL OF REAL LIFE IDENTIFYING INFORMATION POSTED BY ONE POSTER ABOUT ANOTHER (I REALIZE THIS IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE B/C -- UNLESS DONE RUTHLESSLY AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION -- IT WILL REQUIRE SOME DIFFICULT JUDGMENT CALLS AND/OR CONSTANT MONITORING -- FOR EXAMPLE, IF A POSTER IDENTIFIES HIM OR HERSELF BY FIRST NAME (E.G., "BOB") AND A SUBSEQUENT POSTER CALLS HIM "BOB", SHOULD THE SUBSEQUENT POSTER'S USE BE EDITED? IF NOT, WHAT DO YOU DO IF BOB LATER COMES BACK AND EDITS OUT HIS OWN NAME IN HIS OWN POST? IS THERE (OR EVEN COULD THERE) BE A RESPONSIBILITY TO SOMEHOW DETECT THIS EDIT AND THEN TO PROCEED TO EDIT THE OTHER POSTER'S REFERENCE TO BOB?)

In my view, the following portion of that same post addresses my own questions:

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TORN further wrote:

I GENERALLY BELIEVE THAT POSTERS SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO EDIT THEIR PREVIOUS POSTS, EVEN IN LOCKED THREADS -- I REALIZE THAT THIS ALLOWS PEOPLE TO SQUIRM OUT OF SOME EMBARASSING SITUATIONS AFTER THE FACT AND CAN SOMETIMES CAUSE OTHER POSTERS TO LOOK A LITTLE ODD IN THEIR SUBSEQUENT POSTS, BUT IN THE END I THINK EACH PERSONS' OWN WORDS ARE THERE[sic] OWN TO DO WHAT THEY PLEASE WITH -- THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, IF ANOTHER POSTER HAD QUOTED THOSE WORDS IN A SUBSEQUENT POST, I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR OF THOSE WORDS HAS A RIGHT TO DEMAND THAT THE QUOTE USED IN ANOTHER POST BE REMOVED (THE AUTHOR MAY, OF COURSE, MAKE A REQUEST, BUT THE SUBSEQUENT POSTER SHOULD BE FREE TO REFUSE)[emphasis added]

Although not wholly consistent with this principle, I think if Steve has used his own name and a subsequent poster then uses it, the fact that Steve later on edits his name out does not automatically require that the subsequent poster remove his name -- however, given the importance of protecting real life identities, I think that Steve should be permitted to ask TPTBs (yes, I know that term is offensive to some, but I haven't yet learned to cope with "Ranger" yet) to remove his name from specifically identified posts (i.e., it is Steve's obligation to comb through B77 for his name, NOT a duty he can foist on TPTBs or other posters).

I knew it. I knew it.

What about personal information about nonmembers who aren't minors? Is there recourse for a member who objects to the information being posted?

And are IP addresses included in personal information?

I would think they would be—isn't it possible to find out things about people from their IP addresses, using WHOIS? Certainly the board software treats them that way, as only people with admin powers can see them.

Should we spell out what is defined as personal info then? Does it include anything that would make it easier to track a person down in real life, or is it anything that would make someone uncomfortable if it were known? This seems a very broad term...

That's true. If I met someone in RL and learned that they got jollies from painting their toes blue, and posted that on the board and it made them uncomfortable, I believe this rule would let them ask me to remove it, and then have it forcibly removed when I insisted on my right to refuse.

I don't think that's necessarily bad. Action will arise out of complaints. We aren't asking Rangers to police all posts looking for anything faintly personal.

Voting is now Open. Have at it folks!

(I'm starting a bit before midnight GMT because discussion has been more than 10 days already and I won't be home this evening.)

Jn

voted

I voted everywhere I could possibly vote. Vote early, vote often—that's my motto.

And another reason why I love this place.

Oh bob, I voted.

<looks up from painting her toes blue>



Who's Bob?







Oh, yeah: