My post on my stance and feelings on deleting posts.
I have witnessed a small amount of it already on this board in the past. (When the board was closed) It really is not good. That is why I am usually very very very very very against deleting posts. Even if 2 or 3 people do it in ToE really does hurt the forum. The acting number of posters in ToE are extremely small.
I came to this board when quite a bit was deleted and well, you really feel apart from the older board mebership.
It leads to a great deal of frustration and the inclination that the poster trying to follow the conversation does not matter. I know I felt that way reading edited posts. Imagine knowing entire threads were deleted!! I never will even know about the subject of those.
I am very concerned that people will come to the forum of mostly deletions and edits and feel hurt that they are not trusted.
It can really really really really divide the board. I was never really that open on how I felt about all that stuff that was deleted before I came here, but I felt hurt. That everyone had some inside information that I didn't.
Although I had access when the board was closed, I most certainly did not feel like a full member of Board 77 (at times). Fullness or validity of membership is just not about having access to all the forums.
I am not too sure but were you here when the board was closed? How would you feel if the 30 threads that weren't deleted
were deleted? (The historical threads) Notice I was all for deleting them? I kind of felt if everyone else gets to hide their thoughts and feelings on certain things before I came here, why aren't I allowed to have that? (I didn't say so at the time but in that discussion I felt like a second class citizen, people saying we shouldn't delete yet before I came here stuff that they had participated in was deleted. I am over that now though). That is why in a couple of threads you will see some of my posts are umm..... 'edited'. I am sure if you find some of my old posts you will wonder what did I say to elicit such responses? I guess you will never know now will you? Trust me is not good feeling (at least to me).
I remember a few people from TORC who came here thinking the 30 threads were deleted and they were
extremely ticked off. It took
a lot of work on my part and a lot of other peoples parts to calm down their many assumptions. It involved quite a bit of arguing and hurt feelings. I can only imagine what would have happened if we did delete them. So it may not seem like much of a loss right now but deleting really can hurt the board. I know IdylleSeethes had a thread on it but I didn't follow it much. I even mentioned several of my feelings on deleting while I was on TORC too.
A new uh entity may rise but there will always be that level of distrust with the doors wide open. I will say here I participate in the girls night thread in ToE, not the one in Members. So I doubt a public version of ToE will work. Even if it has a 'veto amendment' to give the 'appearance' of protection, with rules that make it nearly impossible to keep someone out, the effect is the same. The forum is totally 100% public (rather then the 90% public while it's in the current version of ToE). With the membership now it is next to impossible to have totally public discussion on personal stuff like that. Especially since some of us have met each other in person we are not anonymous to each other (also, many non board people from the other place know us). The forum will definitely lose a lot of it's uh.. usefullness.
If the amendment isn't actually functionable, then I think the subject matter will get further and further away from intimate feelings on intimate stuff, to more general discussion like in Symposium. Why waste the bandwidth for 2 similar forums?
Oh and Cerin thank you for realizing I meant the poll questions in turf.
I never ever meant group refusal of admittance. I was trying to give a general example of what I felt about people being admitted. As If 30 individual people wanted acces to ToE and I lookead at every single individual person requesting access. I truly feel I would have no problem with having all 30 individual people being admitted. I would not look at each and every single request for access and look for ways to come up with a valid objection for each one. I am not that type of person. Heck, even people who hate my guts can take a peek. For me it's about malicious harm.
Still I am back to my question at the begining Cerin, with a few people looking at objections. Too much power is in the hands of too few people. With only one or 2 rangers looking looking at the objections it is only those 2 who can really determine the validity. With that, those 2 people will be the ones really determining who has access to the forums. That is why I suggest detailed objections in private and a more cleaned up anonymous, sanitized version presented to ToE posters with a Ranger working as a filter rather then a judge or controller. EX : detailed explanation: Person X emailed me nasty hate mail (with pictures) on a regular basis as a form of harrasement, and that is why I do not want him in ToE, for fear of people being sexually harrassed on line. Objecting poster could provide evidence of past emails (Not necersary though). Ranger filter: One poster has concerns of online harrasment from this person. (If needed they could add: proof has been provided). That is all the rest of ToE posters would need to know concerning th objection. Now imagine if the ranger had 5 differnt objections. They could list them paraphrased like that. If anyone made false objections then there should be a severe penalty. If though they have some intuitive bad feeling, I think they should send it to a ranger anyway. With a ranger filter they have no fear of feeling intimadated or judged, and the ranger can just a say: A ToEer has an intuitive bad feeling. That way it is up to the whole ToE community to decide validity of those type of objection rather then just 2 peeple.
The ToE posters could base a vote on the paraphrased stuff, since that is all they really need to know. Also, I want to say to the genral people starting to follow this conversation, that this whole ammendment only gets inacted if there
are any objections. These are not the rules for everyone getting into ToE. For most people it should be request access, wait ten days and you are in. You do not have to worry about fears of yourself being discussed, because 99% you wouldn't even be discussed. The ten days are just a formality.
Also, I would like to say that ToE posters (some of them at least) and are very open and would like ToE to be able to be accessed by some people who are not able to access ToE right now. So right now it will look like we want to be a closed private club, but in the future you will see another disussion and some may think we are being too open. Maybe then you get a better picture of ToE through that, and realize this discussion is
truly about protection from malicious harm. But that discussion is for a later time.
EDIT. I apologize for much of my absence. I have tried to keep up with the conversation but school and a friend uh... issue has been keeping most of my time. I will be away from the computer for most of Saturday. (For the friend issue please see my second last post in my school thread. I really do not want to discuss it on a message board. But IM or email is OK. In fact it would make me feel better.
).