Fellow "deletees"

rosemary-b

Well another post deleted. What a surprise. Sigh...

Bren-2007

Geez .. it's a good thing this thread is called the deletees thread.

I remember Mary's post ... it didn't break any of the BCO rules.

Bren

YramAL

I believe I correctly predicted this deletion several hours ago.....

(The other) Mary 

Anonymous

When someone posts something on a public site that you know a number of people who read that site will find offensive, that pushes against the rules of the site if it doesn't actually break them, and that the poster openly admits will probably be reported, why are so many people so upset and offended when the post is reported?

When you put a worm on your hook, you expect to catch fish.  When you put up a post that flirts with breaking the rules, you expect to have it removed.

Why act surprised when there is a feeding frenzy after someone throws a bucket of bait into the water?

bluedahlia

Because it's STOOOOOOOPID to report posts.  Any posts that aren't spam or porn.....but I guess you have to be an adult to understand that concept! 

covertanjou

Patmom, what exactly was offensive in my post?  

Why don't the cowards come out and state they reported my post instead of hiding?  

We Canadians were schooled a few weeks ago about the fact that the US has TRUE freedom of speech.  Evidently, it's only freedom of speech when certain people can state their view. 

Alpal

PatMom - why are the reporters too cowardly to admit that they did it and explain what BCO rules they think it broke? That post didn't break any rules, but it did point out that there are other web sites (which are not private) where posters from BCO talk openly about the posters on here. What rule does that break?

pip57

Melissa, all of your plans sound so positive.  Thank you for keeping us informed.  Most of us really do appreciate what it is that you have to put up with.  Many thanks.

bluedahlia

I guess the deleters are gonna do what they're good at while the going is still good.  They have a couple months left to get their jollies.

1Athena1

Patmom, what was so offensive about Mary's post? Can you point to anything specific? I assume you read it, since you seem to be defending its deletion?

1Athena1

Melissa, I may be taking advantage of your generosity in time, but I wonder if you could check covertanjou(Mary)'s deleted post and see if it broke any rules and tell us one way or another?

It seems a good illustration of the bullying that goes on around here. I read the post several times and it did not merit deletion at all according to BCO rules. Since we are about to enter into new rules in a month or two, people may want to know what does and does NOT constitute a deletable post.....

1Athena1

.....I don't see where it is against the rules to call out people who have "secret" web sites. Or to say anything about "conservatives." 

Is there anything about not criticizing conservatives on the BCO rules? Just a question. And an affirmation. I know this drips with sarcasm, but I am trying to be civil.  

If this post is deleted, I will repost it. Deleters should know that we deletees are informed via e-mail of the post that is deleted. Of course, you (single deleter, wherever you lurk, and whatever single digit number you use these days) may not know this if you use numerous e-mail addies to create various logins whereby you can become five people and delete one post.  

YramAL

1Athena1 wrote:".....I don't see where it is against the rules to call out people who have "secret" web sites. Or to say anything about "conservatives." 1Athena1-you hit the nail on the head.  Posts that do this are exactly the ones that are getting deleted.Mary 

covertanjou

Firstly,I never wrote that my post would probably be deleted.  Why should/would I?

Secondly, although my post does not break any rules, it is deleted because some women may get offended?  How about putting on some big-girl panties and stop wah-wahing all over the place?

Alpal

The post that was deleted did not stir the pot. The deleted post was a reply to a post which stirred the pot. Because of the current set up of the report this post function, many many posts have been deleted which did not break BCO rules. I wouldn't be surprised if this post was deleted. It is expressly stated in the rules that simply disagreeing with a post is not a valid reason to report the post.

covertanjou

Tupelo,  I did not write that my post would probably be deleted, someone else wrote that.

1Athena1

Tupelo, personal responsibility is a fair proposition as long as there is a level playing field, IMO. Let me explain, with an example:

Let's say that there is a convenience store in a remote area. It is owned and operated by an elderly couple and has an extra staff of maybe one or two people. So because it is in a far away place, near no police station, and often with very few people to man it, it tends to get robbed a lot - let's say once a year. The store has an alarm system and video cameras, but the police cannot get there in less than 20 minutes, so many robbers get away with the crime. You could say that the couple are definitely on personal responsibility times 3 in this. It might be fair to argue that they should have chosen a better place for their business if they didn't want to run into so many security problems. 

At the same time, the different robbers who come and go - who abuse the isolation of the locale to break the law - are morally accountable in an enormous way. Personal responsibility as a concept also belongs to them. In fact, so much so, that society for thousands of years  recognizes imprisonment as punishment for their actions. They are 20 times more liable than the store owners.

Now is it fair to hold Mary accountable for personal responsibility and not the person or person's who deleted her posts? 

You are also assuming that the deletions have been fair. And that if a person mentions the fear of being deleted, it is because she knows she is writing something she shouldn't. Actually, it is more like a Chinese dissident worrying about imprisonment because he has expressed his mind, something universally recognized as a human right. In a perfect world, your surmise of "if the person was thinking a post might be deleted there must have been something off about it" would be fair. In BCOs troubled world, it isn't. No one should feel persecuted, and yet many people here are. 

1Athena1

Tupelo, sorry - we crossposted :-) Didn't mean to sound as if I was rubbing it in.

Beesie

I've been trying to stay out of the fray but I have a question for the Mods with regard to the proposed changes so since I'm posting here anyway, I might as well enter the fray.

I read covertanjou's post and from my reading of it, it did not violate the rules.  I don't know why in the world it was "Removed by the Community".

Frankly, I think it is wrong for anyone here to remove the post of another legitimate member of the board.  The "Report this Post" button was created as a way to get rid of spam, and I regularly use the button for that purpose. Prior to the implementation of this process, the board was overrun by spam.  So I am grateful that we have this tool available to us that allows us to quickly delete spam posts.  I worry that the abuse of the "Report this Post" button will end up hampering our effort to control the spam.

Over the past few days I've been accused of deleting someone's posts and asking others to do the same.  I have never done this.  I think it's absolutely wrong.  Yes, we have disagreements. Yes, sometimes members post things that are rude or slanderous.  I think it's fine to let those posts stand.  We are all adults here. If someone says something that is outrageous, let them be judged by that. If someone is a legitimate member of this board, while I obviously will have my opinion about what they said and while I may write a post to respond, I will not censor them. Frankly I think that by eliminating some of the more outrageous posts, we just encourage people to continue to post that way. If some of these posts were allowed to stand, it would be easier to separate who is being truthful from who is not.  Some of the deleted posts have been truly horrible while other posts have been deleted simply because others have a different opinion.  All the deletees are bucketed together.  So who really did something wrong and who didn't?  Those who are innocent have to defend themselves because their posts have been deleted and there is no proof of what they actually said. 

So, thankfully, the Moderators plan to make some changes.  Some of the proposed changes were actually suggested by a few of us a year or two ago but the ideas were rejected at the time (and that I think is what led to Madalyn's frustration and departure from the board).  All these changes are being made to stop the abuse of the system; my question is whether these changes will also make it more difficult for us to quickly get rid of the spammers.  Specifically:

1. person reporting a post will be forced to provide a reason for reporting a post (e.g. this is spam or this violates this Rule of Conduct).  GOOD.  NO PROBLEM.  HOPEFULLY THERE WILL BE A LIST OF REASONS FOR DELETION AND WE CAN JUST CHECK SOMETHING OFF.

2. make public who has reported the post, and reason why  GOOD.  A BUNCH OF US SUGGESTED THIS A LONG TIME AGO

3. notify the person whose post was reported of the reason, and provide opportunity to edit  DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE POST WON'T ACTUALLY BE DELETED?  OR IF THE PERSON MAKES A SMALL INSIGNIFICANT CHANGE, THE POST WILL BE REINSTATED?  HOW WILL THE SYSTEM KNOW THAT THE CHANGE MADE HAS ACTUALLY ADDRESSED/ELIMINATED THE CONCERN?  THIS MAY IMPACT OUR ABILITY TO QUICKLY GET RID OF SPAM.

So I have a suggestion.  What if the "REPORT THIS POST" button could only be activated on members who have fewer than 25 posts?  Spammers are always new members; sometimes they come back but given that they can only post 5 times in one days, rarely do we see a spammer come back more than 5 times.  And in any case, after the first couple of deletions of 5 posts, shouldn't the spammer's ID be cancelled?  So if they come back again, they would have to start again as a new member.  Would this be another way to address the problem of the abuse of the REPORT THIS POST button, by simply not allowing the abuse to happen? 

As for the other changes: 

4. make profiles visible only to logged-in users. GREAT!!
(Months ago we already deactivated that profiles can be found in any search engine). YES, THANK YOU, THAT WAS A SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT.

5. expand our personal profiles and add an advanced search function to help community members find people who most closely match who and what you're looking for  GOOD.

6. Delete Private messages by checking "all"  GOOD. 

Can I add one request to the list?  Can our diagnosis info within our personal profiles be adjusted so that only real diagnoses are possible?  So often we see diagnosis lines that are illogical, such as "DCIS Stage III" or "LCIS Stage I" or a tumor size or nodal status that is inconsistent with the Stage. There also is no place to include DCIS-MI.  And there is no way to include multiple types of cancer (IDC + DCIS or LCIS + ILC, for example), which so many of us have.  I realize that the programming might be difficult but this is such a cause of confusion it would be great if something could be done to help clear this up.   

Bren-2007

Morning Beesie ... great synopsis of what's been happening.

Can't wait for the new changes to be made.  I wonder if there is a time line for implementing the changes.  I remember Melissa said they were adding more tech people to the staff.

Bren

1Athena1

Beesie wrote:

"3. notify the person whose post was reported of the reason, and provide opportunity to edit  DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE POST WON'T ACTUALLY BE DELETED?"

Melissa, I have the same question. When I read your post, I interpreted this to mean that we would get an e-mail (not a PM) asking the perennial Microsoft question"Are you sure...." But that may be time-consuming and the post may not end up getting deleted because people don't know that they have to confirm via e-mail. So could the "Are you sure you want to delete...." pop up as a windows style box? If that is not possible, as a PM to our BCO accounts?

iodine

Well done Beesie!  As usual.  I especially agree with the idea that if left in place, posts will reveal the person, and nameing the person trying to delete them will also reveal the persons who have little tolerance of others ideas.

Anonymous

covertanjou, I don't recall you saying your post will probably be deleted.  I believe Althenaasked me not to delete HER post with a "kidding, kidding" remark.  If I'm wrong, Althena, please correct me because I'm too lazy to go back and read.

covertanjou, if I were you I would repost the deleted post.  Do you have it?  We used to get our deleted post in our email.

The site you mention is not a "secret" site.  Ask anyone that reads there.  We are like minded and it's probably much better than we take our frustrations to another place.  Most of us have very strong feelings about pundits, cable news, blogs, media, etc.  In most cases it helps the mods to not have to intervene in an argument over those topics.  Get what I mean?  It doesn't make us bad people because we believe what we believe and post where we feel comfortable. In fact, many of you have suggested we do just that...post elsewhere.

Again, this time around I believe the mods are doing the best they can.  Way back when we were not given this kind of attention.  So, well done ladies.

althea

I'm glad to see some followup from Melissa after her meeting with the tekkies.   I have questions and comments on the first item.

>>1. person reporting a post will be forced to provide a reason for reporting a post (e.g. this is spam or this violates this Rule of Conduct).<<

How will the result be handled?  What will make a 'spam' answer different from a 'conduct' answer? If there is no difference, why spend programming dollars on making the distinction?  Assuming there is a difference, will the distinction be clearly defined to the programmers?  Vague destinations are not likely to bring happy results from a programmer.  

There were two other suggestions I made that fell into a black hole.   Maybe no one liked them and they were purposely placed in the black hole, but here they come again, just in case someone finds them worthwhile

1.  How about a LOCK feature for the mods to use.  Other boards have them, phpbb as just one example.  It allows the mods to put a lock on any thread that needs it.  The thread will accept no new posts but the thread remains visible.  (I'm not a fan of all this deleting either.  If someone's an opinionated puffhead, I'd rather read their words for myself to form my own conclusions.)

2.  How about a number higher than 5 for a post to be affected by the report button.  

I'm glad to hear there's some improvements pending in the wings.  

editing to add #3:

I've noticed this thread needs reindexing.  I've seen in other thread too.  It happens when someone requests that all their posts be removed.  There's no placeholders left behind, which makes the number of posts fewer, but whatever's in charge of counting the pages isn't subtracting the posts that were removed.  

Beesie

Althea, I think your first idea, about locking a thread, is great.  It stops the discussion and lets things cool down but it doesn't delete anything that's been written. Perhaps some threads can even be re-opened after a cooling off period.  I stopped participating in the healthcare discussion because I had put a lot of time and research into some of my posts in the original healthcare thread and then poof!, everything was gone.  When the Mods started up a new healthcare thread to replace the original, I decided I was simply not going to waste my time again, knowing that in all likelihood that thread would also be deleted (as it was). 

Your second suggestion, to increase the number of hits of the Report This Post button that are required to delete a thread, gets to my concern that in trying to fix a problem of abuse, we may be making it more difficult to get rid of spammers - and that after all was the reason why the Report This Post button was originally created.  On slow days and during off-hours it can sometimes take quite a while to get the 5 hits necessary to delete spam; increasing the number of posts necessary would make this situation worse. 

I guess I just don't see why any member of this board should be allowed to delete the posts of any other legitimate member of this board.  That's why I think that disabling the Report This Post button as soon as a member has 25 posts (or whatever number is deemed appropriate) solves the whole problem.  Why wouldn't that work?

Bren-2007

Beesie .. I like your idea, but 25 posts doesn't seem enough to me.  A person can get that many playing the word games in one day.  Why not make it 50 or 100 posts.  There are enough people on this board with longevity to delete the spammers.

1Athena1

The LOCK idea is superb. 

1Athena1

So in case the mods are reading this and looking for ideas, I will propose categories people can choose from to explain why they deleted a post:

"You reported the post because...

1) It was a solicitation for services or money, or an advertisement

2) It contained libelous information

3) It contained offensive language

4) It used terms or made assertions that could reasonably be construed as discriminatory on the basis of race/sex/ethnicity/religious or sexual orientation or nationality.

5) You disagreed with the views expressed." - YES - I would include this, BUT, if a person checks this, her action will not contribute to the post being deleted. Rather, a little window pops up and simply says that these are not grounds for deletion under BCO rules, and that BCO asks that you respect others' views and be prepared to find statements you disagree with in a large, public forum like this. It will certainly save Melissa the bother of having to tell us that herself time and again, as she has had to thus far. It will also give BCO a good "teachable moment" in which it can remind people about the difference between unattractive and unacceptable. 

I am sure you all have better ideas. I am not very good at this. Maybe we can all chime in and help BCO create some great categories. Anyone....? 

althea

BinVA, remember, new posters these days are limited to 5 posts per day til they reach 50 posts. 

Beesie, I think your suggestion is good.  I'm just quasi-geeky, not a programmer but kinda sort know how they do what they do.  I was trying to think of things that would be the least expensive to do.  The report feature is already done and in use.  Raising the threshhold from 5 to a higher number, a programmer could probably do while sleeping.  Your suggestion would be a tad more involved.  I picked 10 just as an arbitrary number. 

Even on a slow day, I would think spam would quickly be obliterated with a threshhold of 10.  On the other hand, if one person is pretending to be several, well, it would simply be twice as hard to be 10 people than it is 5.   

althea

editing to remove my attempt at humor; I'm a bit obtuse I guess

Anyway, on the handful of occasions I've reported a post for what I thought was bully behavior, all I wanted was just a little dialogue box to write a brief description of why I'm reporting the post.  ...so that's my suggestion.  Give us a space to write a brief description of why we're reporting a post for reasons other than spam.