Re: censorship - Mozilla

Brian Heinrich wrote:
> All of which begs a several questions:
>
> 1. Why are you (and, presumably, others) removing posts without being
> transparent about it? (Had you not e-mailed me, I wouldn't have known
> that you'd removed a post, and the fact that I was not informed of what
> you did bothers me quite as much as the fact that you did it.)

As far as I'm aware, only Dave Miller and Chris Ilias have the necessary
permissions to remove posts. If anyone else does, I'd like to know how
they got them, please.

> 2. On the basis of what criteria are you (and, presumably, others)
> making the determination that a post should be removed?

When Chris was given permission to remove posts, I gave him the
following guidance:

"If you take appropriate account of the "respected project contributor"
status of anyone involved, if you warn first (now that you have
something to back it up with) and cancel second, if you escalate the
amount of cancels gently as long as people don't learn their lesson,
then you may use this power for removing messages which are offtopic, on
the grounds that the more noise there is in the support newsgroups, the
less useful they are for support."

> 3. Why are the Champs still insisting that these groups are not
> moderated when, in fact, /ex post facto/ censorship (/i.e./, removal of
> posts) -- a form of content moderation little different from what those
> who would ban certain books from libraries undertake -- is occurring?

If you like, we can just "moderate" by preventing you from posting at
all. Would that be an improvement? I don't think so.

Removal of posts after they have been posted is a way of giving people
multiple second chances to say something useful.

Your right to speak does not imply our obligation to listen. If you want
to say something that doesn't fit here, get a blog.

> 4. And, just as an aside, how does this kind of censorship /not/ impinge
> on questions of freedom of speech?

Many people write to the letters page of newspapers; that doesn't mean
the editor is obliged to publish all the letters. Yet no-one complains
about being censored when they are not chosen.

Anyone's right to free speech in the Mozilla newsgroups ends when the
speech reduces the usefulness of the newsgroups to the project. Spam
obviously falls into that category, but so does off-topicness, because
that causes developers to leave for less noisy channels. Content-free
personal abuse is offtopic.

More leeway on the "noise" question is usually given in mozilla.general.

Gerv

Gervase Markham wrote:
> Brian Heinrich wrote:
>> All of which begs a several questions:
>>
>> 1. Why are you (and, presumably, others) removing posts without being
>> transparent about it? (Had you not e-mailed me, I wouldn't have known
>> that you'd removed a post, and the fact that I was not informed of
>> what you did bothers me quite as much as the fact that you did it.)
>
> As far as I'm aware, only Dave Miller and Chris Ilias have the necessary
> permissions to remove posts. If anyone else does, I'd like to know how
> they got them, please.
>
>> 2. On the basis of what criteria are you (and, presumably, others)
>> making the determination that a post should be removed?
>
> When Chris was given permission to remove posts, I gave him the
> following guidance:
>
> "If you take appropriate account of the "respected project contributor"
> status of anyone involved, if you warn first (now that you have
> something to back it up with) and cancel second,

Does this also applies to Dave? Because I'm talking about the removal
of postings back in January 2007. There was a bunch of postings by an
individual, lets call Garth. He asked a question, there was many
/helpful/ responses. And yet, those entire threads were removed. No
warning was given. So, since Chris received the authorization last
week, then someone else was removing all these postings.

--
Peter Potamus & His Magic Flying Balloon:
http://www.toonopedia.com/potamus.htm
http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/46347-Pe...amus_Show.html
http://www.toonarific.com/show.php?s...h&show_id=2778

Please do not email me for help. Reply to the newsgroup only. Thanks

On 2/23/2007 2:38 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Removal of posts after they have been posted is a way of giving people
> multiple second chances to say something useful.
>
> Your right to speak does not imply our obligation to listen. If you want
> to say something that doesn't fit here, get a blog.
>

Just curious. Does removal of posts from this server also remove them
from the Google Archives?



Irwin

Gervase Markham wrote:
> "If you take appropriate account of the "respected project contributor"
> status of anyone involved, if you warn first (now that you have
> something to back it up with) and cancel second, if you escalate the
> amount of cancels gently as long as people don't learn their lesson,
> then you may use this power for removing messages which are offtopic, on
> the grounds that the more noise there is in the support newsgroups, the
> less useful they are for support."

My message here, and others, appear to have set off quite a discussion.
Just so people don't think it was a "hit and run" post: I have been at a
conference over the weekend, and am on holiday today, but will read and
comment on the thread tomorrow (UK time).

Gerv

Irwin Greenwald wrote:
> Just curious. Does removal of posts from this server also remove them
> from the Google Archives?

Dunno. You'd need to ask Google what their policy is with regard to
cancel messages.

Gerv