We should be able to add to, edit, or delete our posts—indefinitely. I take this as fairly intuitive; our posts are our posts. All good philosophers always have to imagine a counterargument, and I suppose it would be this: “You could damage the context of a debate”. That would be true if the context wasn’t always preserved by the person quoting what they are responding to.
While it’s true that you are the originator of your posts, I have bad news for you. Anything posted here belongs to ILP, and the owner/adminisrator makes all decisions concerning content.
…Right on the nail head, sir. That is what we’re talking about.
My suggestion—here in the Help and Suggestions Forum—is that the “bad news” (as you said) be changed to good. —That sound right?
Tentative has pretty much got it.
Although, it’s not just the property of ILP, imo, because ILP (Excepting Staff Discussion, Quarantine, and Rant House) is a public site. In other words, the information belongs to everyone because everyone has access to it as soon as you post it.
The only area where I would disagree is if a post was personally identifiable, either within the post, or via your Handle. Of course, you can change your Handle at any time, and Staff would certainly be willing to Edit Out personally identifiable information from a post. I think I can actually speak for Staff on that one.
The policy is a near Universal on Message Boards. Other than the rare exceptions that will let you Delete an entire Account (Including Posts), at best, you’d have to go through and Edit each individual post one-by-one. Of course, we have an Edit block (either 24 or 72 hours, don’t remember) preventing that. Again, in extenuating circumstances, we would Edit it for a person, upon request.
No matter who posts belong to (and I agree with tentative here), allowing unlimited editing causes problems. Responders shouldn’t have to quote if they don’t want to. The context isn’t always preserved. And anyone is free to emend any of their posta with another post.
Faust,
I think tentative was claiming that it’s ‘bad news’ that the site controls all content, but not more than that, or that it necessarily should. But thank you for being the first to assume that when I was suggesting a policy be changed, that I actually knew what the policy was. I’m not convinced that having to quote is a burden, or that it would do something bad to the context. And control over your content is a good thing—the greater, is what I’m suggesting. Not to mention that if the policy is changed, people are unlikely to affect a context that was worth preserving in the first place. That it’s not worth preserving is going to be why they edit their message. Right?
My argument is largely intuitive. People should have control over their content. I guess I could make a few arguments by analogy… (a) “if I let my friend read my book, it doesn’t mean he can keep it forever”; or (b) “You should see my Uncle Tom at a restaurant when there’s a free bowl of candies on the way out—you (as a site) don’t want to be like him, snatching and grabbing”.
Btw, I also think being able to change a Handle is a good thing—contrary to what Pav said, you can’t, currently. Someone should fix that. No context is lost by changing your name. And it means that when your Handle gets tied to your real name, you can hide who you are.
I phrased myself incorrectly, what I basically meant is we would change your Handle if it is personally identifiable and you didn’t want it to be. We might change it for other reasons, upon request, that’s probably case-by-case.
The only negative effect would be thread continuity, because you’d have quotes attributed to people who are, strictly speaking, no longer posting (and, by appearances, never posted) in the thread. I can say with some confidence that we probably wouldn’t change someone’s handle more than once…
No.
Editing has to have some limits. Nothing pisses me off more than trying to respond to a post that is being edited two or three times and changing the original context that I’m trying to respond to. We have a couple of members who abuse editing frequently. I often have to edit because my @$%#%!! keyboard doesn’t know how to speel and I’m too lazy to read what I’ve written before I hit submit.
I think perhaps the best idea is for members (especially me) to write clearly, methodically, and deliberately so that editing, deletions, or any other changes aren’t necessary. It’s obvious that sloppiness, both in writing and thinking, is everywhere on this site. Making that bad habit even easier prolly isn’t a great idea. We may not like the limitations of posting control, but it beats the hell out of letting the batshitcrazies making it even more difficult to find coherency inside a thread.
Everybody just quotes the part that they’re responding to. It’s not hard—it’s just clicking a button. You have to do that anyways. And being able to edit doesn’t make someone’s thinking sloppier; because if it did, you wouldn’t allow editing at all (but we do).
It’d be better if the website didn’t behave like it owns the content that you lend it. It is still your content, or at least it should be. And if the site operated more like a forum, rather than depository claiming ownership as soon as you click ‘Submit’, you might get people sending better and more interesting material, knowing that they’d be able to take it back and find a better home for it if they wanted to. I’m thinking of papers, creative writing, and such-like.
ILP acts like it owns the content because it does.
Wake up. This is the forum for “suggestions”—I’m making a suggestion about what I think ought to be the case. I already know what is the case.
In your first response you simply said “No”. That was a not helpful piece of reasoning. It wasn’t a reason at all. That kind of thing might be fine in the Religion forum----it’s not, here.
Give your head a shake, partner.
I don’t bother with it because it’s not a possibility.
If you want to hear the long line of reasons, then write Carleas about it.
But ILP will simply not be releasing that standard in any manner you are looking for.
I’m not here debating or waxing philosophy. I’m telling you that your “suggestion” won’t happen so it’s rather pointless to go on and on about it as if reasoning will suddenly change anything.
Go back to the Religion area. This is a “help” forum on a “philosophy” site----and clearly you’d prefer to do neither. I’m not trying to be rude, but answers like “…it’ll never change and that’s that” to my suggestion just are what’s rude.
Sorry if you find it rude to tell you that the forum policy will not change on the matter, so the idea that you will get “help” is not possible.
You want a change that I once inquired on when I first arrived.
I’m telling you, take it or leave it, that waxing ideals on the matter isn’t going to change that policy.
If you just feel like banging your head against a virtual wall…knock yourself out I guess.
Monooq,
ILP isn’t unusual in website ownership of material posted there. We could go through all the “intellectual property rights” and copyright stuff again. There was a thread on it in soc about a year or so ago. It’s a grey area but not legally. The website owns all rights to the material. That said, if you posted a poem or wrote a long essay and wanted to use it somewhere else, I doubt that there would be any objection by carleas or the owner of any other site for that matter. What is ownership is a fuzzy area right now. Ask the music industry how successful they were in demanding intellectual property rights. The internet has turned ownership on its head. All the websites are doing is preserving whatever legal rights they may have until it becomes a big enough issue for congressional action - along with the judicial review process. Eventually, you may own your own work, prolly another 15 or 20 years from now. But till then, anything you write on the internet belongs to someone else, and they also control all aspects of how that material is handled.
tentative,
Again, I’m fairly clear about what is the case… I’m just suggesting that the site would be better if it functioned differently. That’s my suggestion. What do you think of my analogies from the earlier post?
In what way would it make it better?
ILP can’t safely release that ownership because it then states that it doesn’t own itself and thereby is not its own property.
ILP doesn’t own the IP.
It owns the posts.
There is a huge difference.
ILP cannot sue me for publishing a book with ideas I also wrote here.
But the posts belong to ILP.
If they didn’t, then any random hacker could cite that they did not violate ILP’s property rights.
… come again?
edit: I get it now. I’m slow.