Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Discuss the LLORG's and HTLAL forum's past and its future here.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby lavengro » Tue May 12, 2020 2:24 pm

Arnav wrote:Long time lurker here. I've read Speakeasy's posts before, one in particular that comes to mind was about the use of tu and vous in Canada. He seemed elitist and insulting furthermore throwing a tantrum and harming the community by removing resources and valuable information is enough to make any administrator or moderator furious. These people donate time and other resources for the sake of a larger community only to have a power user try to dismantle it. Power users do not get special treatment in cases where they damage a community. Sad to say but often power users are the most problematic to moderator, speaking from experience ;) Jouer à des jeux stupides gagner des prix stupides .

*jouer à des jeux stupides gagner des prix stupides = play stupid games win stupid prizes

It is difficult to see how this does not violate one of the fundamental rules of this forum:

Flaming, personal attacks and inflammatory statements: Some people enjoy flaming, personal attacks, starting trouble, and fighting online. But many people dislike these things greatly, and they will leave the forum rather than put up with that kind of atmosphere. So given the choice, we choose to exclude the flamers, trolls and chronic jerks.

I've reported the post.

An inauspicious and odd start to your posting engagement with this site, unless this is a sock puppet account for an established poster who did not wish to put their name to these comments.

It is equally difficult, at least for me, to see how this post (attacking in a personal, insulting manner someone who literally is unable to defend himself on the forum) does not violate principles of basic decency.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby Deinonysus » Tue May 12, 2020 2:29 pm

I said earlier that I didn't want this thread to be a hate-fest against the mods or admins. I also hope that we can avoid personal attacks against the recently banned, who is not able to defend themself here. I understand that people have had negative experiences and I am not trying to say that anyone's complaints are invalid, but I'm hoping that we can limit the scope of this thread to discussing whether or not users have the right to delete their own posts, and whether deleting your own posts should be bannable. If we keep going in this direction, I'm afraid this thread is on a fast track to being locked, and I don't want that.

Although this user had a history of reports for poor behavior, the specific cited reason for escalating a temporary ban into a perma-ban was the user's deletion of their own posts, and that is what doesn't sit well with me.

Back to the topic at hand:
rdearman wrote:
Deinonysus wrote: I just think that deleting your own posts should not be bannable in general.

Depends on what you're deleting, and how much. The moderation team don't automatically ban people for deleting posts. Although full disclosure; I personally ask for this at every moderation meeting, because post restoration is an admin task, and I don't have the time or inclination to be doing DB restores because someone decides to be an asshat. This incident has strengthened my case for automatically banning for edited posts.

Honestly, if you wanted to delete your posts, and asked the moderators or an admin, we'd probably do it for you. Easier for us to check the impact and do the deletions. Especially since our deletions can be permanent, yours can't. We could also edit other posts where the posts to be deleted have been quoted. This would get your posts deleted, keep you in good faith with the moderation team, and allow you to come and go without being banned. If you have valid reasons for post removal we'll not stand in your way, but if you just start doing mass deletions, then I'm going to assume you're being an asshat.
I didn't realize that deleted posts were routinely restored. Is post deletion such a common and disruptive occurrence that you need to take significant time out of your own day to go against the author's wishes and manually restore and curate deleted posts rather than just letting them stay deleted? That would seem to be the obvious solution to me, although I do not have experience administering or moderating a forum so there could be intricacies that I am missing.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby IronMike » Tue May 12, 2020 3:25 pm

Deinonysus wrote:I said earlier that I didn't want this thread to be a hate-fest against the mods or admins. I also hope that we can avoid personal attacks against the recently banned, who is not able to defend themself here. I understand that people have had negative experiences and I am not trying to say that anyone's complaints are invalid, but I'm hoping that we can limit the scope of this thread to discussing whether or not users have the right to delete their own posts, and whether deleting your own posts should be bannable. If we keep going in this direction, I'm afraid this thread is on a fast track to being locked, and I don't want that.

Although this user had a history of reports for poor behavior, the specific cited reason for escalating a temporary ban into a perma-ban was the user's deletion of their own posts, and that is what doesn't sit well with me.

Back to the topic at hand:
rdearman wrote:
Deinonysus wrote: I just think that deleting your own posts should not be bannable in general.

Depends on what you're deleting, and how much. The moderation team don't automatically ban people for deleting posts. Although full disclosure; I personally ask for this at every moderation meeting, because post restoration is an admin task, and I don't have the time or inclination to be doing DB restores because someone decides to be an asshat. This incident has strengthened my case for automatically banning for edited posts.

Honestly, if you wanted to delete your posts, and asked the moderators or an admin, we'd probably do it for you. Easier for us to check the impact and do the deletions. Especially since our deletions can be permanent, yours can't. We could also edit other posts where the posts to be deleted have been quoted. This would get your posts deleted, keep you in good faith with the moderation team, and allow you to come and go without being banned. If you have valid reasons for post removal we'll not stand in your way, but if you just start doing mass deletions, then I'm going to assume you're being an asshat.
I didn't realize that deleted posts were routinely restored. Is post deletion such a common and disruptive occurrence that you need to take significant time out of your own day to go against the author's wishes and manually restore and curate deleted posts rather than just letting them stay deleted? That would seem to be the obvious solution to me, although I do not have experience administering or moderating a forum so there could be intricacies that I am missing.

This, plus the fact that the banned member didn't delete his posts in the manner described. (At least, not according to the email we were shown.)

In answer to the original question, I also don't think deleting one's posts should be bannable (sp?). I can think that and still think the admins are doing the best job they can in the situation. After seeing that email, though, I'm beginning to wonder.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby Ogrim » Tue May 12, 2020 3:28 pm

I don’t really want to enter this discussion, and I will certainly not express myself on the recent ban. I just want to make a few remarks from my personal standpoint.

This forum was set up by the administrators who spend their own time and money maintaining this resource and giving us a place to talk about languages. I therefore have no problem in abiding by their rules and I will not enter into a discussion about how they uphold those rules.

As far as I remember I have never deleted a single post of mine on this forum. To quote a famous Roman: Quod scripsi, scripsi. Now it may have happened that I regret a turn of phrase or a passage I have written, but in that case I edit the post rather than just delete it. I have certainly never gone back to delete any post I made weeks, months or years later. On occasions I have been rather surprised and a little bit annoyed by seeing that some member has suddenly decided to delete many if not all of their posts, for some reason or another.

I think a general problem with the forum is that a lot of valuable information about great resources and learning methods are only kept in forum threads and often scattered around in the various sections of the forum. Ideally yes it should all go to the Wiki, but that is clearly a lot of work, and unless more members are willing to put in the time and effort to consolidate the information available and create entries in the Wiki, or write blog posts, I don’t see how we can avoid the risk of some members suddenly deleting all the information they have shared.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby Xmmm » Tue May 12, 2020 5:50 pm

lavengro wrote:An inauspicious and odd start to your posting engagement with this site, unless this is a sock puppet account for an established poster who did not wish to put their name to these comments.

It is equally difficult, at least for me, to see how this post (attacking in a personal, insulting manner someone who literally is unable to defend himself on the forum) does not violate principles of basic decency.


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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby rdearman » Tue May 12, 2020 7:01 pm

If someone owns a coffee shop and some guy came around every day and started signing loudly and disrupting business should the owner ask them to leave? But if they are bared from the establishment then someone else stands up and demand the right to sing loudly in the store should the shop owner have to allow loud signing? Is the shop owner forced to allow loud singing, even if it forces other customers to leave the shop and for his business to deteriorate? So who is right? The loud signers who feel it is their right to express themselves how they feel? Or the business owner who is losing other customers because of the behaviour of these poorly behaved customers?

I get the feeling you all believe that the shop should be forced to close if it doesn't allow people do "whatever they want". Should they have the personal freedom to walk around naked? Should they have the right to pee on the floor of the shop? Should they be allowed to do whatever they want even if it impedes the rights of others to drink their coffee quietly while reading a paper?

I say being in a public place you have agreed to abide by societal norms, you shouldn't have the right to just do whatever you want with no impact.

But you do what you want, I've had enough.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby iguanamon » Tue May 12, 2020 8:36 pm

The email that lavengro shared shows a reasonable explanation, but then, Speakeasy edited his resources posts to say "For every action there is a reaction". which made it look like a revenge thing to me. It's gotten to the point now that I don't know what to believe anymore.

For the record, I loved Speakeasy's posts about old language courses, tracking them down and trying to get what he could uploaded to the Yojik site. Those old courses were a window into a world that has gone. His posts about them, besides being nostalgic, showed us what was lost and what has been gained as we transition into a new world of language-learning that is still not where it is going to be someday.

He made a genuine effort to be useful to the membership by posting language resources for less commonly studied languages. He could (and would) overreact to perceived slights and came across as abrasive to those he perceived had slighted him. I, myself, have been on the other end of his ire once. Still, a member doesn't earn over 6,500 votes for nothing. I hope he will reapply at some point and I hope his reapplication will be granted on some sort of 'double secret probation". I hope he will have learned to let the slights pass in the interim. I am sad and disappointed that Speakeasy is gone from the forum. I also miss another controversial former Canadian member, s_allard.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby tractor » Tue May 12, 2020 9:58 pm

iguanamon wrote: (…) I am sad and disappointed that Speakeasy is gone from the forum. I also miss another controversial former Canadian member, s_allard.

I see that I've missed some drama and controversies while I've been away from the forum. I didn't know how problematic Speakeasy had become, and when I came back a few months ago, I had expected to see s_allard here, and wondered what had happened to him when I saw that he was no longer around.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby Serpent » Tue May 12, 2020 11:03 pm

Deinonysus wrote:I didn't realize that deleted posts were routinely restored. Is post deletion such a common and disruptive occurrence that you need to take significant time out of your own day to go against the author's wishes and manually restore and curate deleted posts rather than just letting them stay deleted? That would seem to be the obvious solution to me, although I do not have experience administering or moderating a forum so there could be intricacies that I am missing.
No, this is not routinely done, aside from resources or possibly other important threads. Also, we don't have a problem with deleting an individual post, especially in your personal log.
iguanamon wrote:I also miss another controversial former Canadian member, s_allard
He is not banned.
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Re: Deleting your own posts should not be bannable. All critical information should be in the Wiki.

Postby Stefan » Sat May 16, 2020 8:00 pm

I'm saddened to see Speakeasy gone. He provided a lot of value to the forum - especially in areas where few other are knowledgeable - and I've been blissfully unaware of any issues. I'm definitively not questioning the actions of admin, but I do believe there are room for transparency in the future. As late as in December, members went missing after drama and I was left trying to add 1+1 to figure out what happened. It's only thanks to people derailing this thread, which I'm now part of, that I learned about Speakeasy.

On-topic I find this to be an important discussion. I always assumed that we were free to delete (not vandalise) our content whenever we wanted, which was a feature I appreciated. I'm just as annoyed as anyone else whenever I stumble upon a [deleted] post on Reddit, but thought that privacy triumphed it. If the rule is that admin might restore our deleted posts, then it should be highlighted somewhere.
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