Poll: should Josh remove the static wall archive links?

The fact that all our wall conversations ever are so accessible on google is disturbing. there are a lot of things we've mentioned (especially email addresses!) that really should be kept more hidden. (I'm talking about all the numbered links on the bottom of each archive page) plus, being so visible on google means we end up with a lot of people hitting the site who have absolutely no idea what it's for, but for some bizarre reason decide to sign up anyway, then proceed to clutter the place with meaningless crap. really, anything beyond the first page of the wall should be accessible to members only. sure, it's free and easy to sign up, but at least that means people have to make an effort to get at the older stuff.

Sorry, they're staying. :)

Besides, I don't think we've ever gotten an account from them. Each new account is tagged with the referrer that they came in on, and I haven't seen a single one from the wall archives.

Sorry, they're staying. :)

WHY? what good reason is there for keeping all that information available? at the very least, then, give us a way to remove our older entries from it. there's some stuff I do NOT want on google at all - and didn't expect to ever see there.

really, I hope the results of this poll prove you wrong. would you remove them if most of your users wanted them removed?

I honestly don't give a rat's ass. I view it in the same way I might an online diary. If you really have something to say that is that private then you don't post it on a public site. It's not like you need to be a member to view the wall. Yes Google makes it more widely accessible but how does that change the propriety of what you put out in public? Stuff like email addresses and such, as you cite, should have been in frums in the first place if you worry about them being out in the world.

exactly.

I can see maybe making it members only.

But I go back and check stuff once in a while... sometimes a link someone posted, or I dunno--something else.

if you don't want something floating around on the internet--don't put it out there.

Yeah, the wall is a public forum, and as such should be archived. I don't really care what the results of the poll are, to be honest.

You should now be able to delete wall posts, using the archive. And I went ahead and have obfuscated the email addresses for the people who were stupid enough to post them. So quit your bitching. :)

Oh man... I don't like that at all, Josh... the ability to delete wall posts.

I think it should be just that... an archive... not a "selective archive".
;)

Yeah I had the same thought. The idea of being able to delete posts scares me. Like if I wanted to go back to a conversation and prove that someone said something they now deny saying, they could have since deleted the references.

OK that sounds more paranoid than I mean it. But...you know what I mean? It allows for revisionist history which is never a good idea. :)

Very good point, now that I think about it, I agree. It's gone now.

I hope everybody used their 5 minutes to delete their skeletons in their wall closet. :)

yay! My memory is bad enough without the world conspiring to convince me I remember things wrong. :)

then by that logic, maybe we shouldn't be able to edit or delete our posts in forums, either? after all, this conversation wouldn't make sense if half of us deleted half of our posts. and yet, we have that ability. why should the wall be any different?

Actually that argument serves more to turn me against editable forum posts than for editable wall posts.

I do plan to eventually make forum post deletions only minimize the post, and edits to store the original. But that's just a matter of me never having time for piddly stuff like that. :)

That's a good point, lawrence... perhaps forum posts shouldn't be delete-able either...

Gah!� Do you know how many typos and bad links I've accidently posted and then had to edit two seconds later?� A good compromise on this might be to not be able to delete a post once it has been replied to, or something like that, but I don't think the edit feature should be taken away, I use it probably once every three posts.� What would be worse than posts being edited would be all kinds of correction posts all over the place if there were no editing feature.

I'm with you on that!

I vote with Yvonne and A.J. I tend to correct my posts a lot, but it's to tweak grammatical stuff or linkage mistakes, not to change the whole gist of my post.

I'm a bad typist! Don't punish me! I need to be able t edit my post but I promise not to delete them....

But wait, if people can now delete wall posts, it affects my ability to go back and read drama which I've heard about. Reading people's drama on the wall is one of my favorite parts about it. :(

Actually I was semi-joking, of course, but Nate's point is well taken. The archive shouldn't be selective. That might make whole conversations unintelligible. If that is the case, what is the point of the archive?

really, I wonder what the point of keeping an archive back to 1999 is anyway. sure, it's sometimes helpful to go back a few months, even, but beyond that, who's going to look at it besides random google searchers?

I find it fun to go back. And those who do find it fun to go back rule out over those who happen not to.

Am I the only one who is tempted to scour the archive to see exactly what it is that Lawrence wants out of it? *grins*

hee. I had that thought as well ;D

You realize this is really going to impact the incidence of cybersex on the wall don't you? ;)


Not sure HOW it will impact it. ;)

Maybe he wants to edit his past in preparation for running for office in the future. *grin*

Yeah, I find it fun too. :)

Actually it's not that rare that I search for old things in the archives. Both from a POV of looking for something specific and just looking for curiosity's sake.

I enjoy that the life of the site is documented.

I don't really care what the results of the poll are, to be honest.

you sounded like George W. Bush right there....

ouch.

> > I don't really care what the results of the poll are, to be honest.

> you sounded like George W. Bush right there....

Au contraire - Dubya lives and dies by the poll, to the point of not worrying about what the right thing to do actually is. If the public didn't want revenge for 9/11, he wouldn't have invaded Iraq..

You think so? I think he came into office planning to invade Iraq. Or at least his "guys" did.

It is true that that does sound like bushie, but the difference is that this is Josh's site while the USA is OUR country.

> this is Josh's site while the USA is OUR country.

See, I don't see it that way. I'm just the janitor here. You guys have the biggest say in the important decisions on here. This isn't an important decision, this is just one of the stupid benefits of running a site like this - watching the interesting search hits we get. I should post 'em sometime, they're great.

There are quite a few things I'd do differently here that have been shot down by you guys. :)

Really? I wasn't aware that I'd shot anything down. Or even that "WE" shot anything down. Hmmm. Ok.

Yah, I'd LOVE to see how many hits we get off "hobbit porn"� *lol*

Personally, I have no objection to the information being there, but I am unclear what the links are for. What is their purpose, Josh?

first poll option:
"...that shouldn't be readily available."

well, I voted before I fully understood, I guess.

What you meant was that they should be "members only" not removed, eh?

Because, I DEFINITELY don't think they should be removed.
But, made accessible to members only?
Yeahhh.. I guess I could agree with that.

well, yeah. but the only specific purpose to those static links is getting linked on google. if anything, I'd prefer static links that have dates on them. that would be much more useful. but still, they should be members only.

i would like the wall archives to be members-only. there's several years of conversation on there that took place long before they were available to google--plenty of bitching about work and roommates and musicians and this and this and that, that should probably not be available to the public.

you can argue all you want about the wall being like an online diary, but until recently, the wall archives weren't available at *all*, much less to anyone in the world who feels like googling, say, "homestarrunner fans" or "why is popularity important to teenagers" or whatever. so people were more free with their discussions than they might have been if they'd known that anything they said could be found on a major search engine. which brings up another point--when the archives were made available to google, as far as i know, none of us were told. it would've been nice to know, and to then have been given the opportunity of deleting wall posts.

the wall is not a "public" forum. you need to be a member to post. therefore, you should need to be a member to access the archives.

josh, i'm sorry that you don't agree, and sorrier that you don't seem to be interested in what we have to say.

But you don't need to be a member to see it in the first place. It's not a private site, it never really has been.

I don't know. Maybe my perspective is different because I can't think of a single thing I've said on the wall that I'd be upset about being googled for. Yeah I bitch about work, but I try to make a point of not mentioning on the wall WHERE I work. Stuff like that. To me there is no difference between someone searching and finding something I said on Google and someone happening to be viewing the site when I say something on the front page wall. Well yes there is a difference in the likelihood of the occurrence, but I don't think there's a difference in my behavior in what I decide to say.

Yep.
As the rule of thumb goes... never post anything on the internet that you wouldn't want your entire family and all your cow orkers to read.

Heh.

COW ORKERS?! for the love of god. ;-)

Yeah, the bastards. Always orking those cows.

couldn't be any worse than in ohio where they make butter cows. dude. messed.up.

THey do that here, too. :)

Yay Big E

you'all are messed up, butter is a condiment not an art supply. ;-)

ROTFL!!� That's the most hilarious thing I've read all day.

*realizes she's only been reading books to research her music history essay, so that really doesn't say much*

well we do what we can, love.

I feel like if you say something in a public forum [like fhdc] then you have to be aware that [like omg] other people might find it who are not a member of said site. is it really that big of a deal? don't you have more important things to be crusading for, lawrence? ;-)

*please no haters*

the point is that it wasn't always that public.

It was always this public. The full, publicly-viewable wall archive was a feature from day 1.

Yes. I have said things that I have later regretted to have said, sometimes because my opinions were clumsily expressed, sometimes because I subsequently changed my mind and sometimes beause I was simply in a state of dickheadedness at the time.

Should I now be able to delete something I said in the past that I now consider to be crap, clumsily put or no longer a current view, this would put people at a disadvantage should they want to discuss an issue with me.

Among the utterances I regret to have made on the wall that were totally wrong, stupidly expressed, or just embarassing I would dearly like to delete one I made in answer to Gella, which caused her and others to consider me an antizionist.

The reason I oppose the possibility for me to erase the bits I don't like to have made in the past is that it reminds me of the photographs of the central committee in Soviet Russia. Over time history was revised by airbrushing out members who were no longer approved of. It was that kind of censorship that did then, and can now, limit or skew discussion.

Erm. I never said that. Where did I say that? :)

Among several other utterances I made on the wall, for instance, that I regret

Considering I hardly ever talk on the wall anymore, it wouldn't effect me as much.

...*attempts to resist urge.....fails* Affect.

*hides*