Preserved Topic: Take a second look at Google

[edit] removed due to bullying.. [/edit]

[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 01-31-2004).]

[edit] ditto[/edt]

[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 01-31-2004).]

Google-watch is a steaming pile of crap.

1. Google's immortal cookie:
Of course you realize that you can dump your browser cookies anytime you feel like it right?

2. Google records everything they can:
From their privacy policy: Google will not disclose its cookies to third parties except as required by a valid legal process such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order. If you're so worried about these cookies, disable them on your browser.

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
So? They don't have my name, phone number, or address.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Why should Google have to disclose information about legal proceedings?

5. Google hires spooks:
Holy shit is this a bunch of crap or what? My best friend's wife still works for the NSA. Do you think she would actually be able to close any of that information without fear of incarceration.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
Complete access to your harddisk? I don't think so. Plus, if you pay attention during installation, you can disable the features in question.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
If it's illegal, why hasn't it been stopped?

8. Google is not your friend:
So you want people to be able to use Google bombs to get their sites linked over valid sites?

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.

These people need to find something better to do with their free time.

:::11oh1:::

[This message has been edited by krets (edited 01-31-2004).]

that and the link was posted here quite some time ago...

I read it over the first time around, and quite frankly... I don't get a flying pregnant yak.

But that's just me.

But since I don't have the free time to read ever single post in the Asylum, it would have been new to me ... except that Xpirex selfishly deleted it, partly because Raptor seems to be believe the rest of us follow in his mouse clicks.

(Yes, Raptor, it is just you.)

I can't wait until we bring the grail into effect. It'll cut out childish bullshit like this, becuase it locks posts in for anyone below admin level after a few minutes, and even if someone does delete their message, we can still retrieve it afterwards. All hail TP's programming might!

Edit: oh, BTW Xpirex: What bullying has been going on? As far as I can see, krets neatly rebutted each of the points in the article, one which I'm assumnig you didn't write, simply blindly followed, and Raptor said he's read it before and still doesn't give a flying fuck. I'm not spotting the bullying here. Please...feel free to point it out.

But, you do know the rules around here. Don't just go and fuck up the continuity of a thread by editing out large chunks of text from old posts of yours. What's said is said...there's no taking it back. What you have done is, as Wes pointed out, incredibly selfish, becuase you have denied others the chance to come in and read the article and post their opinion about it. They have a right to do it, so who are you to deny them that right?

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 01-31-2004).]

Wes: Google watch is fairly old news, and like most conspiracy theories (which is what I would classify it as) is easily rebutted by a few points (most of which krets kindly pointed out).

Xpirex's second post was rather useless, in that was basically screaming "look at me! I'm an attention whore!" I may have overreacted and should've thought twice before I posted, but hindsight is of course 20/20.

[This message has been edited by Raptor (edited 02-01-2004).]

Bullying?

I mean....really xpi, is it just that there hasn't been enough bullshit around here for you lately?

Forgive us if we can't see every entity larger than oursleves as the devil the way you do.

Forgive us if we require more than one half-ass website's point of view as a basis for condemning the rest of the world.

Forgive us if we don't jump evey time you stomp your foot....

[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 01-31-2004).]

Oh man now your just pissing me off.. why don't you find out what happened before opening your rash mouths... I got some insulting and very nasty mails so I removed the whole post.. happy now? I hardly see that as being selfish.. I just wanted to stop the nasty reactions.... sorry to deprive you of another target. You don't own me or what I say.. this is not Fucking America.. as much as you would like to.. you don't own the internet.. I delete what I want..and your not going to make me feel bad for doing so..you know what to do with that being selfishness comment..

I just post a couple of things that I am curious about.. in order to get your opinions ... not necessarily what I believe at all... but there are some love to attack me.. cos that's what they like to do.. There are some real nasty vicious people in here. Really not very kind.. Who the hell do some of you think you are? You may be surpassed to know this but many in here on the quiet sidelines think that some of you self appointed know-alls are just arrogant self-promoting %$#@!'s. Lacking in any humility or real class. I know because I have received mails from those too. Is it a coincidence that it's always the godless ones that are like this?

Do you all really think that what you think and post is right? or valid, or true? or connected with true reality? or good? Are all your facts correct? Man.. enough of you talk so much rubbish and promote lies and outright untruths often enough.. but somehow you tickle each other and pretend to be such understanding friends, modern and liberal. It's all fake.

So get offended.. say something smart.. add more nastiness.. I really don't care that much anymore. loveless people. I have my faults but I mean no harm.. but your constant cynicism spoils this place.

[edit]massive deletion took place here... yes right here...[/edit]

[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 02-01-2004).]

Xpirex: So lets see:

1. You post a link to Googlewatch.

2. Some people here say that it:

a) Has been posted before.

b) Is largely considered to be heavily biased.

3. Unbeknowst to the vast majority of us you get some emails.

4. You remove you first two post in the thread without any explanation.

5. People comment on this.

6. You get upset.

-----------
As we didn't know about 3 and you did 4 how do you think people were going to raact? Try putting yourself in our shoes.

[edit: typos - damn docilebob's fat fingers!! ]

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org

XPI -

we're the ones who attack you?

I do beleive your second post went something along the lines of "that's right, just bury your heads in sand, stay ignorant" or something close to that.

Talk about ebing an arrogant self promoting "%$#@!".

If you got emails from people, then address those people. You don't have to be a fucking cry-baby about it. You're a little too old for hissy-fits.

He sounds like religious fundamentalist to me...(no offence)

quote:

---

I delete what I want..and your not going to make me feel bad for doing so..you know what to do with that being selfishness comment..

---

I don't think anyone wants to make you feel bad Xpirex, but you have made it difficult to comment on this as you have deleted the posts a lot of the comments were referring to.

quote:

---

but somehow you tickle each other and pretend to be such understanding friends, modern and liberal. It's all fake.

---

Oh really?

:::tao:::

I've been caught! All my friendliness charade has been revealed, I must confess i hate you all for no apparent reason.

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

quote:

---

I delete what I want..and your not going to make me feel bad for doing so

---

But you seem to have no qualms about crying "victim" for everything else.

If you got e-mail from people, address those people. Don't lump everyone else in with them.

But I suppose that would be admitting it's not you against the world.

Pffffffffffffff

__________________________________________
"Art has to be forgotten. Beauty must be realized."
Piet Mondriaan

Mexican food for dinner Rins?

:::11oh1:::

Hell yeah... that would be a good idea for tomorrow, do you think i could 'bully' some taco-shells?

__________________________________________
"Art has to be forgotten. Beauty must be realized."
Piet Mondriaan

There's tickling?

It's not with that tentacle porn crap, is it?

______________
Is This Thing On?

Bleah...

Emps: always the calming influence... there is wisdom on your side of the pond as always.. shame about the other side.

quote:

---

Ruski: He sounds like religious fundamentalist to me...(no offence)

---

Oh dear.. you would have me locked up in Cuba second wouldn't you. For expressing and defending myself? Since when did you learn to think like them? Oh I forget you too originate from a police state too. Carry on and you'll me made a moderator in here in no time...




[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 02-02-2004).]

I must admit, if I were in Xpirex's shoes I'd do the same thing and not think twice about how I might upset some people at the asylum.

Come on people, these are free waters, but free don?t always mean smooth sailing. Shit just happens sometimes.

And seeing as a forum isn't the same as a conversation (being that people can stumble across a post from ages old and read it like it was said 5 min's ago), I think being able to remove one's own comments is a damn good thing. Hell, I still get at least one email a week from comments I've made tucked away in the asylum archives.

Not that I mind, but if the new asylum is going to take away my ability to remove what I post then I can assure you, I'll be finding another forum to spend my idle time at.

I think you lot need to have a good think about how conversations evolve and persist when using forum software, and ask yourself weather or not you really want to add such features that'll likely cause more conflict and bullshit than they hope to solve.

well, I guess you'll either have to find a new forum in the near future, cameron, or live with the fact that you'll need a mod to remove a post.
(though there is a pretty high time limit in which you can still do it yourself... half a day right now, I believe).
It would be a shame to see you go,
but I believe it should be some hazzle to get your words 'taken back'. (And most of our mods are pretty open to reason )

Now, attacking someone via mail for an opinionated post in a discussion forum is silly.
Personally, I'd have dragged such an occurence completly out into the open, all emails posted.
But that's just me.

So long,
TP

Cameron - I think you're missing one vital point here: Xpirex posted this a few days ago.

Then he came back to it and posted an insulting message towards everyone. That same day is when the rest of the replys started coming here....

Nobody dug up an ancient post of his for the sake of attacking him. . .

He threw his insults and allegedly got some emails in response, and then came back crying about it. That's quite a bit different from catching flack for something you innocently posted a long time ago.

I've got no problem with preventing someone from deleting a whole thread. But not being able to edit your own message would be taking things a little too far IMHO.

Regardless of the circumstances.

I once remember a member of this forum wishing all of his posts and replies to be removed from the asylum. And the Doc obliged. He probably didn't want to remove this member?s entire history from this message board but he did so anyway because he probably felt it was not really his place to make or overrule that decision.

All I'm saying is that sometimes we do or say things we later realise are silly. Some of those things are better off not being set in stone. From what I'm hearing, with the new asylum they will be and I see no positive benefit for this. Aside from a couple of members missing out on the latest in-house soap opera, I can?t see a justifiable reason to keep such concrete records of what everyone posts aside to help fuel conflicting situations.

Maybe I just can't see the good side to this so if you can give me a positive reason why something like this would help the asylum then I'll be open to it.

You know...after much consideration, I've kinda gotta agree with Cameron here. The rollback feature should be enough to prevent malicious post deletion. If we decide it shouldn't be gone, we can get it back. I know it may seem like a bit of a turn around for me, but really, I'd never made a decision in the first place. I was simply following along, very sheep-like. But now...it has taken much consideration, but now I've decided against it. It's a fairly easy procedure to remove it anyway...

I wish I knew what 'rollback' feature skaarjj is talking about.

As for 'person wanting all his posts removed' - that was exactly what I was thinking when I said 'you'll have to contact a mod'.
It just shouldn't be in the postees power, though a reasonable (and polite request to the people who have the power should accomplish that.

Think before you post!


I just looked: The current edit time limit in the grail is 10 minutes. Enough to fix typos and correct a link. I'd be more than willing to extend that to an hour, so that you can remove your posts early on, if you feel remorse. But coming back after a week, and just being able to remove everything you said is no behaviour we should tolerate.

Sorry, the 'rollback' thing I was talking about (I've been dealing with windows XP too much lately...that word is stuck in my head) is the one where we can revert a post to the state it was at before it was edited. I may be wrong, this feature may only be in the FAQ, but i think it's available in the forum module too...isn't it?

quote:

---

is no behaviour we should tolerate

---

It's the idea of enforcing that which upsets me. Should you need to go to such measures? Shouldn?t that be a decision made by the user.

I agree, sometimes someone might abuse this and upset a couple of people, but for the most part I believe such an enforcement would cause more problems than it solves. I would hope that we can trust the majority of the users to act in good faith, in the rare times that this doesn't happen we have trusted people with higher rights step in, their called mods, and that's what they do, moderate unfair practices.

I suppose being able to bring the content back in the rare instance that it was removed without just cause wouldn't be such a bad thing, but preventing the user from removing it in the first place will likely cause all kids of issues and place a higher burden on the mods of the forum.

The "think before you post? statement is all well and good, but I can assure you it won't always happen.

People will post things without thinking of every possible outcome. Hell, I do it all the time. Someone will post something that upsets or offends someone which they didn't intend to offend. In such a case it would be wise and reasonable for them to remove the offending content at the risk of offending further readers and as a form of an apology to those whom they have already offended. But having to seek out a mod to do that? Seems like gross overkill to me, and it'll only likely prolong the process of calming any tension caused my such things.

We won't ever be able to avoid conflict, with such varied members it's simply not possible, but to remove a means of resolution would only seem to fuel the fires would it not?

Edit: Saying that I'd find another forum was probably a little strong, I doubt I'd ever be able to leave the asylum regardless of it's inner workings, but I still feel quite strongly about this issue.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 02-02-2004).]

XHTML has a del tag and an associated <ins> tag precisely for these situations.

Why not make use of it?

Social etiquette could (and should!) say that no one can be blasted for language since <del>eted. Furthermore, items <ins>erted could act to clarify an otherwise opaque or poorly worded statement.

No information gets lost, and no offending, thoughtless posts hang around without proper modification. Seems like a perfect situation to me.

THis conversation has been had over at the new version as well - http://grail.coonabibba.de/19069

I agree wholeheartedly that inability to edit your own posts is simply ridiculous.

Yes, Xpi's behavior here was very childish. But what has his deletion of his words accomplish? Nothing. Now a couple of people didn't get to see what he posted.

Big deal!?

Who cares?

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to edit posts after the fact, and nobody should need to come ask a mod to do so.

It just feels way too totalitarian, and I can't see any valid reason for it.

i hafta say that "think before you type" is spot on here. i don't see what's wrong with making people be responsible for what they say. this is the only form of communication where you can 'take back' what you've said. gawd forbid anyone go back and actually apologize for whatever dickhead/offensive comment they've made. generally, if it's something that offensive or unnecessary, a mod will edit it out anyway.

i also think that it's more of a benefit for people to see how a conflict or heated debate/discussion is worked out. to do that, you need to see all points of the discussion, which can't be done if people go back in and delete their posts. and really, isn't that the point of posting here, to get different opinions/points/perspectives on things? surely none of us posts with the assumption that everyone is going to agree with our view on the given subject.

granted, this doesn't happen often, but this isn't the first time that xpirex has done this. we have the benefit of anonymity here (somewhat) and people seem to think that's license for them to act out and be a shit stirer (is that a word? heh)....especially when they can go back and delete what they've said to cause the situation and then play the victim!

like i said last time this discussion came about, i would like to see this implemented on an individual basis (if possible), as the majority of us don't do much editing to our posts. really, it's like punishing the majority for the actions of the few. if the only choice is to have it or not have it... then i'd hafta go with not having it.

But again....what's the worse that happens? Some people don't get to see how a stupid argument started, or how someone threw a hissy-fit?

Is that really losing anything?

The people who do these things generally do so consistently enough that we can simply chalk such behavior up to "the usual" and be on our merry way...

DL-44 Either that or they don't get to see what the impetous for some real point that were made later on in the thread. Some hot head posting those ideas might not go over too well, but someone a bit more even-keeled discussing something that doesn't exist anymore tends to disorient the reader.

If this is being saved for the "masses" to peruse later... shouldn't it be able to be followed? It doesn't do to call these 'threads' of information if we're always cutting them with the deletion scissors.

I have to agree with TP and Lacuna here, think before you post. If you don't want to come off as an ass... DON'T come off as an ass. If you DO intend on being an ass... expect a few (or more) repercussions. It just comes down to being responsible for what you say and meaning what you say. If you can't stand by it even though you believe it you aren't worth the air you breathe. Take some heat and explain your reasons for believing what you do. Discussions START that way.

personally, the ideal situation in my view is that a user can edit his posts as he pleases, and both he and any mods can view his editing history.

if an issue occurs where, for example, someone flames another person, then deletes those comments, a mod can simply review his editing history, and quote from it, if he/she feels it helps shed light on the incident.





reitsma

quote:

---

if we're always cutting them with the deletion scissors.

---

But.......we're not.

It happens every now and then, and mostly with shit that doesn't matter.

"think before you post" is a fantastic idea.

The problem is that - as I said - there are plenty of legitimate reasons for editing a post after the fact, and punishing everyone because the occasional jackass deletes his post is absurd.

I think points have been made... and frankly, this thread no longer deserves to live.


So to sum up... read DL-44's posts again.