I see to extremes
two … 
For what it’s worth, I think that users should not be able to delete
posts, particularly for “embarrassment, mistakes” etc. If the message
was worth posting it should remain - if not, it will die on the vine.
Whole threads should not be removed at the whim of a user - there may
(as has been said) be excellent material for other users.
The only grounds that messages should be removed by admins should be
privacy exposure, or where the message runs completely outwith our code of
conduct.
Even the most stupid post can give rise to a sensible discussion, which
other users may learn from.
This is best practice, and we should adopt it.
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I find myself being persuaded by the anti-deletion arguments. At the very least, one person should not be able to delete another person’s post, which means that someone who starts a thread should not have the power to delete everyone else’s replies to it by deleting the entire thread.
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Yes I agree with not being able to delete other’s responses. And as I understand it, it is currently not possible for a user to delete a thread unless a moderator intervenes.
As far as moderation intervention policy goes for topic deletion, I think it should be on a case-by-case basis balancing the following:
- code of conduct
- user embarrassment / privacy exposure / simple typos
- number / effort in replies
- potential usefulness of discussion (and learning from mistakes)
And keeping in mind, the users may be fine with “anonymisation” of a post (i.e. remove user-related information from the post and change the poster to “DeletedUser”, for example).
Hi. I asked for one of my posts to be deleted because my problem turned out to be a typo in one of the commands rather than a technical problem. I think it should still be deleted. It’s not about user embarrassment / privacy exposure, but about “quality control” of this forum, preventing “spam” and misleading posts, and not wasting the time of Qubes users who are searching for solutions to theirs problems (for example, in a search engine) and landing on my post that provides no solutions to their problems.
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This also happens on the mailing lists. Here’s a recent example.
It would be nice to have a unified deletion policy across all Qubes venues. That way we can document it and simply link to that documentation whenever anyone asks.
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You’re right. Updated my post. But it could also be that someone else makes a typo mistake. I’ve made typos as well in the past and a post of someone somewhere mentioning it could be a typo helped me solve the issue. But this may be only useful in very particular situations where typos are common, since they could happen anywhere.
But in the end I think it should be up to the person who made the typo to decide.
This sounds good to me. Although it may be challenging if the moderation capabilities are not feature-similar.
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We’re sorry, but your email message to [“qubes_os+9cdc00b92f50977f175a5dc12a0b3ba2@discoursemail.com”] (titled Re: [Qubes Forum] Cannot access to second hard drive [User Support]) didn’t work.
The topic you are replying to no longer exists – perhaps it was deleted? If you believe this is an error, contact a staff member.
The important part of my message seems to have been truncated:
We’re sorry, but your email message to [“qubes_os+9cdc00b92f50977f175a5dc12a0b3ba2@discoursemail.com”] (titled Re: [Qubes Forum] Cannot access to second hard drive [User Support]) didn’t work.
The topic you are replying to no longer exists – perhaps it was deleted? If you believe this is an error, contact a staff member.
Why do people do this?
Doesn’t matter if it was a user mistake - someone else could easily
make the same mistake/ typo in the future, and just deleting it without
comment is no help to anyone.
I admire people who say “stupid of me, it was …” - it shows more
character and a greater wish to contribute than just deleting messages.
You never know when someone else may find your foolishness helpful.
AND, of course, if many users make the same mistake, that points to
something wrong.
Here’s a policy - don’t delete anything, except “code of conduct” issues.
Edit posts where privacy is at issue. (Remembering that those who
interact via email have a copy anyway.)
Is there a time limit for how long users can go back and edit their own posts? If not, then users can always effectively delete their own posts by replacing the content with [Deleted] or similar. In this case, our policy can be, as unman suggested, that mods will intervene only when there’s a Code of Conduct violation or actual spam. In all other cases, it’s up to users to edit their own posts. No other mod deletion-type action should be expected. This would also ease the maintenance burden on mods, since we won’t have to act on so many requests for deletion. There can be a canned reply pointing to the deletion policy.
Yes I agree with not being able to delete other’s responses. And as I
understand it, it is currently not possible for a user to delete a
thread unless a moderator intervenes.
“Split-GPG setup failing; Qubes_GPG_DOMAIN not setting” from 12/26 had
an answer by unman.
original:
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/split-gpg-setup-failing-qubes-gpg-domain-not-setting/2079/1
unman’s answer:
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/split-gpg-setup-failing-qubes-gpg-domain-not-setting/2079/2
reply by OP:
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/split-gpg-setup-failing-qubes-gpg-domain-not-setting/2079/3
It doesn’t matter which link I use the thread is gone.
100% agree. This is how it should be.
This also happens on the mailing lists. Here’s a recent
example.
This is a good example. Even if you would somehow moderate the thread
away on groups.google.com it would still be visible for all times at
qubes-users
It would be nice to have a unified deletion policy across all Qubes
venues. That way we can document it and simply link to that
documentation whenever anyone asks.
That would mean agreeing on a policy that can actually be implemented on
all venues. This includes
- mailing lists
- qubes-devel
- qubes-project
- qubes-users
- this forum
The most restrictive of all those should be the mailing list, where it
is impossible to delete posts other than in the groups.google.com
archive (all other archives will be unaffected).
Equally with the forum (mailing list mode).
In cases of code of conduct violations we will of course use all methods
available on each platform to remove the posts as much as possible.
Added a brief section on moderation. Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.
2 Likes
I must say from the moderation perspective this is the ideal. From the user perspective, let’s see how it plays out. No suggestions from my side.
Checked the settings. New users (tl0 and tl1) can edit up to 24h, all others can edit up to 30 days.
Does this change anything? Should we increase it?
Currently the edit history of the post is public, which would defeat a bit users who would want to “hide” something. This is something we can also tweak (edit history visible to public)
I’m inclined to say we should make the edit history private. As for the time limit, 30 days is pretty long, but unlimited would work better in terms of user self-service.
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Checked the settings. New users can edit up to 24h, all others can
edit up to 30 days.
I’d prefer the user not being able to edit at all.
-
If there is a code of conduct violation the user is unlikely to
correct that themselves anyway and it’s a case for the moderators. -
Any other edit muddies the water, since it may change the original
meaning and already made replies may seem out of context. -
Keep in mind that edits are invisible to everyone using the
mailing list mode. We see the original post, but no edits.
It’s easy to see that those wishing to avoid the above would then start
to quote the original post in its entirety to bypass eventual subsequent
edits. That would degrade the readability for forum users though, I suspect.
Currently the edit history of the post is public, which would defeat
a bit users who would want to “hide” something. This is something we
can also tweak (edit history visible to public)
If this would be adopted, we would have made the life of the mods easier
but not addressed the central points made by unman, Raphael and myself.
What are the arguments for allowing edits?
On disabling edits
I’m not too fond of the idea of disabling edits. They can be pretty useful and are generally very minor. Github issues also allows users to reply by email as well as editing their posts.
This is not the use case for the edits. Giving the users the power to edit is for them to avoid having to ask moderators for something. This example of yours would instead fall under the moderators’ responsibility do deal with.
I think is a rather extreme case. Most likely people will just be fixing stuff on the messages. And you can always quote the person and that will not be affected by the edit.
Edits are really useful. Typos, adding disclaimers in the OP, small corrections, etc. This is how github issues works as well. In general, small stuff that wouldn’t be too critical if someone were to miss.
And this critique of yours also affects forum users, although a bit less. When they go back to a topic the don’t see it from the top. Instead, they see it from where they last were. If someone edits the first post, they will likely miss the change as well.
Maybe this edit or not to edit should have its own discussion?
edit: Also, emails of posts only ship 5 mins after they are posted so any changes done until then will be included in the email.This last paragraph is one such example
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It appears we agreed on a deletion policy and @adw has even updated the
Qubes OS website already. So I agree the scope of this topic is done.
Regarding edits: let’s maybe have a “wait and see” approach. If it turns
out edits are abused, we can start a new discussion.
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It appears we agreed on a deletion policy and @adw has even updated the
Qubes OS website already. So I agree the scope of this topic is done.
It does however look like the ‘delete’ button is still available in the
forum?