I haven't been active much lately so I'm just now discovering the blowup that resulted in Adatesman "leaving" the site and the bullshit that has followed with him deleting large amount of content from the lab and possibly other forums. THAT SHOULD NEVER BE PERMITTED TO HAPPEN. Especially since he announced his intentions in advance.

Thread continuity is key to any value this site may have and is, at the very least, a simple courtesy owed to the other contributors. Everyone who posts to this site knows they are contributing to an archived dialogue. They also have every reason to expect that the site owners/managers will maintain thread and archive integrity.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. When a person decides to post to this site, they are making a contribution to the archive of collective discourse. Simple as that. To withdraw ones contributions is to mar the contributions of the others here.

To do so is childish and disrespectful, to allow it to happen on your site is the epitome of unprofessionalism.

Disagree. posts have always been the "property" of the person who posts it. You can add and remove anything you want whenever you want. RC.com owns the site, not the content. It is in their best interests to run their site in such a way that valuable contributors do not leave and take their information with them...

you give permission that such content may be used at the sole discretion of Rockclimbing.com anywhere else on the site

User Requested Post Removal Policy
As an open public forum user, you are responsible for your own communications and are responsible for the consequences of posting those communications. We will usually not honor requests for post removals or editing. You are welcome to edit or remove your own posts.

Disagree. posts have always been the "property" of the person who posts it. You can add and remove anything you want whenever you want. RC.com owns the site, not the content. It is in their best interests to run their site in such a way that valuable contributors do not leave and take their information with them.

we've already seen folks like John Gill, John Long, Ammon, ClimbNow1( dunno his real name but damn good photos) leave. I have to believe some of the reasoning behind it is the major signal to noise discrepancy. and now harassment without admin. defense.

the unprofessional move was Daniel allowing JT and Curt to continue to poke, jab and push Aric out of here.

It reads to me that they can put it up on the front page or whatever. And they can delete it as they see fit.. not that you can't change it.

Maybe you were still a mod then but isn't the only reason PTPP's stuff is still intact is that he was banned before he could edit it

If a persons posts are their "property", then you would be able to delete your content from within the body of my post, but you cannot. Allowing the archive to be bastardized by arbitrarily allowing people to delete unquoted content is bullshit and a flaw in the system.

This model was chosen for the site, so I expect the owners/operators to stand behind it.

My point was primarily related to the part I bolded. That part seems to say that once you post something here, RC.com has a future right to use it any way they like--except for commercial gain, which is specifically not allowed without the user's permission.

As far as PTPP goes, I have no idea if he had any desire to delete any of his content when he left.

Curt

shrug.. not going to get any sympathy from me. If you think it is valuable then you best quote it or else it could be gone at any time.

Making posts permanent would seem to be very difficult to control since it wouldn't allow any editing (if delete isnt an option then editing to ____ still would be). I would also expect the amount of quality posts to plummet even further than the already dismal level. People aren't being paid to contribute to this site hence their material is not owned by the site.

See the next part that i posted.. another section allows you to delete as much as you want. they just won't do it for you.. much to Dingus's dismay

I never said they won't allow you to delete your posts. My point is that the content on servers is archived all the time and even after you delete a post, there is a reasonably good chance they still have it somewhere--particularly if the post existed for a while. And, they reserve the right to use anything you have previously posted in the future. I have never seen them do this, only that the T.O.S. apparently allows for it.

Curt

Getting rid of the option to delete would at least be a good start.

Banning those who actually follow through on their threats to edit all of their posts in to oblivion would be then next step.

How about instead having management improve conditions so that users who have contributed a lot do not want to leave in such a way. Oh wait.. that required work and effort. Things this staff has avoided despite the urging for many years ie route database, photos, and a killfile feature

nah.. take the lazy way out like the rest of the country.. take a pill to solve the symptom not the disease.

While I agree with you on that, it is somewhat of a separate issue and does nothing to address the times when a person does not do the ethical thing and honor their implicit agreement. The agreement that their posts are to be part of a dialogue and that other posters not only can, but necessarily do rely on their content to give context and meaning to their own.

why should someone who was treated the way Aric was owe this site or any of the users on it anything?

again.. if you don't treat people like crap then they won't have any reason to delete their content.

Jake,

I have seen a few comments similar to yours. Although not exactly on point to the main topic here, I feel the need to jump in and comment.

IMHO, Aric is not a victim. During his drawn out departure from this site he made a number of post trying to portray himself as such, but I feel that reality is somewhat different. I saw him dish out just as much "abuse" as he got. He seemed to enjoy it when it was going his way. Toward the end of his association with this site he seemed more than willing to get personal and incredibly insulting to users while in his role as a moderator.

Although I agree that he owes the site and its users nothing, his scorched earth departure exhibits a huge lack of class and maturity. However, i am not sure what the site management could do to stop it short of removing the delete and edit functions, which would do little to help the overall content of this site.

either way.. the info is gone and in the context of this thread that is what matters and is the way that it should be.

Again, the "info" is probably not permanently gone, it simply can't be viewed by users at the present time. Whether that is right or wrong is more the current issue.

Curt

Pretty sure you are wrong. A mod would have to confirm it though.

I'm not so sure about that. Have you read the Terms of Service here? Here is the final Term:


The bolding is mine. I hadn't actually given it much thought, previously--but it does appear to me (from this) that the site claims a future right to a user's posts. In practice, I think users have had a right to control their content, but this current practice seems to conflict with the T.O.S., unless of course I'm reading it wrong.

Curt