[theforum] [Fwd: [Content] Feedback: Please remove my name]

Drs Marcel Feenstra, MALD, MBA marcel at wintasy.com
Wed Nov 7 08:38:07 CST 2007


Dean Mah wrote:

> So as I mentioned in a previous message, we get the following types of
> requests:
> 
> > -- The following message was sent using the feedback page --
> >
> > Could you please remove my old posts and comments from Evolt?  I'm no
> > longer involved in web development and I think when my current
> clients
> > google me, and they see these comments, it really confounds them.  I
> > appreciate your help!
> 
> This is a pretty tame version of what we see.  Other people are quite
> desperate and can throw in the occasional reference to legal action.
> In
> the past, our policy has been to *not* remove posts from thelist or
> comments that contribute to greater community knowledge as a whole.  We
> typically have not obscured names or e-mail addresses either.
> 
> So is it time to re-visit this policy?  As mentioned previously, we
> believe that people have the ultimate copyright/control over their
> content.  But obviously removing content can cause a gaping hole in the
> archive, or in the case of a comment, will remove all of the child
> comments of the one that you are deleting.  Would it be enough to
> obscure/remove the poster's name?

Simply obscuring the name would probably not be sufficient to deal with the
copyright issue (but IANAL). Instead of deleting the post completely (along
with all dependent records), perhaps you could replace the content of the
post by something like "[deleted at the author's request]"? Then again, if
posts are quoted in comments, replacing the content could cause a *lot* of
work (and make the thread almost unintelligible)... So perhaps a viable
approach would be:

1) send a standard e-mail explaining the problems caused by deletion, and
asking if it would be OK to obscure/remove the name;
2) if the author insists, remove the post altogether.

Marcel




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