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

[Dean Mah]

On 11/7/07, Joel D Canfield <joel at streamliine.com> wrote:
> > My suggestion is simple: tell them to get stuffed. Once you
> > have posted
> > something to a public list (such as thelist), you can't
> > revoke it later - it's already out there.
>
> Which approach is likely to garner greater support from the community at
> large, and future potential members of the community: this, or "sure,
> we'd love to help" ? I prefer the latter.
>
> If this is just an occasional request, we should do what we can to keep
> the content, without needing to identify the author. But if someone
> insists that their entire post be removed along with their name,
> sometimes the needs of an individual outweigh the immediate perceived
> benefit to the community.
>
> I know for myself that if the official stance of evolt.org were
> uncooperative instead of helpful, I wouldn't be here.
>
> If, on the other hand, we're deluged with so many requests to remove
> content that it'll seriously damage the site, archives, whatever, we
> have a bigger (and completely different) problem.
>
> joel

Quite honestly, it's a PITA to remove posts or even obscure them from
thelist.  You have to remove them from at least a few places: the mbox
file for the week, the HTML archived version of the post, and the txt
gzip'ed version of the archive.  There is also a "thelist" table in
the tips database that archives every post as well.  I usually forget
to update that one.  Any tips associated with the post should be
checked as well to make sure they're clean.  You also need to go
through all of the posts that quote the "offending" post and sanitize
them.  Not to mention the gaping hole that removal of a post leaves.
Of course, this doesn't help the fact that official and unofficial
caches/copies of the posts are still out there.

Dean