Posted by Rick [Rick] on November 04, 1999 at 01:50:30 {yxewwqp4aA7mY4XD8K2cFMFBt36Xyc}:
In Reply to: *****Let's Cut to the Chase posted by Friend on November 03, 1999 at 20:52:30:
Hello Friend, I decided to get up briefly to see if the whole flap is at a meltdown. There's an old saying that you don't cry over spilled milk. The administrator who deleted these posts as I explained performed a forced deletion that is permanent. Kristin has not gotten back to me and I take this to possibly mean her ftp download script did not capture Greg's posts in question.
> Regardless, it is my position that administrators of this site have every right to do as they see fit regardless of H2O’s FPP or not. On the other hand participants have the prerogative of participating or not. It is my desire to continue supporting H2O as it serves the interest of truth and the needs of people associating as Jehovah’s witnesses.
I sincerely hope you don't mean that the ability to recover permanently deleted posts is a requisite for your continued posting. I would miss you greatly as you are like a breath of fresh air in your ability to balance past historical values with future organizational potential.
I also have to wonder if a major server glitch ever wiped out the posts and we had to start over, then would I get blamed? Would everyone leave in disgust? People want reliability and they want accountability, and it all seems on my shoulders. If people were serious then why doesn't someone have the posts from Greg? Why is the weight of these 184,000+ posts resting squarely on my shoulders? I have not had one offer to mirror this site and its archives. Universities spend hundreds of gigabytes on archiving garbage like alt.sex but cannot offer a few gigabytes to archive our posts?
See, the whole thing is frustrating because everyone demands the posts are restored as if they are paying customers without stopping to think that there are no backups. Suppose an administrator out of desperation tried to delete pornography and accidentally deleted a topic by AF? I shudder to think. An honest mistake like that would probably get every accusation hurled.
What is done is done. As for the alleged misapplication of the FPP, suppose as purely an analogy some JW scientist with a Ph.D. posts, and gets slammed by A.F., and another scientist posts to A.F. claiming he agrees with the first scientist. The problem is that the second scientist has the same registration screen name (in brackets) as the first. It's obvious the first scientist invented the second one to give himself credibility. Not only embarassing to JWs, and perhaps quite understanding based on mitigating circumstances, nonetheless a moderator/administrator removes the topics. Not having access to the tools, he deletes them directly. Doing this means the posts are not recoverable, and not customarily displayed for 7 days in the deleted bin. Does not the FPP support his removal based on this exact set of circumstances, and is that basically not what happened? Also, should everyone demand the administrator recovers the posts when this is clearly impossible, and when the "shrinkwrap" license agreement on our FPP clearly warns the potential for data loss at any time, and to backup relevant important posts?
Not trying to justify obvious mistakes, just trying to interject some realities and reason. You can't make posts permanently deleted reappear out of thin air, and those who ignored the admonishment to backup relevant posts are not 100% blameless. It's not like one can say, "why should I put forth a little effort to backup important topics, even if slight, when I'm paying an arm and a leg?" It's not like this is AOL, this is a volunteer effort. If I start demanding that those who assist in administration bear unreasonable responsibility for restoring posts that are permanently deleted (less possible than pulling a rabit out of a hat), then I'm going to end up maintaining this site all by my lonesome.
Well, it's back to bed. I just wanted to throw in some more issues for everyone to mull over before they too self-righteously condemn the manner this was handled, or insist on Greg's apology when he clearly said that he is not returning to this site. (So how can he apologize if he's not here? Just trying to be a little reasonable in my thinking here.)
Some of this is thrown in for everyone in general and not meant just for you, Friend, because I realize some of the issues I mentioned are no-brainers with you.
Rick