Posted by M5 on March 25, 1999 at 16:28:21 {MWKglaQqh7SVg}:
Riddle:
This riddle is complex and grows more complex daily, so I shall break it into two parts A and B.
Part A: This H2O admin and moderator discovered thousands of posts in the archives dating back several years for each of several known "apostates." This puzzled this admin because of the current M14 controversy. The heart of the controversy is the claim M14 doesn't allow certain "apostates" to post or removes "most of" their posts. Checking the files on M14 it was discovered he has been with H2O at least 2 years if not longer. Rick confirmed it is impossible for deleted threads to rebuild, and deleted posts cannot rename back to original names. Besides, deleted posts are not saved more than 6-9 months. I wondered how so many thousands of posts, over 10 megabytes per "apostate," got into the archives when M14 purportedly removed "most of them," violating their free speech?
Part B: Congratulations if you solved Part A of this riddle. There's a second part to the riddle, believe it or not. There are dozens of postings on the current board from these same apostates, all the way to the bottom of the board. How is this possible when M14 has violated free speech in removing most of them? See for yourself the statistics of each poster Looking at these stats, the average visitor has posted approximately 5 - 7 postings over the last 2-3 weeks. However, look at a sampling of the number of posts M14 chose not to remove, posted in a 2 week period by those claiming H2O violates their free speech:
The only one it appears *might* be getting too many deletions is N.H. I request M14 to exercise more care with N.H. who has posted protests. Many understand his "vitriolic" Norwegian style and don't take this personally. I also request N.H. to try and go lighter on the sarcasm, letting the facts speak for themselves. Having digressed from the point, Part B of this riddle is especially puzzling. How is it possible for M14 to have singled out these individuals when their volume of posting is 5-10 times greater than the average visitor's? One cannot argue, "but J.H. had 300 posts in 3 weeks and now has only 99!" because flooding the board with posts is not proper netiquette. Surely the board wouldn't be flooded with J.H. and other's posts if M14 didn't delete any, because they know better! The space they occupy alone is pushing the limit because if *everybody* followed their lead then H2O would require archiving on a daily basis (vs. every 2-3 weeks). This would cancel out the benefits. Seeing the numbers above, should we have a daily limit to prevent H2O from getting so huge nobody has the time to read it? (Other boards have similar policies.) This part of the riddle is strange because even with M14's deletions I see huge numbers from these few. (They should thank Rick for archiving this number of posts monthly without even a wimper, if anything.)
Help solve these two parts of this mysterious riddle!
M5