Accountability in the Cadred Comments System
@ Cadred version 3 forum

I am a fan of free speech. That's one of the reasons I fell in love with the wonderful medium of communication that later became known as the Internet. While I am a fan of free speech I am also an experienced forum admin with over a decade of experience on various forums (with varying degrees of activity), as well as a former IRC sysop and virgin.net moderator. This means I understand that there are times when something needs to be edited or removed for a perfectly acceptable reason that doesn't really infringe on freedom of speech. I understand also that in some cases free speech is not a stated aim of a given forum or site, or that they allow as much freedom as is possible without breaking certain laws or statutes of their respective country. In some cases it is just plain inappropriate to allow certain things to be posted (for example adult material on a children's forum).

In all, or certainly most, of those cases the policy of removal or editing is clearly defined and highly transparent. What is more important, however, is that in most cases it is made obvious when action has been taken.

On Cadred, however, it is entirely hidden. "Ninja edits" are common and sometimes cause confusion in threads, and more alarmingly your comments could be (and sometimes are) edited by an admin or moderator without your knowledge and with no notification.

Reserving the right to remove material of any kind for any reason is fine, and Cadred does this (presumably). I disagree with the policy, but I respect your right to choose it. What I <strong>STRONGLY</strong> disagree with, however, is the practice of editing someone's post without any notification to the user, and even more disturbingly - without any way for anyone reading a thread to tell that the post has been edited. The upshot of this is that I could make a post, which then gets edited by an admin or moderator, and people read that post assuming that I posted it as is. In other words you're potentially deceiving people as to the original content and wording of someone's post. This is bad.

My suggestion/request is as follows:

Any edits made to a post, either by the poster or by a moderator/admin, should include a "last edited" time-stamp which also indicates who edited it.

Any deletion of a post/thread should automatically send a private message to the poster stating that it was deleted, by whom and (ideally) the reason for the removal.

This would not only improve the readability of some threads, it would also help to ward against potential admin abuse and help the end user have more faith in your site and system.

Vini Holden // ViniH Posted 1 month ago: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:58:58 +0000

Comments

Report abusive content