Should banned user mods/maps/etc be deleted from these boards?

[cleveland]

Hi All,

Sorry for my naivete, but I haven't been around for a while. I just learned of the Great Schism, where many of the oldtimers I liked & respected were banned from this forum, only to be sentenced to a different boring forum.

So I'd like to take a modest straw poll.

Premise: Given that the purpose of this board is to be a sales tool, should banned user original contributions be deleted from the boards? It only seems fair that if I ban a contributor from the board, I should not benefit from their past contributions, no?

Very curious to hear the community's opinion...

[Knai]

I voted no. The board is a sales tool, yes, but its also a community. If the mods remove a user, contributions and all, then its just massive collateral damage against the community as a whole. We don't need that by any means. Treating the board as a single entity justifies the fairness well enough, but that isn't accurate by any means.

[DeadlyShoe]

Removing content threads from banned users does nothing except make that content harder to find for new players, which does noone any good.

Poll is too passive aggressive by half. Didn't vote.

[Fantomen]

IMO it should be up to the creator. If Sombre etc. wants the content removed then it should be, if not then it should not. Very simple.

The best would be to delete the content but keep the threads and replace the OP with links to the relevant threads on the new forum, that way everyone gets access to the latest updates.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im not sure who it is you are referring to as doing the deleting. Are you asking if the owners should? Or if Shrapnel should?

I think this was semi-decided back when in 2004 when another banned person went thru and deleted as many of his own programs and posts as he could find. Thats when the 30-minute edit window was reinstated, and the backups of uploaded items. The poster no longer gets those choices. Anything put on a companys server is considered to be their property.

BUT on the other hand, the users argued that the FIRST post of every thread should continue to be able to be edited. We won that back. Since most threads about mods and maps use the first post to store the link, they can be edited to point somewhere else. Anything that has been uploaded to the forum will still be there but the link would be broken. Whether or not they SHOULD be Id say no. It should be up to the author to decide, not anyone else.

By the way, the comment of "only to be sentenced to a different boring forum" seems strange. I got the impression they had happily created that forum to prove the premise that a forum without strict moderation could be vibrant and active. I understand that there are some very entertaining threads there.

[rabelais]

They were actually BANNED here? Someone point me to the thread?

What the hey-ho could cause this? It should indeed be up to the author of the content. If it isn't that's somewhere between lame and theft.

[13lackGu4rd]

Originally Posted by rabelais

What the hey-ho could cause this? It should indeed be up to the author of the content. If it isn't that's somewhere between lame and theft.

well, it would have been theft is it wasn't for all the legal mumbo jumbo everyone has to agree on before creating an account. this legal mumbo jumbo basically means the company can do whatever they want with anything that appears on their forums, as well as many other boring things that nobody actually cares to read.

companies hire lawyers for a reason, to cover their asses in various situations. the customer, who generally isn't a lawyer by training, doesn't really have a clue about all those things he must agree on in order to create an account on the forums, and to play the actual game too while we're at it. so they put up various clauses that let them get away with anything they'll ever want by sneaking it in with all the other legalese.

so, to be honest, the community's opinion in this matter doesn't matter at all. the law is very clear, and by playing this game and having accounts here, we've all agreed to these terms, whether we like(or even know) about them or not.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

It should be up to the author to decide, not anyone else.

But (if my understanding on forum workings is correct) part of this argument/problem then though is the situation that arises when banned members can not access their threads/first posts in order to decided whether or not their work should be available to others.

As in that case it is not the author who is deciding whether or not his/her content is available to others (as you and many others say it should be), but instead it is those who are preventing the author from accessing the threads that author created that are deciding the matter. (unless banned members/authors will have any requests they make honoured with regards content they created that they now wish to be made unavailable/removed)

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I think this was semi-decided back when in 2004 when another banned person went thru and deleted as many of his own programs and posts as he could find. Thats when the 30-minute edit window was reinstated, and the backups of uploaded items. The poster no longer gets those choices. Anything put on a companys server is considered to be their property.

This doesn't hold up in court actually. At least in the US, terms of service agreements are often thrown out as non-binding, especially when they conflict with other established rights. I am not a lawyer, but I am virtually certain that a creator's implicit copyright to work he creates trumps any boilerplate terms of service agreement. The only way to relinquish copyright in the US is to specifically agree to do so for a work.

So just because you clicked 'yes' to 5 pages of legal gobbledegook doesn't mean those 5 pages trump other legal considerations.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

This doesn't hold up in court actually. At least in the US, terms of service agreements are often thrown out as non-binding, especially when they conflict with other established rights. I am not a lawyer, but I am virtually certain that a creator's implicit copyright to work he creates trumps any boilerplate terms of service agreement. The only way to relinquish copyright in the US is to specifically agree to do so for a work.

So just because you clicked 'yes' to 5 pages of legal gobbledegook doesn't mean those 5 pages trump other legal considerations.

Which instantly renders forums, blogs and much of the internet unusable,
since I just violated your copyright by copying your post into mine.

Discussions, archives, etc, all break if some of the content can be removed/changed at whim. Should you be able to delete not only your posts, but any posts that quote them, paraphrase them etc? All of which could be considered derivative works.

Any challenges to the boilerplate would likely apply to making use of the content in another form. If Shrapnel wanted to package up a bunch of mods and sell them, that would be a problem. Requiring them to delete content you've already allowed them to publish on the site is more like trying to require everyone who has a copy of your book to destroy it.