J,

It is "hopelessly impractical" in the sense that there will always be cases where it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement.

The only impractical cases I know of I excluded already [beta #22312].

"Hopelessly impractical" is your claim to defend.

To make a promise in the TOU, that promise must be possible to uphold in ALL cases.

That's like saying that a car warranty must be upheld under ALL road conditions. Ludicrous.

I see no problem with ensuring that the TOS specifically applies only to the messages (and perhaps files and photos) that the person him/herself posted under a given account.

("user leaves, requests deletion of all posts 10 years later"; etc.).

Each account has a fixed posterid value that applies across all groups' messages. That, or the account's email address, can certainly be used to find the user's messages regardless of when the request is made.

To quote Mark, in this thread:
"my lawyers interpreted it as I did not have to delete someone's messages in a group when they deleted their account. It's impractical to be able to remove all traces of someone who has participated in a discussion group."

I never claimed it was a legal requirement.

Nor would I want it to apply just because someone left a group or deleted an account. Deletion at will is already implemented, I only suggest that the TOS recognize and establish that as a desirable policy.

The OP requests that the existing one-by-one deletion be extended to a bulk feature that a group moderator can use. To me this does not seem like an impractical request.

As to "all traces" I agree that's impractical (e.g. my cited exclusions). But it isn't what I or the OP has asked for and shouldn't be what the TOS promises.

Shal

Since when was something being "hopelessly impractical” ever a reason for the EU not to mandate it…

… also if you delete your Facebook account all posts, likes, comments will be removed. If Facebook can manage it groups.io can.

 

Dave

(Not I am not commenting on the actually legality of keeping the info)

 

From: main@beta.groups.io <main@beta.groups.io> On Behalf Of J_Catlady
Sent: 25 September 2019 19:33
To: main@beta.groups.io
Subject: Re: [beta] delete old messages

 

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 11:03 AM, Shal Farley wrote:

Being able to provide one, two, or 100 examples where it was practical obviously does not prove its practical in general.

 

But it does show that it is not "hopelessly impractical" in general.

That's not what you need to show. It is "hopelessly impractical" in the sense that there will always be cases where it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement. To make a promise in the TOU, that promise must be possible to uphold in ALL cases. Not just the few that you pull out of a hat. This has zero to do with my not liking your examples (in fact, they were TLDR, because it doesn't even matter what they are).

I don't need to show that it's "hopelessly impractical" in all cases. I only need to show that there will always be cases, no matter how many or few, where it would be hopelessly impractical to implement ("user leaves, requests deletion of all posts 10 years later"; etc.).
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 11:03 AM, Shal Farley wrote:

Being able to provide one, two, or 100 examples where it was practical obviously does not prove its practical in general.

 

But it does show that it is not "hopelessly impractical" in general.

That's not what you need to show. It is "hopelessly impractical" in the sense that there will always be cases where it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement. To make a promise in the TOU, that promise must be possible to uphold in ALL cases. Not just the few that you pull out of a hat. This has zero to do with my not liking your examples (in fact, they were TLDR, because it doesn't even matter what they are).

I don't need to show that it's "hopelessly impractical" in all cases. I only need to show that there will always be cases, no matter how many or few, where it would be hopelessly impractical to implement ("user leaves, requests deletion of all posts 10 years later"; etc.).
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

J,

Disagree. Are you saying you can provide an example showing it's practical?

I simply said that the Yahoo TOS (pre-Verizon, anyway) provides example text that limits the license granted to the service. That limitation means that if the member (or Yahoo) removes their content then Yahoo would no longer have the right to display it. Yahoo treated that language as requiring that members be able to remove their content.

You'd have to be able to guarantee users that at any point in time, they could request their content be removed from any and all groups, regardless of whether they'd left any or all of those groups or even groups.io as a whole, whether a week, a month, or a decade later. I think that's pretty clearly impractical.

Yahoo did not find it to be impractical. I know of cases where Customer Care intervened to require that members be allowed back into groups in order to delete their messages, and also cases where Customer Care did the deletion on behalf of the former member if the group managers refused or were unresponsive.

Shal

On Sep 25, 2019, at 8:52 AM, Drew <pubx1@af2z.net> wrote:

She may not have intended to use/create a hashtag at all but merely included a "#" character in some other context. So, any revised warning message should probably address that possibility (if it doesn't already) because the subscriber may not even know what a hashtag is.

BTW, the hashtag permission for the group can be set so that such messages are not bounced:

"Messages from subscribers can only be tagged with existing hashtags, new hashtags will be removed."

However, be aware- that could alter the meaning of the subscribers' subject lines in cases where they included a # character in some non-hashtag context.


Drew

On 09/25/19 11:16, J_Catlady wrote:
p.s. In addition to changing the verbiage, I think the attempted message should be recorded somewhere, possibly in the pending queue. Instead, it's just completely lost and i have no idea what this group member was trying to post. Unfortunately she's a very naive user and I have been trying to get her to post for months, but she's been afraid of the system. Now I fear she will be doubly so. I would like to get a copy of the text the system sent her asking her to change the subject of the message, so that we can possibly adjust that as well.
On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 8:14 AM J_Catlady via Groups.Io <j.olivia.catlady=gmail.com@groups.io <mailto:gmail.com@groups.io>> wrote:
I just found the following log entry in the group activity log and
had no idea what it meant:
"[xyz member] sent message "[message subject]" with a new tag, has
been asked to update subject via email"
This is incomprehensible! I emailed the member to find out what
happened, but in the meantime, I figured out that what this entry is
actually trying to say is (1) the member sent a message via email,
(2) the message subject had a new hashtag, and (3), because members
are not allowed create new hashtags in our group, the member was
therefore asked to change the message subject. However, I thought,
upon reading the entry, that the member was "asked to (update the
subject via email)." Etc. The log entry does not parse correctly by
any conceivable means.
Can this entry be changed to read something like
"[xyz member] sent message [message subject] via email, has been
asked to remove the new tag and resend"
(or other, possibly better, suggestions)?
I literally could not parse the entry for about 10 minutes.
-- J
/Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy
ones./
/My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human
together. - Desmond Tutu/
--
J
/Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones./
/My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu/

p.s. In addition to changing the verbiage, I think the attempted message should be recorded somewhere, possibly in the pending queue. Instead, it's just completely lost and i have no idea what this group member was trying to post. Unfortunately she's a very naive user and I have been trying to get her to post for months, but she's been afraid of the system. Now I fear she will be doubly so. I would like to get a copy of the text the system sent her asking her to change the subject of the message, so that we can possibly adjust that as well.
On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 8:14 AM J_Catlady via Groups.Io <j.olivia.catlady=gmail.com@groups.io <mailto:gmail.com@groups.io>> wrote:
I just found the following log entry in the group activity log and
had no idea what it meant:
"[xyz member] sent message "[message subject]" with a new tag, has
been asked to update subject via email"
This is incomprehensible! I emailed the member to find out what
happened, but in the meantime, I figured out that what this entry is
actually trying to say is (1) the member sent a message via email,
(2) the message subject had a new hashtag, and (3), because members
are not allowed create new hashtags in our group, the member was
therefore asked to change the message subject. However, I thought,
upon reading the entry, that the member was "asked to (update the
subject via email)." Etc. The log entry does not parse correctly by
any conceivable means.
Can this entry be changed to read something like
"[xyz member] sent message [message subject] via email, has been
asked to remove the new tag and resend"
(or other, possibly better, suggestions)?
I literally could not parse the entry for about 10 minutes.
--
J
/Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy
ones./
/My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human
together. - Desmond Tutu/
--
J
/Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones./
/My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu/