I think Idle Thoughts did the right thing under the circumstances. Opal was understandably upset about what happened elsewhere, but there is nothing that can be done here to remedy that situation.
ESL much? He clearly states he disappeared the thread and that “…I would have removed any thread that was about or stemmed from other board drama…”
A locked but present thread just encourages other threads on the same subject.
Generally not in favor of disappearing threads, but Spam and Board Wars are two exceptions that are fine by me.
So to sum up:
Idle Thoughts: “I would have removed any thread that was about or stemmed from other board drama as it creates a highly potential chance of board wars.”
Marley: “The thread wasn’t removed because we didn’t want people to know OpalCat posted about some off-board issues”
Me: “You should clarify that with your moderator who removed the thread then, because that’s why he said he did it.”
Marley: “That’s absolutely true except that’s not at all what he said.”
Just so people can see how so incredibly wrong I was. I guess technically Idle Thoughts didn’t say that thread was removed for that reason, but given that it was a direct response to my OP asking why Opal’s thread was removed, I hope you’ll allow me that leap of logic.
Except what you have here isn’t a board war.
A board war denotes something posted in order to provoke “Let’s you and him fight”. The posters at the other boads where this was being discussed are Dopers for the most part anyway, and more importantly were keeping it off-board.
This was Opal looking for more attention, plain and simple.
Yes, he does indeed say that. Well spotted. But I was asking where he said he disappeared it because he didn’t want anyone to know about it.
Uh-huh. People post about all kinds of things that happen “elsewhere.” Sometimes they’re understandably upset about these things. Exactly what does the SDMB do to remedy those situations?
I think deleting the thread was the right choice in this case, due to the subject matter.
There’s some stuff it’s just a bad idea to leave out there where anybody can see it…
What board war? Honest to God that line of reasoning floors me. There is no board war. There will be no board war. There IS a Doper who likes to create drama and BINGO! has done so.
And disappearing the thread just creates mystique and that fuels drama. Were any of you EVER adolescents* or have kids?
This treatment is completely out of line with previous Doper’s posting embarrassing stuff. But I’m sure that fact won’t alter the decision making.
*yes, the curiosity and the snark are juvenile. In other news, the Pope shits in the woods. Or something.
I don’t mean to be obtuse, but isn’t that the reason it was disappeared, not locked? So no one would know about it?
Ok, this makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, so thank you for that.
She deleted her photos. What else was out there? A cryptic reference to adult pix and other boards.
And every image stored by Google and Bing and goodness knows how many more search engines. Those pictures are not going away in the short term. The knowledge is now out there that there are inappropriate pictures of OpalCat and that anyone with the desire to see them can just go look for them, indexed in the search engine sites.
Some of those pictures were saved elsewhere before she deleted them from her server. At the moment, they are available through links on at least two other boards. One has been captioned in such a way that it has some potential to go viral.
In my opinion, Opal is the victim of an extremely rude and offensive act. She did not voluntarily publish adult pictures. Someone with a grudge against her went out of his way to locate those pictures and published them without her knowledge or consent. Opal is not my favorite poster here, but no one deserves to be treated this way.
That’s true. You’re right.
But consider this: Her OP never complained about her privacy and photos being viewed (as far I as I recollect. Can’t go back and check). It was that people were doing it to be mean. Her persona is about how public she is. She doesn’t seem to care that they’re out there. I guess the mods feel they need to protect her from herself? Then perhaps a posting hiatus is in order.
You’re right. What does that have to do with here, again? (except that she brought it up…)
Once it’s out there, it’s out there. Delete photos and copies exist. Delete a thread and somebody got a screen cap.
I do believe Idle Thoughts was doing what he thought was best and wasn’t trying to give Opal special treatment. Removing the thread probably will cut its ability to fuel the flames higher. But nothing is going to make it go away. Opal really should not have started that thread at all, but deleting it won’t make it “unhappen.” She made the pictures public, she made a public thread about it, it’s all been public. That doesn’t magically become private again by deletion.
I understand your argument. I’d merely ask, where did this person with a grudge find the pictures if they were not already available?
They munged URLS to get to the base images in the OpalCat gallery. The directories were not secured, so they were available for anyone to look at, at anytime. Hence their being indexed in search engines.
Normally you would not see these pictures if you only followed links from her gallery, but a little bit of URL munging revealed all of the unsecured directories.
This is not hacking. It’s poor form on behalf of the site owner.
As I’ve already said, I would have vanished it had it be anyone, personally. There’s no double standard there.
As I’ve already said, because that was my decision and what I thought was best in the end.
I understand your point, but the fact is, it wasn’t just the personal information that was the case here. It was a thread about the personal information and (directly) about the reaction of another board. It was the latter that spurned me to disappear the thread, not the first.
Posters who post personal information and then later regret it are not protected by the mods, nor are they privileged to any special treatment and this wasn’t the case here (at least barring my decision). It was the personal information combined with the inter-board drama (which is what the topic was soley about).
Mentioning personal information is fine.
Mentioning other boards is fine.
But when one topic is about one causing the other, those threads don’t tend to last long.
I fully admit that that thread could have either been locked or vanished. Either way, it puts an end to the discussion.
I stand by my decision to vanish it.