Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

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Calman
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Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Calman »

Hi folks,

To cut a long story short, we had to issue a warning to a forum member yesterday. As expected, they got upset and are now asking to have all their posts (100's) removed from our site.

Now, the main issue here, is that removing all their postings will disrupt the flow of past conversation in threads ... so my question is, do we have any legal responsibilty to remove all posts as per member's request?

Kind Regards,
Cal
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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV . however,I would say that you have no legal responsibility to remove posts made to your publick board. about the worst they could do is get a lawyer to issue a cease and disist order and then you could do it at that time if you have to.

I would tell them that if they did know want their posts to be online that they should not have made them in a public forum.

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noth
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by noth »

well said Lumpy :)

Cal, is the grumpy oik able to use edit all the way back to their first post?

After telling people (in the same situation you describe) that no such action will occur, I have then seen them using EDIT and doing it themselves :o (yes for 100's of posts)
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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

go to users forum permissions. look up the user,
click on advanced permissions
click on actions
set can delete own posts to never

that should stop them from doing it.

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noth
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by noth »

it would

personally, I would be tempted to go "group permissions" > Registered users > Advanced permissions > Actions :o

but Actions is not there :(
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Pony99CA »

For a discussion on this, read the User requesting all posts to be removed topic.

To net it out, your legal obligations will depend on the jurisdiction where the forum is considered to be located. As you didn't specify that location, nobody can answer your question accurately.

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Cpt. Blackbeard
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Cpt. Blackbeard »

You do have that specified in your rules right? On my Forum it's item 11, to wit:


11. Any messages you post in these discussion forums will remain available to the public for as long as this discussion board is online. Once you have posted your message, it will stay online. Please post carefully and with due consideration to the content of your post. We will not edit the content you wrote unless it does not conform to the forum guidelines. In the unlikely even that we do edit your post and you do not like the changes, we can delete the message at your request.
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KevC
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by KevC »

noth wrote:it would

personally, I would be tempted to go "group permissions" > Registered users > Advanced permissions > Actions :o

but Actions is not there :(
I made a group a long time ago just for that very possibility. At least it means me or a mod can move their account in to a group with a 'never' permission for editing or deleting if someone went mental.
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Calman
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Calman »

Thanks for all the in depth replies folks, very much appreciated indeed!!!

Sorry, I can now add that I am in Western Canada (British Columbia)

Not sure off hand of our settings, but I thnk at the moment, members can edit up to 5 minutes, then they can't ... but fairly sure they can't delete their own posts? ... need to get my head back into ACP and check things out extensively!!!

All the best,
Cal :)
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Dog Cow
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Dog Cow »

Well, just make a backup copy now, and you'll be all set for whatever may happen next.
Calman
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Calman »

Thank you!

At this point, I'd be intersted to learn if there is some kind of standard script along the lines of "postings you make are made in good faith on our public forums, to which become our property ... bla bla bla" kind of thing, not in those exact words, but you get my drift. If such a "web/forum standard" script existed, I'd be keen to add it into our registration page/TOS.

All the best,
Cal :)
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noth
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by noth »

there is no standard wording but the Capt's is a great one to copy ;)
Cpt. Blackbeard wrote:You do have that specified in your rules right? On my Forum it's item 11, to wit:


11. Any messages you post in these discussion forums will remain available to the public for as long as this discussion board is online. Once you have posted your message, it will stay online. Please post carefully and with due consideration to the content of your post. We will not edit the content you wrote unless it does not conform to the forum guidelines. In the unlikely even that we do edit your post and you do not like the changes, we can delete the message at your request.
did you check out the topic linked by Pony99? from that topic many good points, such as
marian0810 wrote:I would just remove any personal information of him I could find and leave the rest as it is. He can't check it anyway and even if he does there's a) no way to prove for him that it was his and b) he's probably not going to bother with official steps anyway.
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by AmigoJack »

Think about it from a different view: the posts have been created by that user, so they're fundamentally his property. Changing the state of the property (editing, deleting, preserving...) is reserved to the property owner. In doubt, I would give each user the control over all of his data (not only posts).
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Pony99CA
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Pony99CA »

Calman wrote: At this point, I'd be intersted to learn if there is some kind of standard script along the lines of "postings you make are made in good faith on our public forums, to which become our property ... bla bla bla" kind of thing, not in those exact words, but you get my drift. If such a "web/forum standard" script existed, I'd be keen to add it into our registration page/TOS.
Look at other Terms of Service on sites that have user-generated content and copy their language. I would say something like "While the member posting owns the copyright of his content, the user grants to us a perpetual, world-wide, non-exclusive license to use the content in any way we see fit, including (but not limited to) the right to redistribute, edit, delete and create derivative works based on it."

But I'm no lawyer -- that's just off the top of my head.

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Dog Cow
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Re: Member Wishes on Forum Conduct?

Post by Dog Cow »

AmigoJack wrote:Think about it from a different view: the posts have been created by that user, so they're fundamentally his property.
But they're written inside of our web sites, so that would seem to imply that we can display a copy of whatever he wrote.
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