monkdiscuss
gmax
<h3>Facts</h3>
<p>Trying not to be confrontational, I would like to bring to the Monastery attention the fact that the contents of some nodes were recently removed.</p>
<table border=0>
<tr><td>[id://285414]</td><td><a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/285414_orig.html">(mirror)</a></tr>
<tr><td>[id://285422]</td><td> <a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/285422_orig.html">(mirror)</a></tr>
<tr><td>[id://285597]</td><td> <a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/285597_orig.html">(mirror, <i>but unfortunately empty as well </i>:( )</a></tr>
<tr><td>[id://273976]</td><td> <a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/273976_orig.html">(mirror)</a></tr>
<tr><td>[id://273978]</td><td> <a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/273978_orig.html">(mirror)</a></tr>
<tr><td>[id://265998]</td><td> <a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/265998_orig.html">(mirror)</a></tr>
</table>
<p>It's very sad to see some replies to such nodes, congratulating the author for a piece of empty space.</p>
<p>Since there is no explanation about the reason for this disappearance, I am not going to speculate. Perhaps the author would take this opportunity and speak up here.</p>
<h3>Analysis</h3>
<p>Here are my personal feelings about that.</p>
<ul>
<li>If I accept to contribute to a community, I should not withdraw what I have given, unless there is a breech of mutual trust between me and the community. If this happened, though, I would make sure that the right motives are properly explained. As long as nobody is trying to misappropriate what I have given, I feel morally obligated to maintain my contributions available to the community.</li>
<li>If I make a mistake, (and I have made [146108|a] [226531|few]), I consider the experience as part of the game. I will surely remember that glitch, and never do it again. Removing my node because it was criticized does not fit me. If the disturbance is trollish, I don't care. If it is debatable, I debate. If it just points out that I was wrong, I take notes.</li>
<li>I was considering the idea of proposing a "freezing" mechanism, to prevent people from erasing their posts, but I discarded the idea because it will also prevent them from correcting mistakes and improving old nodes. For example, it is useful to add a warning to an old node on module X::Y, saying that method xyz is now deprecated, or it was removed from recent releases, or its behavior has changed.</li>
</ul>
<p>The bottom line is that the community trusts its members to be responsible ones.</p>
<p>What I was thinking lately, after seeing this sudden disappearance of posts (some of which have a high reputation), is that the Monastery has a mechanism to defend itself against unwanted content, but little to defend itself against the loss of valuable information.</p>
<h3>Proposal</h3>
<p>There is [thepen] <a href="http://perlmonks.thepen.com/">mirror site</a>. I don't know if the missing nodes can be replaced by their mirrored copies somehow. Making it automatic and preserving the rights of the vast majority at the same time would require - I believe - too much work.</p>
<p>Perhaps the easiest solution is <u>adding a link to the mirror nodes</u> (both the original and the latest snapshot), just next to the "print w/replies xml" links at the top of the page. Therefore, if a node's contents are missing or heavily modified, one could be just a click away from their recovery.</p>
<p>I would like to hear the Monastery opinion on this issue.</p>
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