ozstamps

A "semi-private club" which had what 50,000 members. .. 99.999999% you did not know from Adam?

And may well have included your boss, your parole officer, your ex-wife, ex-husband and several dozen axe-murderers etc.

THEY were all cool having access in your mind ?????????????????????

Assuming bdjohns is your real name - are you SERIOUSLY trying to tell me you, being clearly identifiable, would have EVER posted here your boss was a regular thief, or your ex-husband was a pedophile, or your neighbor was a heroin addict, and ASSUMED no-one you or they knew would see it or hear of it .. except those 50,000 bosom buddies that is?????

I saw no whines and grumbles back then.

You folks break me up.

And most of you WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY overestimate the power of google to somehow go find that Bill Smith, known only to himself on FT as Flyer3056434 posted in 2005 that his workmate George sexually molests his poodle.

That just does NOT happen.

I own a large BB and trust me, long dead BB threads are NOT what the google spiders index anyway.

Get over it.

OMNI being googleable is good for IB.

It makes them money.

End of story.
.

bdjohns1

Nice straw man - right up the same alley as "when did you stop beating your wife?" This is the second time in the past few months you've gone off on a half-cocked rant at me. Last time, it was because you weren't familiar with the fact that Excel worksheets have tabs.

It doesn't matter whether OMNI had 50,000 eligible posters or 500 (although I'll bet if you could run a dump of all of the OMNI posts in the 2003-2008 timeframe, >80% of the posts come from <20% of the eligible posters, even if you leave out the counting threads). Pareto was a smart guy. (oh, and by the way, the correct number is more like 10,000 eligible, per Randy himself)

Argue all you want about hypothetical axe murderers, bosses on the take, and child molesters. They're all straw men. The point here is that people shared information on OMNI because they perceived it wasn't out there for the general public (ie Googleable). Randy (in words and actions) indicated that OMNI wasn't going to be public, as in this example, where he moved a thread to OMNI to "shield" users earlier in 2008. I don't have a problem with OMNI being opened to all registered FTers. I do have a problem with the rules being changed in the middle of the game. Randy has argued that other websites' OMNI-equivalent is open to the public. That's true, but I doubt they were previously behind a velvet rope.

Oh, and bdjohns1 isn't far off - it's the mishmash of initials and part of my name that became my email address at college a while back. The good news is that my name is pretty common. I share it with a Western movie star from decades ago, a Canadian sprinter who forfeited an Olympic gold medal in 1988 for steroid use, and a few others.

I just googled my username and the name of my employer. Google indexed a 2006 thread in OMNI, among a few others. Not a big deal - I didn't say anything embarrassing. However, other people may have said things they might not have said had OMNI been wide open to Google - you never know when some yahoo's going to go off and play internet detective. Your ranting aside, if Randy's going to change the rules in the middle of the game, the decent thing to do would be to allow people an escape hatch.

People have been affected by this. I just did a search for a particular humorous OMNI story. It doesn't exist, and I know why - because there was some good-natured joking in that thread that would have impugned the OP's character had it been seen by people not "in" on the joke. That thread probably wouldn't have existed in the first place had OMNI been open to Google. The OP would probably be happy if the entire subsequent thread went away.

SkiAdcock

bdjohns1 speaks for me WRT this matter on his posts both in this forum & in the ORP forum re: Omni being opened up w/ no notice & available to google. He's more eloquent than I am, & more up on how the technology works and/or privacy policies of the other websites that are being mentioned.

My take, as mentioned previously - before Omni was opened, was that Randy should have done a survery prior to request input - but even if he chose not to (as happened), should have given notice to Omni-ites (and that's one of the big complaints, no notice - ie, rules changed in the middle) so that if they chose to go back & delete their posts prior to the opening they could do so. He didn't, and to me that betrayed the trust FTers had in him. I happen to like Randy a lot, but on this one IMO he dropped the ball big time & just goes 'round & 'round in trying to justify his decision, even when others have pointed out the fallacies in his reasoning.

Back to the purpose of this thread - I think that, if it is indeed a simple programming measure, that FTers should be allowed to purge their Omni posts en masse vs doing it 1-by-1, which some are gruelingly go through. I'm not deleting my posts since I figure Google cache has them already. But then again I'm not really visiting Omni much anymore either, whether it's Omni-Fluff or Omni-PR.

Cheers.


Cheers.

LLM

deleted

wr_schwab

I like this idea. If it passes I will probably be one of the first people to utilize this feature.

Why do I like this idea when I stand by every single post I write, even the ones in OMNI?

Well, in Aug 2003 I picked a username without thinking it through very well. As it was explained to me by one of the admins when I had inquired about this, I have a one time option to change my username. However, the post count would be reset to zero, the join date would be reset and the existing posts would remain with the other name.

I am still interested in changing my username, but not if my previous posts remain with the old handle. Why? I stand by everything I have ever said and am not willing to disassociate my words from who I am. (Actually, if I could just change my username and have it update all of the associated posts that would be an ideal solution for me, but barring that being able to purge everything and starting over is the best solution I've seen yet.)

Words take on a life of their own once they have been spoken. It may not be possible to put the genie back into the bottle, but it is sure is possible to attempt to minimize the damage that is caused when he is released.

PhlyingRPh

I wonder how much an off-shore subcontractor might charge to remove a member's entire library of posts. That should take the pain out of the process.

LLM

You are brilliant! I know just the whiz to outsource this to and favors are due .

xmlsoa

I havent been on the forum for a while now... But I am wondering why people want to LEAVE FT?

wharvey

You may want to ask the technical staff again. I do not believe this is now the case.

I just checked on a member who changed their handle within the past month... and all their posts are under their new handle.

William

RichMSN

A poster just did this. You should PM itsaboutthejourney.

I did the same on another board hosted by the same software. Everything remained the same and all my old posts were associated with my new handle. My old handle was my full name and it was just too much exposure for me even though all the regulars "know" me.

magiciansampras

At least you're honest.

mikey1003

If asked before I got my new job, I would happily worked to remove posts for a fee. (Only because I needed the Money)

That said, I still think this is a bad idea. If someone made the posts, they should live with what they posted. (Kinda makes you think before hitting enter, doesn't it?)

bdjohns1

As a general rule, I'd agree with you. I went through my recent OMNI post history, and there's not too much I wanted to delete. That said, I know a few posters have entire threads they'd like to see disappear. People used to let their hair down in OMNI. I haven't seen quite as much of that in the past few months.

As I noted above, even as recently as Q1 2008, Randy himself moved threads to OMNI to "hide them".

craz

sounds to me like a part in an old movie, when after scaring the people the curtain is opened by Toto and the Great and Powerful OZ isnt so Great and Powerful

1 should NEVER post anything they dont want to be Public, rule #1 -1,000,000 of the Internet

I think everything should stay as is. Why do I have the feeling that those who want to Delete what they wrote would never say the same if Bush was quoted although it wasnt suppose to be a Public statement.

As for OMNI I still wish it would be COMPLETELY deleted, there are plenty of other Boards where everyone can air their Nonsense.........

birdstrike

Look folks, It's simple.

No one is going to force anyone to delete their posts.

Not everyone (perhaps not even anyone) who wants to delete their posts regrets what they wrote or does nor want to "stand by" their words.

If you don't get this, fine. A sizable group of FlyerTalkers (in sum total of post count), DO have clear and fundamental reasons for wanting to expunge their OMNI and/or FlyerTalk presence. This has already been intelligibly expressed.

In the early days of OMNI becoming indexed by the search engines, I may have sent Randy and others conflicting messages, perhaps because I was actually conflicted and surprised. I have not been conflicted for quite some time now. My heart and mind are clear.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I think it should be a feature of FlyerTalk to allow members to remove their corpus of posts en mass. I intend to do so and indeed, have already removed a few manually. Nothing about my request involves giving members something that they don't have today - All I'm asking for is for the process to be automated.

I do not intend to continue to participate in Flyertalk other than to pursue this agenda until a resolution is reached. That is how strongly I feel about this.

The fact that I am not alone in my reaction should make implementation of this feature (or use of what we now know to be an existing capability) a matter of simple courtesy to those FlyerTalkers who request it.

Rather than ask why someone wants to expunge their posts, turn the question around and ask "why not?".

The search issue has gone unresolved for so long that I think we can assume that it has tacit approval of FlyerTalk management.

The right thing to do is to allow members to opt-out.