I could swear that I was having a discussion about whether administrative exhaustion was jurisdictional or prudential (and very well may have gotten it wrong), and Butterfly Bilderberg posted that courts in the D.C. Circuit, influential in FOIA matters, had ruled that it was prudential and courts could waive the doctrine within their discretion, and cited two recent cases. I responded and thanked her. The post would contain words like "prudential" and "jurisdictional" and have parentheticals like (D.D.C. 2010) in them.

It could also be that the search function is broken but the posts are there. I thought they were in the Taitz v. Astrue thread, but I'm not seeing them there.

They were in the "draft letter" thread, which the thread owner (Foggy) deleted.

Oh, goody.

Thanks.

Why was the thread deleted? It was an interesting topic.

Some unnamed person or persons complained about it. I would kind of like it if my off-topic posts in that thread and BB's were moved to the Astrue thread, where they probably belonged anyway. So is the rule now that you can't discuss what you do elsewhere or risk your thread being deleted, or is that just for Foggy, who makes us all look so terrible by doing something useful?

It was Foggy's thread. Foggy deleted it.

If he saved a shadow thread, and wants to put those in the Taitz v Astrue thread, then he can do that, I'm sure.

So basically, anything I write here, I'd best save a copy of it, because it can be nuked at any time with no warning or explanation. Is this what you're saying is the policy?



That's a rhetorical question. I'm pretty sure Foggy will see reason on this and try not to do this in such a ham-handed manner in the future, if for whatever unexplained reason, active threads get nuked.

To answer your rhetorical question, the thread owner can always delete the entire thread.

Solution: To prevent unexpected deletions, post in threads you "own."

Apparently the thread was scaring some people. I don't know the exact details. Although the PMs were about me and what I was doing, they weren't addressed to me. I had to find out about them from others. I still don't know who sent them and I haven't read a word of them.

Apparently there was some fear that Orly would sue me and get a court order for me to turn over the forum database, and then she'd have access to people's email addresses and could thereupon mount a multistate litigation in like 20 or 25 states or more, assuming she could use the email addresses to track down exactly where any of you live in order to have a summons and complaint properly served on you.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking Orly could never get such a court order, and you're right. I'd fight that to the death, and win. You're thinking even if she got everyone's email addresses, which she never would, she couldn't maintain a court case in 20 or 25 states or more, and you're right. You're thinking that even if she did have an email address for you, like SorosPaidObot@gmail.com from the database, that wouldn't exactly give her a home or work address where you could be served with a lawsuit, and you're right. You're thinking Orly never served a lawsuit properly to this very day, so the chances are she'd never be able to serve you, and you're right. You're thinking Orly couldn't win a nickel from you, and you're right. She's still the worst lawyer in the history of the planet. All of your head lice are better lawyers than Orly.

But I couldn't swear on a stack of flying spaghetti that it absolutely wasn't possible that any of you might get dragged into a lawsuit. I heard secondhand that people were concerned that maybe not just I would be sued, but that everyone here would be sued, and it's no fun to be dragged into a lawsuit, unless you're me.

So believe me, I'm not happy about it at all. I may take a day or two off and cool down, or maybe I'll cool down by tomorrow morning.

But rather than try to reassure people who had concerns but didn't take them to me because everybody knows how difficult it is to discuss things with me, I decided to simply yank the thread. A decision made in anger, I'll be the first to admit. I did print the whole thing out so I could review the suggestions and comments people had given me.

Loh, if you'd like, I can type some of that 'prudential' discussion back in, or scan it, or something. I apologize, but in the heat of the moment I decided the best way to stop the fear from spreading like a cancer was to abort.

I'm going to go stand in the corner for a spell.

Later on ...

This seems like an invitation to mischief. So anyone who gets mad at the site after starting many threads, even if they've gone on for literally years with thousands of hours of research in them, can then just obliterate huge chunks of the site with a few presses of a button?

I find it difficult to wrap my head around the reasoning involved there.

Suggestion: only Dick Taters or greenies should be able to delete anyone else's content.

I would assume it is a software issue.

But perhaps the preferences can be set to prevent folks from deleting their own posts.

I actually thought that this was the case. I have a tendency to save anything I write that I consider the least bit important, because I'm narcissistic that way, but now I'll be even more OCD about it (And I'd go along with Loh's suggestion in a heartbeat.)

Which also doesn't prevent threads or posts from being deleted, which can be done at any time. That's not been a huge problem here, nor was it at PJ. It does happen on occasion, however, but usually with explanation. Sometimes folks agree, sometimes they don't.

Actually, I'm not so sure a thread owner can kill a thread. (You can delete your own post only if no one has posted after you in that thread.)

If a thread owner can't, then it was killed by Foggy-as-Dick-Tater, not Foggy-as-Thread-Owner.

I was worried that we were giving too much away and when I thought it was pulled as a tactical measure, I wuz relieved. I also thought Foggy said he wuz only gonna leave it up for a bit anyway?

That makes a certain amount of sense, but I really don't think Orly is capable of using such information to react in a rational manner anyway. I really had nothing in that thread I cared much about other than those cites. I don't mind the posts being deleted that were directly relevant to the reason for removing the thread or even the off-topic ones, which consisted of me being wrong and then saying oh, I was wrong.

Losing useful information needlessly isn't good, though in this case, I could find what I wanted anyway.

Foggy,

FYI -- on my phpBB board, I sometimes have a topic that I need to remove, but which I want to keep for evidence or some other reason.

I have several forums that are secret and hidden, and that are visible only to specific groups which are also hidden (e.g. nobody even knows they're there unless they're a member). One set of forums is visible only to me and other admins; not even my moderators ("greenies") know I have it.

That makes it easy for me to "disappear" something really quickly, and still have it available to me. You might want to do that, rather than delete.

That was my understanding also.

Hint: Keep a management forum hidden to the public, and salvage any questionable threads and/or posts so you have continued access, rather than nuking it entirely and immediatly.

No biggie. Find out how to move threads into a sandbox so it can be done at the drop of a hat. And nothing of value was lost.

The fact is, the very same issues raised by you sending this letter are raised by ANY Fogbow participant doing ANYTHING ANYWHERE. So if that's too much risk for you, back off. If anyone ever has any complaint about anything I'm doing anywhere, they can pretty much bite me. Well, unless they are right and make a reasoned argument for it. The fact is that poking litigious kooks for fun can end up costing money. It isn't just Foggy who can, conceivably, get us all sued.

The only way to avoid that risk entirely is to stop doing anything relating to birtherism.

WTF is going on around here? Are we suddenly afraid of Orly or the rest of the birfers?

I dont get exactly what happened here or what went missing... oh well *whistles*

There was a thread about something Foggy was planning to send to someone about something, I'll try to avoid reposting questionable content, and there were people concerned it exposed the site to liability by mentioning it. I griped about it, as I had engaged in a blatant threadjack about the Astrue case in it, and been helpfully corrected by BB about a fairly minor point of law, and was irritated that her cites had been deleted along with the entire thread. (I later found them and what I actually wanted, a cite to a D.C. Circuit case that definitively proved me wrong, and now lives in the Astrue thread).

I'm not sure about the solution to things like this. I'm probably not going to self-censor based on anything other than my own concerns, though I'm certainly not going to out people deliberately, and I'd certainly be open to anyone telling me why I should stop doing something. I will not take responsibility for nutcases retaliating against random people for activities entirely protected by the law, or surrender my own rights to appease an impotent wannabe terrorist like Orly, however, based on pure speculation.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind in the least that my posts on the thread related to the subject of the thread got deleted, as deleting those served the purpose of the deletion. I was mildly annoyed by unrelated posts getting deleted, and thought it could have been more surgical and less offensive to The Beloved Herd. I'll note that the deletion, like all Streisand Effect events, has simply drawn more attention to the material and helped our enemies even more than anything that could have resulted from the original thread.

Consider it a life lesson.

I think we've now beaten this thing to death. If you agree with me, don't post here.