More Housekeeping: DO NOT DELETE YOUR POSTS AND COMMENTS

Gestapo's and totalitarianism--why, when trying to enforce some basic, common-sense community rules, does the slope to Godwin's Law suddenly become so slippery?  Yes, I agree with the basic premise that "people want to be free."  But people also want stop signs, traffic lights, and basic forms of etiquette to prevent online discussions from feeling like a ghost town just a few days after they started.

Look, if you feel the to ritually delete your own threads--blogs that you create--then go for it.  At least when you do that, the entire post is completely deleted, and does not leave pockmarks and out-of-context jetsam littered throughout the community.  But please do not delete comments you post to other people's threads.  Yes, it seriously diminishes the overall experience of the community.  If you feel that you cannot abide by this guideline (sorry, MANDATE) then the solution is simple: do not post comments in other people's threads.

Think of it this way: when you participate with someone else's post, you are essentially going into their home and joining the party they are hosting.  You can stand on the lawn, hang out, and talk to anyone you want.  And you can also exit whenever you want--but you can't dig a hole in the lawn or punch a hole in the wall when you leave. Which is an apt metaphor for what happens when you delete your comments in someone else's thread.

Or, if this helps: when you comment on someone else's thread, you are implicitly entering a multi-perspectival, co-creative, mutual space with whomever is hosting and participating with that discussion.  You are officially "On the Air with Larry King" (or Annie or Stanley or Stefano or Mary Linda or whomever might be hosting the thread).  You can say whatever you want on the air, but you cannot demand that Larry stop running the footage after you walk off the stage.

And yes, it is sometimes appropriate to request privacy, which is what I am getting from your "recording devices" metaphor.  But an explicitly public space like the Integral Commons is not the place.  We have a private messenger for that, and I encourage you to use it for discussions that you would like to keep out of the public eye. 

And whatever your assumptions about how many people have complained about this problem, you should know that they are many, that I am one of them, and that we have been receiving complaints about the negative effects this has on community cohesion for years now.  This is not about "goading people into polite integral behavior."  It's about trying to promote behaviors and guidelines that best serve the ongoing health and vitality of this community.

But seriously, can we stop with the MANDATES and GESTAPOS and TOTALITARIANISM?  This isn't a Tea Party, this is a conversation about how to make this place as healthy as possible.  At this rate, I am expecting someone to post a picture of me with a Hitler mustache.  As of now, the rampant number of deleted posts is seriously diminishing the health of the community, so I am asking you all to please respect each other's discussions enough to keep yourself from littering them with anonymous [comment deleted] posts.

--

Corey W. deVos

Editor, Writer, Producer
Integral Life
Managing Editor
KenWilber.com

Well I dunno that you're going to win against the IL team by claiming they're only interested in their own image. 

Looks like a proportion of forum users are themselves complaining about the deletions. 

I guess some people see the threads as more like a letter in the post, and others as more like a phone call.

Seeing as people themselves are generating the complaints, the "letter in the post" people, maybe those who prefer the "phone call" usage can pop something in their signature (you can set it in your profile) just to forewarn people not to expect stuff to stick around.

This comment is intended as brief and short lived, and may be deleted.