Requests to delete poem threads
 

Recently the moderators have been receiving rather frequent requests to make a thread disappear for an individual poem.

I understand the motivation for these requests very well. Like the rest of you, I don't like to wait months to be able to submit a poem to a picky venue that doesn't want workshopped poems. And months is what it sometimes takes, since our policy has been to prune only once a month. That schedule can leave a poem up for a couple of months, and it can remain in Google's cache for weeks after it has been removed.

Other boards that maintain permanent archives have a policy of removing a poem to a nonpublic forum when a poet asks for that in order to submit. Knowing that, and wanting to be at least as cooperative as other boards, I've lately been moving poems to Reports when people have asked.

I don't want to keep doing that, though. It's clear that the requests will be numerous and hard to keep up with. It's also clear that that practice could run afoul of two other long-standing policies of the board: the policy that critiques belong to those who wrote them and are not to be removed willy-nilly, and the policy that (at least on some forums) poems should remain up for two weeks.*

So I'm starting this discussion about another possible solution: pruning more often.

Now that I've got the hang of it, I find pruning easy and quick. It would not be a burden to do it more frequently than once a month.

So let's have a full airing of the reasons for and against more frequent pruning. I'd like to get a lot of participation here, especially from those of you who don't post often but who enjoy coming here to read.

And if you're a non-member who only comes to read, and you've got an opinion, you can e-mail me.

*Editing back: I misspoke slightly. The policy of leaving poems up for two weeks is policy, but it's fairly recent.

Maryann, having stirred up this matter again after having several poems declined by major print journals specifically on account of their appearance at Eratosphere, I must add my voice to those requesting something definitive be done to solve this problem. I would hate to have to give up workshopping as Alicia and some others seem to have done long ago. Online workshopping can be a pleasure in itself, but publication in major journals and good anthologies still seems to be the best way to build or to firm up a reputation.

So if bi-weekly pruning will do the trick, and you now find it easy to prune, then by all means let's try it---at least until we can see if it really works. It took only hours for the robots to find and cache the whole test poem, with a meta-tag, I posted at TDE yesterday afternoon.

G/W

G/W

I posted my poem "As Winter Ends" recently to the Deep End. A couple of days before, I posted the exact same poem to Gazebo. A moment ago, when I googled a few phrases, the Eratosphere thread was the only search result. I don't know why it didn't show up for Gazebo, but the answer may provide a clue as to what we should be doing here.

Anyway, why can't we do "self-pruning," i.e., edit the poem out of our own threads? I would suggest that we simply invent a new protocol requiring those who want to "self-prune" to clearly announce their intention one week in advance. Perhaps the announcement should come in bold, capital letters at the top of the first posting, setting forth the exact date of pruning. That way, people will have time to copy the thread if they so desire, or rush to post a critique they've been working on.

I know that this would leave quoted portions of the poem in place, but maybe, as a courtesy, those who quoted chunks of the poem could edit out the quotes as well. Regardless, it's better than nothing, and ought to be effective particularly if people take care not to use the real title of their poem in the subject line.

PS--

My strong preference would still be to make the entire site invisible to anyone who is not logged in. Registration should remain free and easy, but those who want to view the site should have to be logged in to view it. This would be a complete solution to the problem. And quite apart from the problem of prior publication, I would very much favor this approach since I see absolutely no reason why we should want our work being displayed to anyone who casually wanders by. It really is a form of publication to allow that to happen, if you want to be honest about editorial reactions, and I would prefer to be able to post without shame or inhibition among people I trust and choose. This is especially true since (like most of us) I often post work that I know to be particularly flawed, since my more polished work is less in need of workshopping. Why would anyone want their incomplete work to be displayed to the entire world when there's a simple solution, i.e., just making the site invisible to anyone who is not signed in? That would keep the site from Google and prevent anyone from stumbling across our unfinished work. Not to mention preventing people from our "non-poetry" lives from sitting in on our poetry discussions.

It would really be a very minor inconvenience to ask people to log in before being able to read the site. It takes just a few seconds, and you can stay logged in for quite some time before you have to log in again. I really don't get why we let non-members read. It's like having a workshop in someone's house and leaving the door open with a sign inviting strangers to come in and have a seat in the back.

I belong to two discussion forums that are invisible if you are not logged in. One has 20 members, the other has a few thousand members. I have never seen any of their posts on Google. Ever. And I can be sure that no one other than my fellow members has seen what I have posted.

I must say I have often wondered about that too.

It seems to me you could prune as often as you wanted. Anyone wishing to retain their golden words of wisdom (either poetical or critical) could cut and paste them elsewhere at regular intervals (or every time they change).

And how come in this age the pruning process isn't automated?

Philip

If the workshops were invisible to those not signed in, you could still have a home page providing a "guest" sign-in procedure to allow people to read the site but without posting privileges. That would allow potential new members to look around before deciding whether they want to register.

Dear Maryann

I very much agree with Roger’s suggestion that Eratosphere should be visible only to members who have logged on. As I said on Golias’s adjacent “Spider” thread this morning, “Running the site as if it were a kind of reality-TV show open to the passing eyes of the world, may not be such a good idea.” Though I know nothing about managing a web-site, the fact that Roger belongs to other sites that operate in this way suggests that it ought not to be too difficult for Alex to put it in place.

Kind regards

Clive

Since we seem to have two threads running in parallel on this topic, Golias's "Avoiding Spiders" thread and this, I want to draw attention to Rose's most recent post "across the way": "There are plenty of bad spiders out there that ignore robot tags. The only foolproof way to keep them out is to require a login." (I am certain Rose knows a whole lot more about such matters than I do....)

Clive

I somewhat agree with Roger et al., but I can completely understand why the site is currently open (though read-only) to any who should happen by. I think a lot of newcomers would want to get a feel for the place prior to joining. It might seem like a very minor inconvenience to have to join a forum to see its contents, but I guarantee that you WILL see a decline in new membership. Which may or may not be a bad thing.

How about this: is there a possibility of making the three workshopping forums login-only alone, while having the rest of the forums open?

Edited to add: oh, like Rose mentioned in the other thread. I didn't see that.

Maryann,

I hope you have noticed the other thread. Steve C's post there is informative, and others have posted some responses that bear on your questions here. I am for an all-out approach: (1) use the tags in the headings the way Steve C suggests, (2) make the workshop forums accessible only to registered members, and (3) prune more often.

David R.

Thank you for raising the issue, Maryann. I join the chorus of those who would like their poems "gone" sooner. Just yesterday I deleted one of my poems in Met. It hadn't been commented on in two weeks and I've long been done with it, but it didn't meet the guidelines to be pruned this month, and I didn't want to burden you with asking (again) that it be removed. I know some people get upset when poems are deleted like that, but as grateful as I always am for the comments and critique, I don't feel I need to warn anyone that I'm deleting my own poem. Speeding up the pruning process would help avoid this problem.

As far a making this a "log-in" site? I wonder if I would have ever found this place or made a commitment to it if it had been "log-in only." I doubt it. If I couldn't have seen the quality of the poems without giving registration info., I don't think I would have stuck around. I spent months reading here before I joined. I don't think I'm alone in that, though maybe it isn't common. It feels kind of elitist to me (but perhaps I don't fully understand the system Roger wants to implement). I rarely comment at the Gaz, but I do read there often, and I'm not logged in when I do, so whatever system they have, it isn't the one people here are discussing (I don't think). I'll go along with whatever is decided, but I'd rather see how pruning more often works first, unless someone convinces me otherwise.

marybeth

Marybeth, I also suggested that we allow for "guest" sign-ins. For example, anyone who is not a member could simply log in with the username "guest" and the password "password," and they would be able to read the entire site (although not post). So it would be easy for people to check us out before deciding to register.

The home page could say who and what we are, invite people to check us out as a guest, etc.

I hardly think it's elitist not to publish our unpublished work to the world until we are ready to do so, and on our own terms, any more than I think it's elitist to close my blinds to keep passers-by on the street from looking in the window. If people want to see me, let them ring my bell.

I just posted this in the other thread, but I think it goes here too (Maryann -- maybe the two threads should be merged, or one closed and referred to the other, since they really seem to get at the same issues):

I agree with Bob's idea of a guest login. Add that to the tags, the members only workshops, and the frequent pruning. I just googled a poem that was cut in the lat pruning -- it was right on top with the first line or two visible in the google summary and a link to the cached page with the whole poem. If Wiley is right that mags are rejecting based on this, I am very deterred from posting anymore.

David R.

Meanwhile, Maryann, I vote for deleting the deck the hall threads. Or at least the posts containing the poems in full. As Steve C pointed out in the other thread, the tags aren't working there anymore.

David R.

This seems to be a huge fuss over a problem with an apparently simple solution, which was mentioned in Roger's first post on this thread. I can google myself on the Sphere, but not on the Gaz. Find out whatever it is the Gaz does for privacy protection, and emulate it here.

I also think that members have to get over this intense concern about having your threads read by somebody who is not also a member. If you elect to post on a public forum - no matter how private it tries to be - you're on a public forum. The internet is imperfect. Stuff will be seen. If you're that worried about it, possibly you shouldn't be posting.

David, to respond in part to your comment about deleting the "deck the halls" threads:

I see that we've got a new situation now. We tried this year to deal with the issue of hiding the poems so as to let people give us unpublished work, and our hoped-for solution failed us.

But I don't think the goal for the future should be to take poems down after these contests. We might have to rethink what's eligible for a contest; it might have to be "previously published only." We want the Distinguished Guest board to be a record that stands, I think.

Golias - permit me a question. Can you share with us which print journals it was that would not accept your work because it had appeared here? As far as I know, only Poetry takes this approach, and they don't inform people that they googled and found something on the net - they just spit out the usual rejection slip. If there are others with this approach, I would appreciate some advance warning.

Is it possible that you forced the issue by going out of your way in the submission to indicate that the poem had been posted on the net? And that possibly you were not clear as to whether the poem was in a workshop with a short life span, or posted for general reading in a journal? It just sounds strange that you seem to be the only one who had this experience, so I'm curious as to the background.

Michael, that sort of begs the question. Yes, it is a "public forum," of course, but there are indeed steps that can be taken to alter the level of privacy we enjoy here. The question is whether we should take those steps. I don't see how "get over it" is an argument one way or the other when there are actual choices to be made.

I don't think you believe it either. Otherwise, why would you suggest that we emulate the Gazebo codes? Why not just say "Get over it" and suck it up that Google is indexing our work?

It's a question of how many steps we are willing to take. You are willing to use protective codes, but not to require non-members to sign in as a guest. It's a fair enough disagreement, but I simply can't "get over" my issues. They impact me directly and the current situation is keeping me from being able to workshop lots of my work here.

Lots of public functions are restricted for privacy purposes. I believe that AA meetings are open to the public, but that doesn't mean they want non-alcoholics dropping in to "lurk" or that they want the transcripts of the meetings posted online.

PS--
I'd also add that the fact that you may not be bothered by the additional visibility doesn't mean that there's any reason for you to oppose taking measures to address the concerns of those of us who are bothered. I don't see how it hurts you to humor the rest of us. Why not just be a sport and indulge the privacy freaks? What's it to you?

Folks, I appreciate all your suggestions about evading spiders, the possibility of having a closed site, and the many other ways of getting at the issue of privacy versus the benefits of workshopping. HOWEVER:

My original question was about more frequent pruning. That's the one thing I have the power to do, IF Alex approves of the idea.

I suggest that the solution to this morning's overlapping threads is to post on this one ONLY if you're arguing for or against more frequent pruning. If you want to talk about a different aspect of the problem, Wiley's thread is probably the place to post.

For the record, it doesn't seem to be within my power to hide forums, but I'm still looking.

Well, I did ask before the competition whether the tags would be in place, and during the competition, I checked and they were working. Now they are either gone or not working. Can we do something about this? Re-tag those threads? Block them to non-members? Especially if they are going to be up there in perpetuity. I am starting to now I hadn't entered.

Interestingly, I just googled my Bake-off entry and it didn't pop up, so how archived is archived?

David R.

Moved from another thread per Janice's suggestion to keep it all on one thread
It's especially puzzling to me to find that Golias has had poems apparently googled and rejected since he is one of the few here who posts under an assumed name. The use of an alias should make it much harder for a publication who was interested enough or had enough spare time on their hands to do seach and discard research each and every submitted poem.

As far as I know "Poetry" is one of the few which does not accept previously workshopped poems - and they state so explicitly on their submission page. I would think that if one wanted to submit a poem to them that they would be aware of their distaste for workshopping and either not workshop the poem ahead of time or just not submit it.

But that's just me.

And I'm cranky today.


Personally, I'm pretty surprised to find that so many people here seem to find the set-up here to be a problem.

Tim has had poems which he's workshopped here published by Poetry, hasn't he?

I'm for increasing the frequency of pruning, mainly because new members overeager to pad their crit count occasionally search back three or four weeks for short poems that look quick and easy to crit, and exhume them...much to the disgust of everyone whose more recent work has been bumped off the first page by these antiquities.

It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a major annoyance.

I gather from a reply by Golias on a related thread that, actually, his report of " having several poems declined by major print journals" related to a single personal rejection (of several poems work-shopped here, including one that also appeared in the Bake-off - which is not a workshop) by Poetry. Golias did not indicate other publications. As far as I can determine, what he encountered is what we had already heard about Poetry, and it may have been exacerbated by the Bake-off post.

Golias - any clarification would be appreciated.

Sorry to interrupt...but Roger, I tried to PM you my thoughts on your earlier post, but your mailbox is full. If you're dying of curiosity, empty your mailbox and I'll send it again.

If not...the extremely abbreviated version is: Sorry I missed your "guest sign-in" idea, which would work, and yet I'm not swayed.

OK...returning to our "pruning" program...

Roger. I'm puzzled. Why is your suggestion regarding guest sign-ins any different than what we now have? As far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong), guests can read the Forums, but not post, and only members can post.

We have to have some mechanism for allowing non-members to see what's happening - or we'd never get new members - so they can look, but they can't touch. And if you want to post - you have to join.

What am I missing here? It's true, your approach asks the casual browser to sign in as a guest - so I agree it's somewhat more exclusionary - but there's no screening process, anybody can be a guest - and anybody can see what we're posting.

Regarding protecting the Forums (and the site) from googling - I'm in complete agreement. If I was still working, I would be very uncomfortable knowing that any business associate who googled my name would be able to read every thread, and poem, and political pronouncement I made. I'd be posting under a different name (which is a bummer if you start publishing, because it would be nice to publish under your own name.) I know you've been through that. But I regard google-proofing the site as a different element than members-only access. And I also feel that - even with google-proofing - stuff leaks. (There are periodic complaints on the Gaz, even though whatever they do seems to work fell, brom the most Google-averse.) So I think that, if you post on the internet, you have to accept the fact that whatever you put up may be seen, but proceed on the premise that you will try to encourage whatever steps are possible to limit the chances of this happening.

Once again, with feeling: could we put the matter of Google-proofing on the OTHER thread? This one is about the question of more frequent pruning, which is the only one I can do something about.

Google indexing
 

I've been working on a tag equivalent to the standard HTML noindex meta for a while unsuccessfully. However, I've accelerated the work rate in response to this and similar concerns expressed elsewhere. I'm happy to report success! Now, you can prevent Google indexing by placing this new bbcode as the first thing in your workshop poem thread that you want to hide from search engines:
Although I haven't tested it yet in practice to verify the final outcome on Google, the generated HTML is equivalent to noindex meta tag and should, in theory, stop indexing of anything that follows it.

Cheers,
...Alex
--

If there were a Knighthood connected to the World of Cyberspace, you would get it, Alex.

Complete with a real castle and a jousting lance. And attendents playing the lyre. And you could sit in the House of Ether Lords when it was in session.

Thank you so much.

Can someone who has a poem ready for Met,TDE, Non-Met or Translations please try out the tag Alex has just posted? I'll get in line to offer a crit at halftime.

G/W

Google Caching
 

Wow, Janice ... Thanks!

But, that's not why I'm posting again. I have even more good news. I've been able to modify the forum code to add a directive that instructs Google and others to stop caching or archiving content in the poetry forums (i.e. Met, Non-Met, Deep End, Translation). With this in place, even if you did not use the [noindex][/noindex] tags to prevent indexing by Google and others, any references they may have to the poem will become unreachable once we prune or delete it here, with no lingering tell-tale cache being served by Google.

Cheers,
...Alex

Thanks, Alex. I feel ok about workshopping poems again.

Alex, pardon my dunderheadedness, but would one place that "" all together, just like that, as the first thing in the thread?

Editing back in because I notice the "noindex & /noindex" thingy didn't show up. The reason I'm asking this question is because usually a command, such as inserting italics ("") comes before and after the text you want to affect. But you seemed to be saying just place the whole thing at the beginning.

Thank you, Sir Alex.

That's right, Andrew. You just enter only [noindex][/noindex] (i.e. all together, with nothing in-between), and do this first thing at the beginning of the post, before you start entering your poem.

Cheers,
...Alex

Thanks, Alex. You answered my question even without my editing back to explain myself better!
Andrew

Thanks, Alex.

Just to be clear,

(a) we don't have to put any code into our posts now to stop them from Google, it will happen automatically; and

(b) there will be no period of time, even prior to pruning, when newly posted poems (as opposed to poems posted before today) will show up in Google; and

(c) one can still use the tags in non-workshop forums to keep particular threads from being indexed?

Assuming (c) is correct, must we use the tags to surround the entire posting, or just put them both up top?

Thanks again.

Roger, my understanding (I've no more info to go on than you have) is
a) the default for past and future posts is that search engines will find them
b) if you add the new tags, posts will disappear from Google the next time Erato is scanned, at the earliest - more likely days than weeks.
c) You put the tags as is at the top of your posting. I'd guess that it affects the whole thread that it appears in.

Can someone explain to me how this works: I googled a phrase from a translation I had at the Translation forum a few months ago and it came up on google but when I click there I can't get the thread. I understand the thread has been pruned, so why would it show up on google? How can I get it to stop?

I should have thought that this tag would be like any other html or IMG tag we use here. The text to be hidden is located between the start part of the tag [ ] and the finish part [/]. If the tag were generated by the software, say with an N alongside the B, I, and U, the cursor would appear between the parts and one would just proceed to type the poem with its perhaps false title. Is that not the case? If it is, since we don't have the automatic N, we probably should type in the whole tag, place the cursor between the two parts and type in the poem or whatever we want hidden. Else place the first or start tag, type in the poem, and then type in the finishing tag. Let's try it:

We should not be able to find the expression: -with Google or any other search engine.

Let's see if it works...... Well, it must work, in a way, because the expression I placed between the words "expression:" and "with" disappears when I merely preview this post. But does this mean the poems will also disappear from the workshop thread? I hope not, but we can test it if someone will put up a suitable poem, between the parts of the tag, at TDE or one of the other workshop boards. I don't want to risk another poem.

G/W

EDITED IN: The test expression was "Egarlux Puriam Booliroo" and Google did not find it. Now that I have put it outside the noindex tag it will probably be found eventually by Google---but that still does not tell us whether a poem posted for workshopping will disappear from the thread.

Earlier Alex wrote
i.e. the "hidden" text doesn't go between the start and end parts.

Tim, I don't think it will work that way. I believe Alex relies on the cursor popping back between the parts. but when we have to type in the whole
tag the cursor won't do that. If I'm wrong, then this is a very peculiar tag, which it well may be.



EDTING IN: Too impatient to wait, I decided to use the poem I previously exposed to rist at TDE. I used the tag as Alex presented it. The poem did not disappear, and so far neither Google nor Yahoo have found the nonsense title I placed on it. It's at the TDE thread titled "Il Ragno" (the spider). We'll wait to see whether the spiders eventually find it by the title---or until it's pruned by Maryann.

Wiley, I may be misinterpreting you, but this text does not require the cursor to "pop back in" between the two halves. Tthough I have put a space between the first bracket and the "noindex" so it will show up here, this text below (without that extra space).

[ noindex][/noindex]

should be entered as a non-interrupted entity as the initial text of a post.

My understanding is that text is not to be entered between the two halves.

Alex wrote as follows: