[Maryann Corbett]

For whatever it's worth, I had removed my poem entitle "LJStalker" some weeks ago. Searches on the title still produce results.

[Claudia Gary]

Maryann wrote:

"Poets can delete their own poems at any point. We should test whether the title that remains still produces results in a Google search.

"Critters can refrain from duplicating whole poems, or pieces of them, in their critiques, to respect the poet's desire to avoid Google."

The kind of activity described in the second paragraph is what has made me nervous. I would appreciate it if moderators would delete such a post from a critter, any time the poem's author requests that it be deleted.

And I really don't understand why any critters do this in the first place. Maybe it's being done by those who don't realize that they can see the poem by scrolling down, while in the process of posting a comment.

Claudia

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Do you think it is due to the TITLE in the TOPIC that it can be Googled, Maryann? Or has Google become the dreaded beast that eavesdrops on our every last typed word. It is kind of creepy to feel that one's every word is being spied upon, frankly. It infringes on everyone's right to privacy. It seems to tread on the 4th amendment of our American Constitution - (sort of) "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

p.s. Perhaps we should just start numbering our poems in the TOPIC space rather than putting the actual title in.

[Maryann Corbett]

I probably should be saying "search engines" rather than "Google." I've just run some experiments with Dogpile.
As a practical matter, the phrase entered in the title field is what the search engines are finding.

This confirms what I thought: pruning is important. Threads need to go away.

[Wintaka]

Scott,

As others have pointed out, only one major poetry magazine, along with very few lesser ones, has the policy in question (i.e. "Work that has appeared on-line is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted."). Thus, any reaction is likely to be regarded as an overreaction. From my dealings with Fred Sasaki at Poetry magazine I can confirm that they are deadly serious about this antediluvian policy. While Poetry may be a gorilla too big for some to ignore, we just have to wait patiently until they decide to join the 21st Century. Don't hold your breath, though. In the meantime, there are other fine periodicals to which one can submit and subscribe.

I agree with Rose, Carol, Michael and others who encourage pruning. Yes, I know it's a PITA but having members delete the poems only works if none of the critics have duplicated the text--something we wouldn't want to discourage since it would preclude line-by-line critiques (and reposting the poem to show which version we're dealing with). Killing titles is useless; knowing that titles often change, searchers can and will use key phrases within the poem.

FWIW, a software solution, automatically deleting poem threads that have been dormant for 7 (or whatever) days, would be quite simple, requiring about three lines of code.

I concur with Quincy's points #1 and #3. If we were advising someone new to poetry where to go for a grounding in and discussion of contemporary verse where better to send them? As they say in the ad biz, "our product is our best advertisement"; allowing lurkers is how we get the discriminating new members we'll value most. My only disagreement is tangential: IMHO, the IBPC is a brilliant idea horribly executed (please excuse the pun). Their PR and judging...well, let's not go there. In my view, the more ways (not just venues but ways) we have of recognizing the best poems being produced the better. And, yes, I understand that this is a minority opinion.


Signed,

Colin

[Roger Slater]

Originally posted by Anne Bryant-Hamon:
Do you think it is due to the TITLE in the TOPIC that it can be Googled, Maryann? Or has Google become the dreaded beast that eavesdrops on our every last typed word. It is kind of creepy to feel that one's every word is being spied upon, frankly. [/i]

As I think I mentioned, all you need to do is Google a distinctive line or phrase from the poem itself and it shows up on Google. This is not limited to the title of the poem itself, nor is it limited to the top post of the thread.

What I'm not sure about is what happens when you delete the poem from the thread. Google often keeps a "cache" copy of the previous version of the page. I don't know how long it takes to clear the cache.

How much simpler it would be to put the anti-search code into every page. That would also let us keep the threads around here, without Google, so that we can use the Erato archives as a private resource that is searchable only by people who use the local Erato search feature.

[Henrietta kelly]

If a poem is removed by the poet and the title still pops up- why not use the subject line as the form type. And put the title in the body of the post that is deleted along with the work?

Example-- a ballade (on shades of pink )

N-- besides it will aid and speed up the teaching process of beginners nothing is that hard

[Quincy Lehr]

If anyone's knickers are really in a twist on the pruning front, let me remind you that the Round-Up automatically deletes poetry threads after three weeks of inactivity. So come post with us. We're oh so nice, and a lot of us are here, too. Or there, too. Or something.

Quincy

[Stephen Collington]

Hi Maryann and All,

I think that there may indeed be a very simple solution to this, but it will require the intervention of someone with administrative access. Google does indeed have a function whereby one can block its (and indeed, all) search robots. The fix is described here .

If I understand the explanation correctly, all that has to be done is for the tag

< META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" > (see p.s. below)

to be pasted into the HTML source code for the "Post New Topic" code in the workshopping forums. For someone with password access who is able to "publish" changes in the code to the website, this should be a very easy fix indeed. There are other ways also to block Google from the site, including placing a "robots.txt" file in the root domain, but adding the META tag might be easiest, since it would make it possible to deny access to critical forums without restricting Google from the rest of the site. Anyway, I'm not really the techie to explain all this, and I don't know how E'sphere is organized administratively, but all the pertinent information about search robot management is available in one stop here . (The META tag option described above is the first option on the list.)

I for one would be very grateful to the moderators if they could deal with this issue. I think it's great that Eratosphere is open to the public--I would never have found it myself if I hadn't stumbled on it one day in a search. But poems are private things sometimes, and while poets may feel comfortable taking the leap in the company of other workshoppers, there is indeed a chilling effect in knowing that the results of a workshopping session may linger in cyberspace for years. I'm here under my own name, but I do wonder sometimes whether that may someday come back to bite me. And beyond that, what's the point of polishing a poem here if some boneheaded editor is going to reject it simply on the basis of prior "exposure"?

One last note: Google has a whole "Webmaster Help Center" with other potentially useful information here . "Preventing content from appearing" is number four on the first list.

Hope that's useful . . . and yes, please could we fix this?

With thanks to all our administrators,
Steve C.

p.s. I added the spaces between the command code for the META tags and the carets <> because otherwise the software does indeed read the line as code and fails to display it. (I wanted everyone to be able to read it, so I tinkered.) But this does raise the possibility that posters could merely add this tag in to their own "Post Topic" posting and maybe . . . maybe (I don't know) that would prevent Google from indexing and caching the initial post (which of course would contain the poem). That may well work as an interim fix . . . I'm going to try it here by adding this ridiculous word "Comboptchachoptchulacious!" and reinserting the unaltered META tags at the top of the file (where you will not see them, of course, as per the explanation above). I'll try googling the word in a few days, and we'll see. Note, however, that this will not solve the problem of critters quoting a poem. If a generalized "system" fix is unavailable, posters may just have to request that critters use discretion. We'll see. S.C.