by Aldus Marius on Fri Apr 21, 2006 5:26 pm
Salve, mi Scerio...
IIRC, I'd noticed as much in the "Restoratio Memoriae" topic...that not only ex-Consul Coruncanius had left us, but our former Aedilis Kaeso Duellianus as well; he hasn't been heard from since shortly after the "Topic Organization" thread got started. I'd expressed my hope that the two departures were not related.
Tiberius Draco and I did some experimenting last month; we can delete a member's Board login (leaving him still an SVR member), but there is no way on our end for him to take--or us to send--all his posts with him. Unless something was done server-side, the only way we know of for a Sodalis to make off with everything he ever wrote is for him to delete them all by hand.
As to the larger issues of preventing and allowing such things... The SVR is a free association. Sodales are free to come and go as they please. If a member no longer wishes to be here, we have no power whatsoever make him stay. The Societas has no formal 'resignation' process. (That would be a bit OP-ish anyway, nonne?) We might hope for a courtesy letter or some such, so that we'd know to remove the member from the Album Sodalium at least. But we can't mandate anything.
The only thing that might have kept those two from deleting all their messages would have been some sense of honor, some sense of community, some sense of shame on their end. If either of them had seen the act the way I do--as vandalism, as a deliberate act against the SVR's public record--I trust their Romanitas would've prevented it. But failing that, and in the absence of measures that would make us a more closed society, there is not a whole lot we can do.
One must anticipate a thing to prevent it. No one had ever harmed us in this way, so we could not be on guard for it. I only discovered these things months after the fact. And what could we have done anyway, if we had caught them in the act? Send a PM asking them to desist? It would still have come down to their own decision to either delete things or leave them be.
If it's any comfort, I have disabled deletion privileges in the Comitia (only). Anything posted there will stay there, unless and until my successor changes the setting. But as to the rest...if Pompus Maximus doesn't want anyone to be able to read his article on the Samnite Wars, he's perfectly within his rights to remove it.
In fide,
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.