Deleting topics

[Brightguy]

Come on Dan, you ask for help with your big project and then delete the topic when I answer your question? I'm opposed to censorship, so I don't even like it when topics are locked, but this is worse. What's the deal? Anyone agree with me on this?

[Cervantes]

It might not have been Dan that deleted your topic, but some other mod. Also, I've looked through the staff forums and don't see any evidence of such a post existing. I'm not entirely sure what that means.

[richcash]

The topic did exist and was a challenging problem, so no other mod or admin would've deleted it.

Brightguy, the answer you gave was correct according to bugzpodder, but Dan decided to use a different approach that was given by hikaru on the irc.

I would advise not discussing details of the problem until Dan gives permission, because he could have deleted it for reasons to do with his class (e.g. people in Dan's class were bugging him for the solution; he didn't want someone to attempt the question, post a similar solution to his and then he would be accused of copying; etc.)

I guess he also could've done it by accident, and now can not retrieve it. Who knows?

[bugzpodder]

haha, or that its possible he doesnt want his professor to find out that he plagiarized his assignment. in any case, this is pitful and i will no longer reply to any more of Dan's "assignment" posts in the future.

[Amailer]

Another one of compsci's conspiracys!

[md]

I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything!

(no really, it wasn't me)

[rdrake]

bugzpodder @ Sun Apr 15, 2007 12:31 pm wrote:

haha, or that its possible he doesnt want his professor to find out that he plagiarized his assignment. in any case, this is pitful and i will no longer reply to any more of Dan's "assignment" posts in the future.

All I can say is Dan did not get a single line of code from Hikaru in the channel last night from what I saw. He helped him determine a method, nothing more. Really not sure where the post went, sure didn't disappear to the usual places.

/me scolds self for starting a debate on what constitutes plagiarism.

[Dan]

I deleted it so buggz whould not start an argument witch it was turing in to, in fact he is trying to trun this post in to such an argument as well as you can see from his complenty baseless post above.

Other reasons are:

1. The topic had no value to any one eltes in the comunity, the question was very speficke and was more math based then computer science based so even if it had an awser in it, it whould not help very many peoleop.

2. It did not realy have an awnser in it, buggz restated the question, the propterys of biconnected components and a few other things however none of thess where the soltion to my problem and most where aucatly stated in the orignal question.

3. My oringal code had a bug in it that was making the solution off by 1, if some one used my orginal code and then tryed to impplment any soltion they whould be even more screwwed.

4. It was my topic, and the posts under it where 1/2 mine and the other 1/2 bugs restarting the propterys of graphs. So i don't see how i was censoring any one but my self.

5. Only my bits where effected, by deleting the topic.

6. One of the links in my question was to copy righted materal (the cd that goses with CLRS), i did not even think of this at the time however it dose vilote the polcilys of compsci.ca (Also by copyrighted materals i do not mean copying code, that cd came with the book i have and i was told you use it by the assigment.)

7. Ignorent poeleop like buggz whould get the idea that i was asking for some one to do it for me, however i cleary side i did not whont that in my orginal post and in replys to my post when buggz started inmpleying that. Any one who was in irc yesterday whould know that i was no given a line of code by any one and the help i got was in several very kind members finding materal on graphs online for me and helping me with graph theroy behond just saying what a bridge is over and over.

8. Buggz like noraml was inuslating lakehead in his 1st post to the topic, imppley that is was addaming that lakehead whould even teach such materal.

9. If some one from my class copyed the code then i whould be in trouble for copying when i did not. This whould be a masive loss for me for doing nothing wrong. (sadly unis think adcdently allowing peoleop to copy you is the same as copying thess days).

bugzpodder wrote:

haha, or that its possible he doesnt want his professor to find out that he plagiarized his assignment. in any case, this is pitful and i will no longer reply to any more of Dan's "assignment" posts in the future.

I think you need to look up the deftionion of plagiazium, asking for help is not plagiarizsum, if it was almost every post in the help sections of this site whould be mean the user is plagiazing some one. As for you not replying to my posts, PLEASE DON"T!!!!, i whould be very very greatfull if you did not it whould save me so much stress and time. Also how many times have i asked for help on anything never mind content of an assigment on this site? This whould be the 1st.

There is no way i whould get in trobel from any crediable profser for asking for help and question. May where you go, you are discoruabged form discusing problems and free thought but at lakehead discotion, comucation and learning are a postive thing. In the real world there are peer reviews of work and questions are asked of peers all the time, this is hardly copying there work.

Honstly i am quite insulated by the reply i got from you buggz and if it was not for some of our great users like, Hikaru, Ultrahex and rdrake i whould have given up on computer science and this site long ago.

richcash wrote:

I would advise not discussing details of the problem until Dan gives permission, because he could have deleted it for reasons to do with his class (e.g. people in Dan's class were bugging him for the solution; he didn't want someone to attempt the question, post a similar solution to his and then he would be accused of copying; etc.)

That is one of the reasons, tho i am not so much worried as them copying me as them copying the code i posted and geting stuck where i did for so long becues of a bug. Tho it indeed whould be bad if they copyed my code 100% and handed it in and i realy did get in trouble for copying becues some one copyed my code. This prorgeect was not small, the graph part is just the surface of it and in total it is worth 35% of my final grade, so asking for help on one question of somthing this masive is hardly wrong and if some one did copy it like you side i could lose 35% of my grade for some one other then me cheating.

Brightguy wrote:

Come on Dan, you ask for help with your big project and then delete the topic when I answer your question? I'm opposed to censorship, so I don't even like it when topics are locked, but this is worse. What's the deal? Anyone agree with me on this?

1stly i asked for help on one question of part of my big project. Also i did not use your awnser, if i did i most deftaly whould not have deleted the topic. If you don't blive this i can share the code i curently have with you so you can see the method i used witch is calautoting the low value (defined in CLRS page 558 part c if you have it) and then seeing if the time of discovery is the same, if it is then it is a bridge and the edge is set as being a bridge.

I am also for free speach when it is construtive, however from my point of view i was only censoring my self (since it was my topic). If i had known you whould be so offened by deleting of the topic i whould have not done it. Honstly i did not have much time to read your solution becues i had allready solved the problem and moved on to the next. From the sounds of it, it whould probly have worked however it confilcied with the method i had to use for solving it witch was one run of a linear DFS to find all 3 objectes.

If you whont to have a discution about free speah on forums it is an intresting topic, i am all for free speah however there are limits. You have the right to free speah but that dose not mean you can go to some one eltes house and right on there walls with spam (not that your post was spam or wrong at all, realy it just go in the way of a start of a long draw out argument that was avoided by removing the hole topic witch whould have turned in to a masive chunck of spam).

Also if we whont to look in to the privacy laws of canada, a person has the right to request that there information be removed from almost any orgnastions data base at any time. So legealy if some one requested that there information be removed it has to be done or at least made so it can not be linked to them.


Now it is clear this topic was made as a trolling atmepted and realy i should not even dignify it with a reply, if i realy was the evil censorship copying monster that i was made out to be i whould just delete this topic two. However i am not and i am giving you an expaltion as to why my topic was deleted. CompSci.ca policy is noramly that you ask such quetsions in PMs becues the fourm whould be filled up with topic about actions of editing, locking and deleteing topics. As such do not be supriesed if this topic gets locked if this turns in to a flam war, is just trolling or turns in to a debate.

[Dan]

Cervantes @ 15th April 2007, 9:00 am wrote:

It might not have been Dan that deleted your topic, but some other mod. Also, I've looked through the staff forums and don't see any evidence of such a post existing. I'm not entirely sure what that means.

It was my topic, and i did lock it at 1st, then moved it to evidence and just deleted it, becues there was no edvidence to be found from it, it was my topic, i know who i am.

richcash wrote:

I guess he also could've done it by accident, and now can not retrieve it. Who knows?

At this point i had been up for 50 hours with out sleep so, my jugement was not 100%. In retrospect i should have not deleted it but at the same time i am not about to roll back the site a day to bring it back.

rdrake wrote:

/me scolds self for starting a debate on what constitutes plagiarism.

No need for such a debate, the deftion of plagiairism is quite clear and very few whould clasify it as asking a question (unless you copyed that awnser word for word in to your assigment). In the end even if in such a world where that was plagiarism (witch it is not) i whould not be plagiairising buggz or Brightguy but Hikaru and since Hikaru read some articals online to help me he whould be plagiazining the artical and that artical whould be plagriazing who ever they ornganly whould be thought the information from and so on and so on to the begining of time.


P.S. Sorry for the double post.

Edit: Affter spending serveral hours, that should be put in to studying for exams tomore, of looking threw our backups it seems that the topic and it's posts just missed both back up runs and is thous imposable to bring back unless some one knows more about our backup system then me. If you guys realy realy whont i could try to remake the post by memeory and then every one who posted can try to make there post again, however i think that is just rediculess.

Edit2: I also sreached google to see if the had a cahed version of the post, however the google bot had not got to it yet.

[Brightguy]

Ok, I see your reasoning now. I wasn't exactly insulted, but pretty surprised and at least wanted some kind of explanation. I mean, I spent some time thinking and replying to your question (during exam time no less!) only to have it deleted with no response. I posted only about an hour after you were still trying to solve it, so I had no idea you found another way at around the same time. It seemed as if you deleted it as soon as a solution was posted, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions, that's why I made this topic asking what happened. I'm sorry if this topic seemed like trolling, I never tried to make you seem like an 'evil censorship monster'.

By the way, I'm surprised you posted your code in the first place, especially for such a large project. We're always told to keep our code private.

About the topic locking thing, it happens on a lot of boards and most of the time I think it is unwarranted. For example, if the topic was locked because a flame war started, that stops the flames but it doesn't handle the underlying issue, which is why the people feel it necessary to flame. Maybe I'm an optimist on this issue, but I'd like to think that with the help of impartial moderators sometimes the opposing sides could reach some kind of a compromise or truce. In any case, topic locking seems like the easy way out, it doesn't try to resolve anything and also stops reasoned debate.

[Dan]

Thank you for understanding Brightguy, i in no way ment to make it seem i just took your help and ran. I am very thankfull for your post even tho it got deleted and i found another way.

In the futtuer i will think more befor deleting somthing or locking it.