Some actions are easy to characterize, such as Unity08 deciding it would begin deleting portions of my questions from its website because they were — get this — taking up too much space. On the threads I started there, devoted specifically to those questions. A much easier way for my questions to Unity08 to stop taking up space would be for Unity08 to answer the questions. I wasn’t about to have Unity08 apparatchiks editing my statements and keeping my name associated with the content — so I deleted the questions from the website, with an explanation of what Unity08 was planning and a link to those same questions, unaltered, here.
Some other actions are more difficult to judge. Unity08 decided to further edit my post, removing address information of a person who received a tidy sum in payment for working on the thoroughly unsuccessful Unity Petition project, despite a very clear message that the Unity Petition project was all-volunteer:
Is anyone being paid for this Unity Petition effort?
No. It is entirely volunteer, from top to bottom.
This person’s name and address are already available as a matter of public record in Unity08′s 4th Quarter IRS report, which you can read here.
Should a person be exempted from having their address being published by media when it is already publicly available?
Think about that.
Now let me tell you that this person was a college student. “U08Moderator” (who was revealed earlier this week to be Unity08 Communications Director Shane Kinkennon) made a special effort to introduce the fact that the person who was paid was a college student. Does that change things? If so, why?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. I have a tentative position on this, but I can recognize that other positions may have some merit on this, and my mind is changeable. I’d like to hear your thoughts to help focus mine.
If I were one who were led by “greed” and not by “creed” I would say, “wake up and smell the coffee”. However, this would not apply to those who need medication to accommodate a sense of smell.