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Mikael Erikson, Disappering Discussions, & Disappointments

Well, it looks Mikael's flown this forum and wiped out all trace of himself. That's too bad, because I thought a discussion with a fellow aging malcontent might have been interesting and fruitful. I read in his blog that he has ADHD, which would explain his impulsiveness in words and actions. (Hey, I'm not putting him down. I have ADHD too, and have the same traits, as I'm sure many of you have noticed.)

I did find his blog, and wanted to contact him through it, but as with a lot of blogs, I couldn't find how to do that. No "comment on this", no "e-mail".

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not railing. But another problem I have with the Internet is the ease with which things can be erased. I'm not "outraged" that Mikael erased his discussions, but I am disappointed. If I'd written my own comments there in a zine, some copies would've survived. With the Internet, every last trace is burned to cinders, to non-existence down the memory hole, in a flash. (Fortunately I composed my own comments on Notepad, but still, a good discussion is gone forever, and a lot of the reasons I do zines, and bother with Net forums, is "the good discussion", which doesn't happen too often.

I don't quite understand the rather harsh response Mikael got. Reading over his comments a second time, they seemed pretty restrained, balanced and moderate.

Not mad at anybody really. Just some comments.

JND

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Permalink Reply by incurable hippie on November 22, 2009 at 3:20am

I find it incredibly frustrating when a thread disappears, especially when I've contributed to it.

It seems that on this site there's nothing that the people who run it can do about it, but it always looks childish when someone deletes a thread they started because others disagree with what they say.

Of course, if things get abusive I can perhaps understand it, but could there be some kind of rule that people can't do it without their membership being withdrawn? Even though we can all technically delete a thread we start, if it was disapproved of officially, and the membership could be threatened, then maybe it wouldn't happen so much?