I’m still confused about the reasons you’ve given so let me paraphrase. The reason why I always refer to my OP is that I hope someone reads and follows my logic. If they don’t, I’ll try and see where our arguments part ways.
According to this comment.
- Addresses contain a lot more personal data and require a safer way to exchange.
- Private messages are safer than public moderated posts.
- Therefore, private messages are preferred.
In case you feel I intentionally left out this point. In private messages, if you’re the one who sends the postcard image, you can delete it yourself. If you’re the translator, you can remind the other person if he hasn’t done so. As you’ve said multiple times, we Postcrossers are a community. A certain level of trust is assumed here.
Therefore, I don’t see justification in your point above why such private exchanges must be published just for the sake of seeing it get deleted. That’s also why I brought up the issue of addresses.
- If you think addresses should be deleted regularly but are upset we can’t, then following your position, it’s be better to publish our addresses in a public thread and let admin moderate.
- But you said we should not publish our addresses.
- That’s the contradiction in your argument.
Put in another way,
- If you think it’s safe and okay for our addresses to be stored permanently in private messages here, then it follows that it’s also safe and okay to store postcard images in private messages.
- You don’t think it’s safe and okay to store postcard images in private messages.
- Therefore, you don’t think it’s safe and okay for addresses. Again, contradiction.
Hope you understand where I come from by calling some arguments invalid.
According to this earlier comment.
Postcard pictures may or may not contain personal information.
- If a postcard contains no personal information, it is better for it to be posted in a public moderated thread.
So what if a postcard does contain personal information? I sense you assume:
- Nothing else on a postcard except the address and name is personal information.
Referring back to my OP, I gather that you support
- Presumption of publicity
Even if the message may contain what the sender thinks is personal information, according to your presumption, all postcard messages are public. You maintain postcard messages can be straight away posted publicly. That means you think it’s impossible for a postcard message to contain any information that requires the same level of treatment as addresses.
- Presumption of publicity is the opposite of presumption of privacy. The community guidelines treat postcards as private. So I think it’s reasonable to request such a switch in fundamental position to be mentioned. This leads to “Alternative 1 Revise guidelines”.
- You’re for “Alternative 2 Keep status quo” and think this switch from presumption of privacy to presumption of publicity is trivial, or borrowing your words, lies in the juridical gray zone, so no need to mention.
- I’m for a blanket ban because I think the presumption of privacy is fundamental to the concept of Postcrossing. I’m fully aware of the risk of postcards being unknowingly published, but it is the integrity of the Postcrossing concept that I want see honored to the utmost. I guess that may be the reason why the forum is an option. It may be a technical constraint that the main site and the forum cannot be seamlessly integrated. But opt-in forum membership is obviously is a choice made by Postcrossing team. So would also love to hear @admins’s official stance on this.
Again, we don’t need to agree with each other. As I’ve emphatically repeated myself many times, the presumption of privacy is fundamental and is what makes Postcrossing special. In my opinion, it is Postcrossing’s niche and I guess many non-forum members think so too. When the presumption of privacy is broken, I can of course still exchange postcards, just that Postcrossing is no longer what I thought I signed up for. That’s why I’m building a case here.
I sincere believe this was only a benign oversight on Postcrossing’s part. If it were more thoroughly thought through, the translation thread wouldn’t have existed in its current form. So once again, I urge everyone, including those who disagree or are neutral, to revisit the parts and parcels of my argument and see if it can help you understand our differences. You may have your own logic and so far I’ve tried my best to identify the exact points that we disagree on (such as principles, pros and cons and even high-level assumptions). Through this effort I’m confident we can understand each other and find common ground.