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philipy philipy
 

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M$1.00  Funded By Mahalo ? |  April 16, 2009 01:42 AM

Darcy's answers have been vanished from the system. Would you like to still be able to see them?

Personally I would like to be able to see Darcy's answers, especially to my own questions.

I always assume I will be able to refer back to answers people gave me if I ever need the info. I don't print them out, cut-and-paste the info elsewhere, or anything like that, so I rely on them being accessible on Mahalo.

I can understand why it might seem appropriate to vanish them, but when the information was good, vanishing answers is punishing the asker and anyone else that wanted to know the answer, as well as Darcy.

If there's going to be action, rather than vanishing answers, I would prefer to see a batch run that removed all the suspect votes from her answers, re-calculated who got the Best Answer on that basis, and awarded the points accordingly.

How do other people feel - would you still like to be able to access those answers?
Interesting Question?  Yes (7)   No (0)   

Interesting: demanda, morriss003, stephenk, easyeboy, williamwaco, mrnemo, bhasky

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Best Answer  Chosen by Asker

williamwac... williamwac...
 
 April 16, 2009 03:44 AM
I thought her answers were very good and I would like to be able to refer to them occasionally.

It comes down to:

Is the primary purpose of the site to provide intelligent answers to meaningful questions?

or

Is the primary purpose of the site to protect other members from inappropriate votes?

She had lots of best answers. Many of them would be best answers even if all voting was honest. Closing her account and deleting her answers will not restore lost 'best answers' to the other members. If her account is closed, it is not even an effective "punishment" for her.

It does however punish the people whose questions she answered and the other members who would find her answers a valuable resource.

It seems to me removing her answers is punishing the wrong people.

You could however remove the "best answer" status indicator from her answers. That seems to be neutral, neither harming or helping anyone.

If you really feel vindictive, your could replace her user id with "N/A" when the answers are displayed.
Source(s):
Musings about an unhappy situation.

Asker's Rating:


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eatthatpop... eatthatpop...
 
April 19, 2009 06:58 AM
I completely agree. They should delete her profile, but her best answers are Mahalo Answers' way to grow as a community.

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drmatt drmatt
 
April 16, 2009 01:46 AM
I'm surprised that the questions/answers were removed. She did nothing wrong around the questions or answers. Those are still valid... and useful..

I would be curious to understand why the staff would do that...

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philipy philipy
 
April 16, 2009 02:00 AM
I'd guess they have a "vanish user" option among their "sheriff tools", and that was the natural thing to turn to for removing her from the top users list.

Maybe some of the side-effects of that weren't thought through.

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jasoncalac... jasoncalac...
 
April 16, 2009 08:35 AM
Very strange... the questions should still be in the system. I'm going to let @Mike know to make sure they are kept in the system for consistency

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philipy philipy
 
April 16, 2009 05:38 PM
Ok this seems to have been rectified. (Or rectified itself!)

Yesterday I could not see Darcy's answer to this question among others, but now I can.

http://www.mahalo.com/answers/politics/what-were-george-bushs-biggest-accomplishments-in-office

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easyeboy easyeboy
 
April 16, 2009 02:14 AM
It's very sad. I feel painfully disgusted and quite disappointed about the whole situation. I was at one point not feeling good about coming back to Mahalo Answers knowing that this happened. It's terrible what she did to the rest of the Mahalo Answers community, and not only does she owe us an apology (an apology wouldn't even make up for her wrongdoings), Mahalo should not sweep this under the rug like nothing happened, because something did happen. Just think of all the members Mahalo could have potentially lost because they never would make it to be the best answer, as her answer was always the best. I feel like we've all been cheated, because this member who was at the top cheated us all. This should not be taken lightly, and Mahalo Answers should compensate us all in some way for having to go through this misfortunate situation. Anyone who had answered a question, and lost because of her gaming the system should be paid back. I equate it to an olympic athlete taking steroids and getting the gold medal, they didn't earn it. I don't want to see her again. I would rather not see her answers knowing what she did, as it makes me feel sick to think about what she did to the rest of us.

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demanda demanda
 
April 16, 2009 02:27 AM
I understand your feelings of disappointment, but I think saying that Mahalo should compensate us in some way is a little extreme. Yes, it is a terrible situation and very unfair. But it would also be unfair, in my opinion, to have someone go back and try to sort all that out. I hope that we can all put this whole situation behind us soon. I'm glad you decided not to leave.

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easyeboy easyeboy
 
April 16, 2009 02:45 AM
They should go back and reward the best answers we should have been awarded because she cheated us, and prevented us from getting chosen as the best answer.

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morriss003 morriss003
 
April 16, 2009 02:50 AM
easyeboy your anger will only hurt you, not Darcy. You need to take a deep breath and relax. There are a few unpleasant things that you are likely to experience in your life ahead. This one is minor, although it may not seem so right now.

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demanda demanda
 
April 16, 2009 02:24 AM
Yes, I would like to be able to still see Darcy's answers. It is undeniable that what she did was very disappointing, and I can't believe that someone with her intelligence would be unaware that what she did was wrong.

That being said...no one can deny the quality of answers that she provided. It's a detriment to the site to have them no longer visible. However, I think it's very possible that she could have asked for them to be removed because, I think, her words are technically her property. It definitely sucks, either way. It leaves a lot of blank 'best answers' out there that I am sure will be confusing to users unaware of this situation.

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philipy philipy
 
April 16, 2009 02:48 AM
Good point about the ownership of the answers.

From the reactions here, maybe we need a more general conversation about how people feel about what's happened. Seems like there are still some very strong unresolved feelings out there.

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philipy philipy
 
April 16, 2009 03:07 AM
On second thoughts, while we own our answers, the TOS gives Mahalo the right to use them forever. So maybe it's not that.

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morriss003 morriss003
 
April 16, 2009 02:56 AM
Yes, I want to see the answers.
As one of the not-so-good people, I can tell you that it is unfortunate when we damage our reputations, especially since it usually is not necessary. There is rarely so much money involved that we need to madoff someone.
Sometimes, I found Darcy annoying, but I know for a fact that I gave her more than a few helpful clicks.

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mrnemo mrnemo
 
April 16, 2009 04:11 AM
Wait, they vanished? I was just reading some of her posts earlier today! I suppose this happened after that. I think her answers are no less worthwhile, but I feel Team Mahalo know the best way to handle this.

But yes, I would like to access those answers... don't shoot the messenger. This reminds me of how people say, "I'll never listen to that music because of all the drugs that guy did" or that sort of thing. This is definitely a special scenario, and Darcy is being made an example to discourage this type of thing, but her actions do not make her wonderful answers any less valid.

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philipy philipy
 
April 16, 2009 04:46 AM
Darcy has now given her side of the story here:

http://www.mahalo.com/answers/mahalo-answers-community/mahalo-response-to-recent-inquiries

Basically she says:

- She had a second id called DarcyL, from long before Answers started

- She used it for testing stuff, and playing around to see how things worked

- She wasn't trying to intentionally get Best Answer, just testing things

- Mahalo didn't give her a proper chance to explain.

As in my comment to Darcy's post, I hope Mahalo will let us know exactly what evidence they have. Like how many answers she's supposed to have voted for herself on.

Having an id called DarcyL certainly doesn't sound like anything intended to be deceptive.

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jeffhoard jeffhoard
 
April 17, 2009 09:05 PM
As far as I know Darcy's answer's haven't been eliminated from the system, in fact I believe this issue was already brought up and answered in one of the previous Darcy threads.

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philipy philipy
 
April 17, 2009 10:53 PM
No I raised it here first, then it got mentioned in other places by people that read this. If you read my comments you'll see that for a while I couldn't see Darcy's answers, but now I can again.

May have been a side effect of something else people were doing to her account.

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