Laurie Childs, yes of course I'm making it up. So are you and so is everyone else who proffers an explanation.

You think it unlikely that mails are deleted from the server. Why? Is that a guess or do you have details of Dr W's mail setup? You must know from your own experience that you can set your mail client to delete mail once it has been collected. Equally if the mail is going into a UNIX mail spool and the client deletes it, it is gone. The relevant blocks are almost certainly on the disk for some time thereafter, but you'd have to use tools that the average user doesn't have to get them back - and why would you bother calling someone in for something so trivial?

My guess is that Dr W came to the Hill used to being treated with a good deal of respect by his colleagues and students and expected the same here. When he didn't get it and then into the bargain got rude emails he was probably quite shocked. Getting an FOI request for things he'd deleted could well have been the last straw and decided, "to hell with BH, I want nothing more to do with them"**. People can be quite stroppy once they've been offended (whether you think taking offence was justified or not) and the Uni is certainly on his side, not yours. And they all doubtless considered the issue far too trivial to be bothered with - which indeed it was and is.

** pedants beware, not an actual quote

BB - "My guess is..."

No need to guess - go and read the thread.

MartinA you are a dramatist. You make it sound almost exciting, with you making your dramatic announcement and the FOI officer rushing to put Dr W in lock down mode to protect him from doing something criminal...

The reality is more mundane. How do you you read mails? For me it is something like, Open mail, hmm rubbish - delete, delete again, ah that is interesting I'll read that more carefully later, next, hmm next, delete, delete, delete.

See the pattern there - I delete most of it. Some are interesting and are kept, some are just kept, most are deleted. Am I unique in this? You believe Dr W is different in that he does not delete things he finds useless or offensive.

You say, "...and they would have had no way of knowing that the senders of such mails would not pop up and gleefully reveal that they really had been sent". Think about that. If as I imagine, deletion took place immediately, such consideration is void. You then announce your FOI request, so after that nobody has an interest in embarrassing himself by claiming to have sent a foul mouthed email. And if he does how and why does he prove it - show the world his email account thus identifying himself and proving that such emails were indeed sent? And now? What does anyone stand to gain from making such a claim now that you have the hammer you sought with which to bash Dr W?

You theorise that Dr W would have forwarded to AM. So lets see: Dr W: Andrew, I received some nasty emails. AM: Let's have a look,... no, none of then is a subscriber or registered user. Nothing I can do really but I can issue a dressing down to the troops if you like... Dr. W, no I'll give them a stern telling off in my next post. That should sort them out!

AM could of course confirm whether discussions about emails took place, but he might consider it a breach of confidentiality... My guess is that this FOI request is just an embarrassment for him. He would most likely be very happy if BH could become the 'go to' place for scientists to discuss their work with 'sceptics', but with petty-minded FOI requests being a danger of participation, such an outcome must be much less likely.

BitBucket - you are floundering. Give it a rest.

Of course, it's always open to Rob Wilson to clarify things if he considers that Martin A's account is inaccurate.

Calling Rob Wilson.

BB's replies seem to suggest that he has never worked in an organisation with a data retention policy. How surprising is that! The idea that deleting an email from a corporate account makes the email vanish is, frankly, a ludicrous conjecture and implies that nothing he says on this matter should be taken seriously.

Diogenes, it was not a corporate setup but a university. And nobody looked for backups squirrelled away on a server, they asked Dr W to hand over what he had.

Andrew Montford, if you read these threads, it would be very interesting to know your opinion of the usefulness and propriety of this witch-hunt and whether it embarrasses or has embarrassed you.

BB, AM ought to be interested to know which if any BH commenters send threatening emails. I'd think you could us that for ammo too, as it supports a contention you regularly make without proof. Don't you want to expose the guilty? It does not seem sensible for Martin to pursue the question unless he waned to find this out. Doesn't the fact that no emails were forthcoming mean we are all left hanging? Doesn't that bother you? It makes the AGW bunch look shifty that they can never substantiate this kind of claim.

Martin A ,

Bang goes another of Bucket's attempts to make argumentative bricks without straw.

Yikes! There goes my argument! MartinA has found the user guide. And yes, here it is, "mail folders are automatically backed up centrally". Damnation! But wait! What is this? "You are responsible for ensuring that your email, documents and other University data are all securely backed up" - how can that be when they just said it was centrally backed up? And what's this, "Data held on the Central File Store is backed up daily by us" - could that mean that it is done once a day? I bet those crafty IT guys have figured out how to backup just after offensive emails are received or just before Dr W can hit the delete key. So they must be on the backup tapes, unless, what's this, "The backup tapes are only kept for four to six weeks"... So eleven months seems like a stretch.

Your selective quotation skills are impressive Martin. You would make a good climate 'sceptic'.

To be fair my selective quotation may be just as dishonest as yours, as I really don't know how they operate their systems and haven't read the whole guide. They might manage to backup every mail that is received with their backup procedure, assuming it isn't really just daily. On the other hand, they don't seem to have been in a hurry to dig out the tapes, but instead just asked Dr W to hand over the goodies.

BB - stop it. You are foaming at the mouth now. Admit that you have no real life experience of a corporate email environment - which adds to all the other areas of experience of which you have no knowledge, as you freely admit. In other words, you know nothing about anything. And your opinions are worthless.

Wonder if BB has noticed Rob contributing on the "trust statistics" thread? Surely an impossibility in BB world?

"You are foaming at the mouth now."

Not a pretty sight. Floundering was the word I used.

The emails aren't "backed up" in the sense that the admin goes into the computer and copies the email folders, Outlook, or some other PC mail system interacts with the mail server run by the university IT department, so all mails outgoing and incoming, pass through that mail server where they are stored, and kept sine die by transferring onto discs if more memory is needed. Hence, if Rob had deleted the mail it is only on his own PC, the copy is on the university mail server and is not deleted. Rob could have deleted his "nasty" emails, but they're still on the mail server. In short he received one email saying he worked for the taxpayer not the EU, which must have frightened the bejasus out of him.

I thought we'd plumbed the depths of little bucker's ignorance, but apparently we've only scratched the surface. He gives new depths to the meaning of the word "shallow".

Just seen this thread, well done Martin A. As so often with climate scientists, the terms "dishonest" and "juvenile" spring to mind.

Geronimo, it took you 4 days (since your last post) to find out how the mail server might work but I'm ignorant for not knowing it... Sure.

Bucket

Yes you are ignorant for not knowing that the situation described by geronimo is the norm for just about all corporate email regimes. Why not stop digging?