A few times a year we get emails from people, "I'm the wife, sister, xxxx of XXXX an outstanding runner and human being and people are saying terrible things about them on your message boards."
Then they go into an explanation of the marathon they ran and then say there is no way they cheated and imaging the shock they had when they google their relatives name and found these terrible things said about them.
Usually I look into this for about 5 minutes and conclude the person cheated. I'm not sure if I've ever concluded they didn't cheat. Once if I remember correctly people were calling out someone who ran the half instead of the full and it was corrected later in the thread so I removed that.
My most recent tactic is to write the person back and say it looks like their relative cheated and explain why. In one I got last year, I wrote the brother back and said I'd be open to the idea of removing the thread if the person would just admit to cheating. Maybe I should say I'll remove it if they admit to it, and promise to not run a marathon again.
Or maybe we should have a time period that it stays up? Or maybe they shouldn't cheat in the first place?
I'm open to ideas on this. We are all human beings, so that means we are all flawed and make mistakes, and understand the concept of the "right to be forgotten". What do you all think?