Short version: Cory got trashed in a BB comment thread for occasionally talking about himself and his current projects.

Put on your mask and behave badly: Internet anonymity is an excuse to say vile things - op-ed in the London "Times" only two days ago.

I was "lucky" (FSVO) enough to have read the thread before the deletion and disemvowellings.

My reaction, somewhat less articulate than Patrick's, was basically "Entitlement much?" I complain less than that about things I do pay to read.

You're being a bit oversensitive, Patrick. I've seen plenty of Doctorow-hatin' blog trolls, and that comment ain't one of them. Your notion of "troll" is expanding to include "any comment that produces discussion I don't like".

Of course, now I see that the offending comment has been deleted --- not just disemvowelled, but removed entirely. That sort of sanitizing moderation is one of the things that makes a blog less interesting to visit. Alas.

[Reposted from OT 94, where I put it by accident.]

The BoingBoing comment threads are a bizarre place. The instant they started back up, there was a sizable minority of people on them who already had that peculiar sense of entitlement. Why four people so obviously decent and aw-shucks thrilled about a lot of the world around them should attract such a crowd of naysayers is beyond me.

The comment in question was deleted by someone else (not Cory) while Teresa was disemvowelling it--an internal screwup, mostly regrettable because it makes it harder to have an intelligent discussion about this particular flavor of assholery.

As for "oversensitive," sorry, no sale.

It seems to be me that you should at least note in your above rant that Teresa Nielsen Hayden works as the comments moderator for BoingBoing.

This seems to happen a lot when a blog becomes very popular due to carrying a large number of a particular kind of article: other kinds of article become unappreciated. I first noticed the phenomenon on Slashdot, which most people don't think of as a blog, but it is really. I suspect that's the same issue here: many people aren't thinking of BoingBoing as a blog. It's a news source, a collection of miscellaneous interesting things, and so they forget about it being a blog.

For what may one criticize Cory Doctorow, if not what he writes, publishes, blogs, enthuses about?

The internet is filled with people who have a remarkable ability to type with one hand.

Does anyone really need to know exactly who they are?

Up next: livejournal author criticized for using self-portrait as userpic.

Nobody's suggesting Cory should be exempt from criticism. This isn't about anyone being above criticism; it's about the way some people feel entitled to abuse celebrities, even niche microcelebrities, for behavior that's acceptable coming from everybody else.

Judith, #7: Teresa's work with Boing Boing has been extensively and openly discussed on Making Light. What I said about Boing Boing applies here. This is a blog, not the New York Times, and just as neither you nor I are responsible for what we do in other people's dreams, I'm also not going to take any crap for failing to live up to your imagination of what disclaimers I "should" post on my personal web site.

You get what you pay for.

The fact that there are so many people out there willing to give "free ice cream" does not, in any way, mean that they are required to do so. If I, as a reader, no longer like the flavor, I have no right to demand they change it. Besides, it's not as though there aren't plenty of other places giving out free ice cream.

Or cheeseburgers. :)

I thought it was blindingly obvious that a blog belongs to its writers, not its readers. The writers post what they want, and the readers go along for the ride.

I gather it's not quite that blindingly obvious to everyone. Well, tough. Welcome to the real Internet.

The actual comment history is a bit hard to follow with all the relevant posts deleted. The comments now start off with Cory apologizing to "squid" for feeling some particular way, which, I must say, didn't make any sense to me at all until a comment by Teresa further down mentioned that the post had been deleted.

As for whether or not Cory can be criticized for having 6% of his posts be about him: sure, anyone can criticize anyone they want, including me criticizing people who complain about free content on the web.

Isn't it relatively rare for blogs to comment about anything other than the bloggers' own lives? This is jaw-droppingly...nikulturno.

Over at firedoglake, when someone starts criticizing the hostesses for not posting about whatever the commenter's hobbyhorse-of-the-moment is, they get politely told to go start their own blog. Or, sometimes, impolitely told.

The original Boing Boing post that the referenced thread is about started out "My Nebula-award-nominated story...". That sounds self-congratulatory and is likely to attract adverse comment. It slightly raised my hackles and I thought "that has the potential to cause trouble" before any furore ensued. As it is I've met Cory and he isn't of a self-congratulatory mind set; after all he's Canadian and that's almost as self-effacing as being English.

I have to say, however, that I've noticed that a lot of his posts are about things that could be considered as 'promoted' by the post. Clearly I'm not the only one to have formed that opinion. My attitude has been, well it's his blog and if he wants to do that he can, but if it gets much more blatent then that may be one less blog I read.

Due to constant exposure to spin, I can't help but ask if the quoted 3 of his last 55 posts have been about 'himself' does that mean that 4 of his last 56 posts have been like that?

By the way, you need to do something about spam and this blog. The comment form requires an email address and posts it to the site thus forcing its exposure. It took under 24 hours for me to get the first spam to the (unique) email address I used for my first comment on here. Spam to that unique address now represents 5% of the spam I get (and I get a lot).

I think the most amusing and amazing anti-doctorow comment I ever saw was on Metafilter http://www.metafilter.com/60356/freedom-isnt-free#1656789

where in response to the question "WWCDD (what would cory doctorow do)" on an RIAA post the response was:
"Complain. Incessantly. Maybe throw in some indignant posturing. And then, gradually but with utter certainty, become distracted by knitted papercraft subway anagram cozies like a raccoon is distracted by something shiny. Then get a bad haircut and maybe another Apple tattoo, masturbate in a fit of gut-wrenching loneliness and call it a night."

somebody actually wrote that! ON METAFILTER!!!

'started out "My Nebula-award-nominated story..."'

should definitely have started: my incredibly crappy story of which I am deeply ashamed. This is how I announce anything of mine and it has been a real winner for me, I highly recommend it.

ian @ 18

Put something in as a URL; it will appear instead of the e-mail address.

Fruitcake-maps? Again?

s smn whs nnyms cmmnt crtczng Dctrw's frqnt pstng f slf-rfrntl rtcls ws mdrtd nd dnd pblctn, thnk th pnt f th crtcsm s mssd by hs dfndrs. s Bng Bng s " drctry f wndrfl thngs", thr s smthng lttl crss bt frqntly pstng bt nslf. f crs Dctrw hs sm wndrfl thngs, bt th rt f Cry t nn-Cry bts sms bt xcssv, spclly whn cmprd t thr BB dtrs. s Flyng Sqd pntd t n hs/hr rgnl cmmnt, Dctrw ds hv prsnl blg, whch mght b cnsdrd bttr frm fr n's wn ccmplshmnts nd cclds. Whl Dctrw sggsts tht th Swd's dlght n hvng hs wrk n thr ntv lngg s jstfs th pst's nclsn, srly tht s bt slf-srvng. nd whl ths wk nly cntnd 3 Cry strs, thr wks r lss knd. Srsly Dctrw, y hv ccss t yr wn dt, s wht s th rt f Cry t nn-Cry pstngs? Wht bt thr dtrs? ny bsrvtns frm thrs bt n mblnc n slf-prmtn mng BB dtrs?

I should note that I have never met Doctorow but have formed a negative opinion of him due to a post on Boing Boing about 4-5 years ago.

So not only are most of the Cory haters a bunch of wieners they are also an extremely parvenu bunch of wieners that cannot measure up to the level of fortitude exemplified by me in my own Cory hating.

Ok, a confession here - I am seriously thinking of quitting the whole hate Cory hobby because most of the people who do it are technically douchenozzles, by my reading of the douchenozzle spec. And I have read that spec, thoroughly.

I have already resolved not to hate on Xeni because it would be unchivalrous to do so. Maybe I can move to hating Mark.

'As Boing Boing is "a directory of wonderful things", there is something a little crass about frequently posting about oneself.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN_oWSEizec

Ian...check some of the other addresses of posters here. Mine, for example, has a big NOSPAM in it; it's obvious to any human that that's supposed to be removed, but not to a spambot.

And, just to let you know, By the way, you need to do something about spam and this blog isn't really phrased in the most polite way. We are guests here. Try again.

CeCe 22: Are you a drive-by, or are you actually going to engage in conversation? I'm asking only because this is your first post on ML, at least under that email address, and if you're a drive-by I won't waste energy responding to your post, which I consider wrong in several important respects.

"has a big NOSPAM in it; it's obvious to any human that that's supposed to be removed, but not to a spambot."

actually if that strategy was worth it for Spambot writers to take into account breaking the strategy would be trivial. That spambot writers have no need to solve this problem does not mean that it is a surefire strategy.

CeCe@22: surely that is a bit self-serving.... what is the ratio of Cory to non-Cory postings?

Since the answer to that question is, literally, right in front of you, it would seem that you have no interest in the facts that would conflict with your opinions.

scroll up to the top. First sentence, second paragraph.

Cm pn ths thrd frm lnk t th rgnl BB stry. my nt cntn t ths blg, ths s my frst tm hr nd cn't sy f 'll b rnd lng. f tht dscrdts m smhw, s b t. s my cmmnt t BB ws cnsrd by nn-pblctn, thght mght cmmnt hr, whr m nt rqrd t sgn p fr nythng. Cnvrs wy, my r my nt rspnd, f tht mks dffrnc n yr dcsn t vc yr pnn.

Xopher @ #25 & bryan @ 27:

Yeah, it's hard to believe that NOSPAM actually works. It's a one-line perl script to remove it. (Of course, what isn't?)

I used to write my email address backwards (ude.yelekreb.htam@tja), but that turns out to be a bit too effective. Real people have trouble reversing things. These days, I just settle for some nonsense that googles well.

Wait, what's the game here? .... Oh! I get it. Here goes:

Patrick -- and all of you people -- as one of your biggest fans, I have to say you should stop using this space to push your own opinions, interests, and viewpoints. There is something more than a little ugly about defending someone you have some kind of (cough, cough) professional relationship with -- I mean, what's in it for you, huh? I'm here as your captive, worshipful audience, and now, I just don't know . . . I think you are leading me astray! Where will I go? What will I do? Who'll be my role model now that my role model is gone? I demand that you respond to my concerns with a full accounting of your online activity for the last year. Otherwise I will consider you guilty of self-expression outside the well-established boundaries of blogger ethics.

Did I get a BINGO???

Wait . . . the game was to replicate the stupidity of the Boing Boing thread on this thread, only with irony, right? Please tell me there was irony.

Recursive discourse is so confusing.

Wll thnks fr th src f lst wk's dt Grg. s md n rfrnc t spcfc tm frm, th qstn thn rfrs t th vrll rt. Hw ths mnts t dsdn fr fcts, m nt sr. Slly.

Hm. Not gonna go read the thread, I find that kind of thing pretty toxic, but regarding the post that set off the noise:

As soon as I realize a Boingboing post is about a CC work being translated into a language I don't read, I move on, so I don't have an opinion about whether Cory was being too immodest in this particular one. I see those, and I think it is Cory crowing about how well the Creative Commons idea is working. "Look, more people are doing more great stuff with the Creative Commons stuff I'm putting out there! Isn't Creative Commons great?" It doesn't read as self-congratulation to me, it reads as excitement that the idea is working. Does he post about other CC work getting translated occasionally? Less often, I'm sure, because no one keeps him informed about it, but hasn't it happened at least once or twice?

I think it will be a little bit uncouth to flame out on CeCe at this point, in case anyone is revving up for it, since he or she has done nothing to warrant it other than comment with an opinion that I for one find reasonable.

There has been no support of torture in this thread yet people, everybody remain calm.

CeCe @ 32

As Boing Boing is "a directory of wonderful things", there is something a little crass about frequently posting about oneself. Of course Doctorow has some wonderful things, but the ratio of Cory to non-Cory bits seems a bit excessive, especially when compared to other BB editors.

If you really meant 'in the last week', you really should have said so at the time, instead of complaining later that we misunderstood what you said. Your best defense is to put in those qualifiers, rather than make absolute statements.

And in case anyone is going to take me to task for agreeing with CeCe I didn't, I said I found the opinion reasonable which is not exactly the same as agreeing with it.

Speaking as a Swede, I think it's positive and newsworthy that relevant new science fiction like "Ownzored" is translated into my native language -- the Swedish SF scene has always been small and needs constant nurturing by international talents.

(And yes, "I'm Your Biggest Fan" are the creepiest words in the English language.)

ddn't wrt r mn '"n th lst wk'", r sggst tht mnt tht. s 'v sd, th lck f sttd tm frm lvs nly rfrnc t n vrll rt. thnk ths s th dffrnc btwn msndrstd nd msrd. nd thnk my "cmplnng" s rthr mld crrctn f n bvs msrdng f wht wrt.

actually I'm your biggest fan-dancer is creepier.

CeCe@32: As I made no reference to a specific time frame, the question then refers to the overall ratio.

I highly doubt that anyone who runs a blog tags their entries with "Stuff that some yay-hoo might get bent out of shape about" so as to be able to run some script and spit out a number of how many posts they made that some yay-hoo might get bent out of shape about.

Do you?

And if you take issue with the lack of data, then again that's simply more of the "flaming Cory for doing what any other blogger does". No one keeps those kinds of statistics on their own blog, because it's stupid statistics to try and divine what may get some yay-hoo bent out of shape.

That's the problem with yay-hoos: you never know what's gonna make them bend.

You want to know how many posts are about Cory versus non-Cory, and you'll toss a fit if the ratio doesn't meet your satisfaction. Some other yay-hoo might get bent due to an underrepresentation of posts about bagpipes, cause, you know, there just isn't enough talk about bagpipes out there.

What's the saying, make something foolproof and the world builds a better fool.

Lila @11: You starting? ;)

Is it me, or does Boingboing attract an equal number of wonderful things and Internet nutjobs? I'm glad to see comments back there, but (without wanting to get all brown mustachey) they're nothing like as interesting or informative as ML's.

Oh, I dunno, what about "I know where you live"?

ctlly Cry ddn't gt "trshd", t lst nt by th dltd cmmnt. hd tm t rd t nd t ws rlly jst n hnst crtq.

thnk th bttm ln s "d nt prvd nythng thr thn pstv fdbck r thy'll dlt/dsmvwl/bn y."

Yp. My cmmnt gt dsmvwlld s wll.

ts rlly sd tht sch plt, tm, blncd crtcsm ws trtd s hrshly.

It's amazing, at least to me, how much the complaints about the way bloggers at Boing Boing or Making Light (or any other site of note) choose to manage comment threads in their own weblogs sound like the complaints you get in Harry Potter fandom (or any other fandom of note) when the author chooses to involve the hero or heroine in a relationship with some character other than the complainant's favorite.

Fannish entitlement. It's an amazing thing.

Wanker wind, when wilt thou blow
The shit rain down can rain?
Christ, if my vowels were in my post,
And I in my thread again.

Hy Grg. cn ndrstnd why my crrctn f yr msrdng nnyd y. t cn't b plsnt t b cght bng crlss. nd, btw, cmplng tht dt s ctlly qt sy. f crs thr s n bjctv ln tht msrs t mch, t lttl, r ccptbl slf-rfrntl pstng, bt cmprtv dt bt BB dtrs mght b lttl tllng. t crtnly hlps t hv sm sch msrs whn mkng lrgly sbjctv rgmnts. ws ctlly hpng t hv sm dscrs bt whthr Dctrw nggs n t mch slf-prmtn. Bt f ncrrctly rdng my wrtng nd schwng mthdlgy ppls t y mr, kp t p, y'r dng fblsly. Rsn mch? njy yr rghts ndgntn. T.

CeCe 29: Good, and I for one expect no more. Comments here are moderated after the fact, never held for moderation (unless they contain lots of links, which is a spam-blocking feature).

I think most of what I was going to say to you has now been said, but I will add that "a directory of wonderful things" is just BB's self-description. If Cory thinks it's wonderful that one of his stories has been translated into Swedish, he has every right to post about it. If you don't think that qualifies as "wonderful," then you can skip that post or go elsewhere...or you can whine about it in comments, but IMO that's pretty gauche.

If I'm getting free ice cream, and they give me butter pecan (my favorite) frequently, but occasionally serve peppermint (I cannot STAND peppermint ANYTHING), it's unseemly of me to complain that peppermint is being served too often, or to suggest that they serve peppermint somewhere else. "Beggars can't be choosers," as my mom taught me.

I think you're thinking of yourself as a customer of BB, and I think that's wrong. You're a guest in their space, and if they don't like what you say they don't have to put it up on their wall (by publishing your comment). Ordinarily they are quite moderate about these things, but there are lines you can't cross.

If you visited my house, you could play with the letters on my refrigerator door. If you arrange them so they spell "Christopher is a duh-head," I won't object, but if you arrange them so they say "there's too much lemon pickle in this refrigerator; please get rid of it" I will not only not let that stand, I probably won't let you come back to my house, because you've just been extremely rude. I didn't ask you to EAT the lemon pickle, after all; you just saw it in the refrigerator while you were looking for the mayo (or whatever).

I respectfully submit that readers and commenters on a blog are much more like guests in someone's home than customers in a store, or readers of a magazine. Also, I can subtitle my blog "Discussions exclusively of marmota monax and its ability, or lack of same, to propel large pieces of cellulose through the air, along with hypothetical questions of degree" and then write about nothing but food, and anyone who complained about the lack of papers on marmota monax could really just go to hell.

BuffySquirrel 42: Yeah, or the classic "I know who you are and I saw what you did," which really will scare just about anyone. Doesn't matter if "what you did" was Swiffering your living room.

NoneSuch 43: It's possible for a critique to be rude by its content. Cory has a right to blog whatever he wants. People who read a blog are his (usually welcome) guests. If they don't like what they read, they're entitled to complain—within the limits of courtesy.

It's discourteous to complain that someone's blog posts are too much about hir own life. Not to mention ridiculous. I did not see the post that was deleted, but Cory's response to it was quite measured, though his annoyance showed through. Flying Squid, for hir part, was gracious in the posts of hirs that remain.

CeCe Whining:

The Internet, I find, is not so big
that I cannot poison the parish pump,
upon my kind hosts' best intentions jump
and on their bare heads dance a merry jig.
Here I can come clad both in mask and wig
and drop my anger in a single lump,
in the most public space just take a dump
and then complain when I am called a pig.
It seems the way to exorcise our ghosts
is just to shout that life is never fair
to those of us who lack honour and shame.
You feel much better annoying your hosts,
letting your flatulence pollute the air,
and that way others will think of your name.
The whole thing's nothing but a childish game
of shouts and shadows, loud and anxious boasts,
but nothing matters since my anger's bare.
I'm not the guilty one. I'll take no blame
for what I've written in my silly posts.
You cannot shut me up. You would not dare.
And so one boring life is given worth,
while others wonder at the monstrous birth.

'v bn rdr f BB fr fw yrs nw nd th rctn by thm t wht thght ws n hnst crtcsm ws bt jrrng.

Ys t's thr blg, bt fl ppl shldn't b cnsrd, prvdd th cmmnts rn't ffnsv.

ls, d fnd t bt hypcrtcl tht BB hs pstd svrl ntrs n cnsrshp rltng t Ggl r Ytb, bt whn Bng Bng ds t, w'r tld tht thy cn d whtvr thy wsh, nd chw t ths wth n ppsng pnn fr hvng sns f nttlmnt.

ls fl tht th "dsmvwlng" t b smwht mmtr, s sw ths blg s cllctn f prfssnls wh wldn't wst tm dng sch thng.

Booch 50: I also feel that the "disemvoweling" to be somewhat immature, as I saw this blog as a collection of professionals who wouldn't waste time doing such a thing.

Booch, they don't waste their time doing it. They hired someone to do it for them. Someone, by the way, who is your Hostess here.

Shocked, shocked I am to find that a owners of a blog would comment about the lives, interests and careers of the blog owners. It's such a revolutionary concept.

Somewhere Kurt Colbane is saying, "I told ya so." (here we are, now entertain us).

Pnt tkn Xphr. Bt crtqng dtrl chcs nd cntnt sn't rlly dscrts, t's n ppl t thrtcl cnsdrtns bt th ntr nd frm f pblshng. Mny ppl crtcz dtrl cntnt f mny dffrnt frms f md. Th dtrs f BB dn't hv t mv pn my pnn, bt thnk th ct tslf s dfnsbl. f crs m fr t gnr Dctrw's pstng nd slly d, bt ftr bsrvng ths pttrn fr rthr lng tm, chs t mk frly plt cmmnt bt th frqncy f hs slf-rfrntl psts. Whch ws mdrtd wy. Whch h ws bsltly nttld t d. nd s chs t wrt t hr, whn th tpc cm p gn.

Fr thrs, prhps nfmlr wth trm d hmnm:

n d hmnm rgmnt, ls knwn s rgmntm d hmnm (Ltn: "rgmnt t th prsn", "rgmnt gnst th mn") cnssts f rplyng t n rgmnt r fctl clm by ttckng r pplng t chrctrstc r blf f th prsn mkng th rgmnt r clm, rthr thn by ddrssng th sbstnc f th rgmnt r prdcng vdnc gnst th clm. Th prcss f prvng r dsprvng th clms s thrby sbvrtd, nd th rgmntm d hmnm wrks t chng th sbjct. (Wkpd)

ll fr xprssng n pnn bt n dtr. Fr shm y lkly lbrls. gn, rsn mch?

Xopher @ 48

'Marmota monax' ... oh, my aching ribs, that had me nearly on the floor. Do you ... never mind, yes, you did have to.

(BTW, save the peppermint icecream for me.)

I've noticed that there is a phase change for celebrities. Up to a certain point, they are viewed as regular people, and their opinions are accepted as their *opinions*. But past a certain point of popularity, they are seen as having the power to steer agendas and make or break newcomers in a field. At that point, the public forces them to assume a new responsibility as gatekeeper of the public agenda. And the public gets upset if they feel the gatekeeper -- who is only doing what they had always done -- uses their celebrity power for personal gain or for the gain of their friends.

I wish I knew when and how this phase change happens. But Cory's long overdue for it. He's not just some guy with a blog, anymore. I know he wishes that he still was.

CeCe @ 53

About those last two paragraphs of yours ...
(1) We know quite well what ad hominem arguments are. Just about every troll or wannabe troll uses them.
(2) Are you always this rude to your fellow guests?
Just asking, before Our Hostess decides to bring out the disemvoweller.

CeCe@47: Hey Greg. I can understand why my correction of your misreading annoyed you. It can't be pleasant to be caught being careless.

Oh, hogwash. You're whining about BoingBoing. I called you on your whining. You want to make it an argument about some linguistic technicality because you don't want to make it about the fact that you're whining.

Waaah! Cory talks to much about himself! We need hard data to prove Cory talks to much about himself! Why doesn't Cory have hard data to prove that he talks too much about himself!

#22: what is the ratio of Cory to non-Cory postings?

#32: the question then refers to the overall ratio.

#47: And, btw, compiling that data is actually quite easy.

Then shut up and do it rather than whining that no one did it for you.

CeCe (22), which comment in that thread was yours? Neither your name nor your e-mail address nor your IP address matches any of the comments there.

I don't understand why the disemvowelling comes across as an immature practise. Particularly if one has been warned that it is the consequence for rudeness.

Booch says he views it as A) censorship and B) not worthy of a professional's time. Except that A) the comment is still there to be pieced together if'n you really care about that sort of thing, and B) that is how the professional in question has chosen to deal with all outbursts of that nature. They (in this case, Teresa) have to deal with it in some way...and this way has proven effective in other venues (namely here). It doesn't ignore a problem, nor does it give extra oxygen to a troll's flame. It merely makes it difficult for a troll to propagate their message.

In this case, the folks in question may or may not be trolls, but seriously, how many times does the internet need to bang this lesson into people's heads? People's blogs are their home turf and dictating somebody's behaviour on their home turf is rude. I don't think Boing Boing has misrepresented itself as being anything other than a collection of links to things some people might find interesting.

Also, famously, you can catch more flies with honey, or something like that anyway. There are certainly more positive, less rude ways to get content you like up on Boing Boing, one of which is to compliment the stories you do like. (Although all things in moderation. I bet even John Scalzi, just to pull out a random example, gets tired of hearing that Bacon Cat was the best thing EVAR.)

Before people gripe about how many more posts Cory does about things that Cory is doing, I'd like to point out that, at least from an informal survey of boingboing, I'd like to point out that on the front page at 8:32 EST 11/03/07 Cory had 14 posts, David had 5, Xeni had 1, John had 0, and Joel had 1. It may just appear that Cory has a less favoriable ratio of posts about himself to posts total, because he posts so much more to the site. (I don't recall people jiving Xeni crap about posting about her work.)

As someone whose anonymous comment criticizing Doctorow's frequent posting of self-referential articles was moderated and denied publication, I think the point of the criticism is missed by his defenders. As Boing Boing is "a directory of wonderful things", there is something a little crass about frequently posting about oneself.

I don't know anything about your comments. I do think it's a little precious to surf over to a blog which is about things that Cory Doctorow thinks are wonderful and get bent that occasionally some of them are his own.

Fragano Ledgister #49:

I was thinking of making a comment to the effect that coming in here to defecate on the carpet because one is not allowed to do so on BoingBoing is really classy (not), but you've said it so much better than I ever could. Cheers!

Why can't Cory be more like Neil Gaiman or John Scalzi, say? They hardly ever promote Cory's stuff on their own blogs.

When did it become gauche to promote yourself on your own damn blog, anyway? I seriously, seriously don't understand all the whining at BB. I love the comments there, it makes me feel like the in crowd to post there -- but my God there are so many jerks.

I figure Remus @55 is right, though. +4 Insightful.

Xopher@48, that was the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I don't actually normally laugh out loud when reading things online, and very rarely have to take off my glasses to wipe the tears out of my eyes. Good one.

Does the name "BoingBoing" derive from the defunct BoingBoing Magazine? (If so, is the name supposed to signify something?)
:-S

mcz #62: I do my best. Thanks.

Alex Cohen #63: YOMANK!

P.J. n d hmnm ttck mmdtly ftr sttng h knws wht d hmnm mns. Hlrs.

Grg, yr nm cllng dsn't mnt t mch f n rgmnt. nd ys, yr rrr n rdng frmd th bss nd sbsqnt fr fr yr flm. Dfnsv prd? Rnt wy, bt myb y wnt t ctlly ddrss th pnt. Smply dsmssng m s whnng dsn't qt ct t.

Trs, th cmmnt md ws fr dffrnt pst nd smply nvr md t t pblctn, yt sm f my pnts wr ddrssd n Dctrw's rspns t Sqd.

Hv fn wth th tpc ll. Ths s gttng tds. T.

Having only met Cory only about a month ago, I have to appreciate his mentions of his outside work, they've been allowing me to fill myself in on his previously published short stories.

I have noticed that there are a lot of comments from him that promote his other work, but that's probably just because a lot is happening in his life currently. Sometimes things run in trends (political blogs and elections, sports around the Olympics and World Cup), and it doesn't surprise me that once in a while a lot of things happen in a short amount of time.

Now, if he only promoted his other work, then that might be a problem, but if you're going to offer criticism, try to make it constructive criticism. He's a writer, I'm sure he can take a critique of his work.

What's all this mealymouthedness about honest and mild-mannered criticism? There was a string of extraordinarily offensive comments, and I disemvowelled them. Of the people who posted them, only one -- Flying Squid -- is an established commenter at Boing Boing. Nutkin was posting on Boing Boing for the first time, and Yeago had only made his first comment there the day before. The anonymous comments were on average worse.

Now we have CeCe here, being condescending (though not very well) about the fine points of language, and explaining that Cory talks about himself too much. This is nonsense. Cory spends most of his time talking about other things. So do the other boingers. In fact, the frequency with which they talk about themselves is unusually low for nonpolitical bloggers.

Besides, CeCe talks about himself/herself a lot oftener than the boingers do.

Upshot: I'm not buying it.

Bryan (23) and Fragano (49), thank you for your reassertion of civilized values.

CeCe (29), are you familiar with the word "bingo"? Also, in re (32) and (38): Greg, he's yours if you want him.

Folk on LJ (41): I'm working on it. The commenters are slowly getting the idea of reading and responding to each other.

Booch (50), reconsider the part about "provided the comments aren't offensive."

CeCe (53): "I chose to make a fairly polite comment about the frequency of his self-referential posts." You did nothing of the sort. How far this statement depart from truth depends on which one of the disemvowelled posters you were -- assuming you were one at all.

Seems to me that there's an awful lot of free floating hostility in this thread...

CeCe, I think your point -- the ratio of Cory to non-Cory bits seems a bit excessive -- has been heard. Most people so far have disagreed with it. It's your opinion, you have a right to it, but your implication that you are being reasonable and other people are attacking you unfairly is unsupported by any evidence. The ratio of Cory to non-Cory posts at BoingBoing proves nothing; if the ratio were 10 to 1, it would still not prove that Cory is posting about his own achievements too much, because what is "excess" is a subjective judgment.

As is the judgment by P. J. that you were rude. It was not an ad hominem argument, because you did not make an argument, you simply expressed an opinion. You have been disagreed with and told that you are perceived as rude.

The music stops, and one of you is now without a chair.

Since you said goodbye, I'm probably wasting time here. Oh well...

So Xopher: how much cellulose would a Marmota monax propel if a Marmota monax could propel cellulose?

Lizzy L @ 70: The music stops, and one of you is now without a chair.

Our thoughts are parallel; I found myself wishing Susanne was about so I could ask her what the music was like for the ancient dance called the Troll Flounce.

CeCe (67), you don't sound like you think PJE's comment was hilarious. Also, Greg was right about your language. And then there's this bit:

"Teresa, the comment I made was for a different post and simply never made it to publication, yet some of my points were addressed in Doctorow's response to Squid."

Second, your initial claim regarding your status, made in a comment thread on Making Light that was discussing a specific Boing Boing entry and the comment thread pertinent thereto, was:

"As someone whose anonymous comment criticizing Doctorow's frequent posting of self-referential articles was moderated and denied publication, I think the point of the criticism is missed by his defenders."

Do feel free to go away. Arguing with a liar is a waste of time.

Finally:

"Have fun with the topic all. This is getting tedious. Ta."

Also, Debra is right. People get emotionally invested in things. I certainly get emotionally invested in the books that I read and the shows that I watch. In those situations, I'm invited to be emotionally invested in them, so that isn't so surprising.

In this day and age I think that people are used to becoming emotionally invested in things that are not tangible. I myself am coming off a long term commitment to a web community. I understand that people can form deep emotional bonds with the things that they interact with.

Is it an amazing thing? Perhaps, but I don't think it is that odd. In the publishing industry, Debra is on one side of a very clear division. With online communities (and BoingBoing is a community by virtue of their setup and their solicitation of leads) the line is a little less distinct. I don't find fannish entitlement in any situation all that surprising, least of all in these online communities.

Xopher @ 48: re: marmota momax

*helpless laughter*

CeCe@67: maybe you want to actually address the point

You wanted to know how many posts Cory made about himself, ever. You then said at #47 that it would be easy to figure out. So I told you to shut up and start counting.

Your point has been addressed. Let me know when you have a number.

Continued blather from your end means that either you lied at #47 and it really is a difficult task or it's an easy thing to do, but you'd rather hear yourself talk than actually do the thing you think is so important.

If you actually shut up until you report back with a number of Cory's total posts, ever, compared to his total self-referencing posts, ever, then I will submit a public apology to you on this thread.

Any post by you prior to you reporting that number forfeits my offer.

I swear, some people are like slinkies. Absolutely useless. But fun to push down stairs.

Oh dear. Now I get it. Yes, this pig can whistle.

Anyone who tells someone, directly or by implication, what that person ought to be writing on their own weblog is an asshole.

Teresa and Patrick: I think you need to...

[a dreadful way to express "Please would you consider..."]

... take personal responsibility for the sense of entitlement that has readers telling blog-owners what to write about.

After all, as is well known, here readers can demand a sonnet or sestina or some-such-verse on any odd topic, and it will be obligingly written within the day.

That sort of thing raises expectations, and when other blogs can't raise their game to the same level, there's bound to be disappointment.

Now what I think you really should write, just to make up for that, are the first five chapters about an immortal from Atlantis, suitable to kick off a five-book series. Preferably something original, mind you. Not necessarily something good. Perhaps along the lines of this:

Ayup, I remember back in the days of good old Atlantis, the floating island that would lean east in the morning and lean west in the evening, floating from pole to pole over the course of six months and then back again, how I would have to trudge to school and back again every day through six feet of snow, uphill both ways....

Yeago @44 -- (yes, sorry T, I know you already disemvowelled him) you write that your "polite criticism" of Cory was sadly treated with such disdain. I'm not very good at reading disemvowelled text, so I didn't get all the way through yours, but ... your entire point was that Cory promotes himself on his blog because he's not as good a writer as a bunch of other people you like better.

This you call polite?

Incidentally, I'd never read 0wnz0red before, and had thought I had. So if all this furor hadn't kicked up, I wouldn't have -- and I find I really like it. So really, Yeago, I guess I have to reluctantly thank you.

Ta!

well for mine when i read the latest post by cory i thought : wow another post by cory about himself that's slightly boring - but would i climb on my high horse and attack him? nah. time is short. more interesting things to do : like write on my own blog about myself
:P

Actually, Teresa, I think it's double bingo:

CeCe at #47: Reason much? Enjoy your righteous indignation. Ta.

Yes, ladies and gents, there's the flounce. Righteous indignation indeed!

But wait, at #53, s/he's back! The re-flounce! Fine form, for a first-timer - we've obvioulsy got a potential champion in the making here!

And at #67, the re-re-flounce! Such ambition in one so young! Is it nature or nurture? Sheer talent or hard-won application?

This has been Vian, reporting on the inaugural Making Light Make a Pillock Of Yourself Competition, where we've seen the debut of a doughty young contender for the title ...

P J 54: Thanks, of course I did, and OK, I will.

Michael 64: Thanks. You mean the marmota monax thing, I suppose?

CeCe 67: Asking you if you're habitually rude is not an argumentum ad hominem. Answering your criticism of Cory by saying "Yeah, well you're a [religious or ethnic group], so who cares what you think" would be such an argument. You misunderstand the term if you think P J was employing one.

Lila 71: That's exactly what I said, but in academic language.

glinda 75: *fiendish chortle*

The censored comments may indeed have been 'extraordinarily offensive', but with the disemvowelling in place it would take a lot of effort to reconstruct them and make that judgement for myself. What is left is the impression that all comments criticising Cory were censored, and those defending him were left un-touched.

Sometimes it's as important to maintain the appearance of fairness as it is to be fair, especially when people are already looking for something to be annoyed about.

In light of Doctorow's oft-expressed belief that the answer to bad speech is not censorship but more speech, perhaps this could have been avoided by leaving both the complaint and Cory's response untouched, then refusing to approve anything further on the topic from either side.

Of course, everything looks clearer with the benefit of hindsight.

Patrick,

Thank you for writing this. I had been bothered by the fandom entitlement radiation on those posts for a while, and truly troubled by the bizarre, hostile, & self righteous attitude of some of the posters.

I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, but Eric Burns wrote an excellent (if discursive) essay a while back on Entitlement and the Modern Fandom, just substitute "Cory Doctrow" for "Brad Anderson" and "BoingBoing" for "Marmaduke" and you're all set:

Almost all fandom members feel a certain sense of entitlement. This is normal. This is healthy. This is even slightly legitimate. The overall feeling is "I have invested something of myself into Marmaduke. I evangalize Marmaduke. I spend a portion of my day on Marmadukish things. I affirm Brad Anderson. I deserve some recognition for this." And yeah, they do deserve some recognition. They certainly deserve Brad Anderson saying "guys, thank you so much for supporting Marmaduke. It means a lot to me that you like the strip."

And... well, that's about it. They're already getting Marmaduke for free (or for the cost of their newspaper). They don't get part-ownership of Marmaduke by virtue of liking to read it. And if they offer Brad Anderson sex and he takes it, that just means that Brad Anderson got some. It doesn't mean they get to dictate what Marmaduke would or wouldn't do. The majority of Fandom members get that.

There is a minority, however, that dives into Entitlement, butt naked and way over their heads.

Charles@84: Sometimes it's as important to maintain the appearance of fairness

The thing is that I don't think anyone reasonable thinks anything horribly unfair took place. Some trolls jumped out from under the bridge to feed on small children, and they were cut down in their tracks.

The only ones I know of who are crying "no fair" are the trolls who were denied their supper. And a troll will never call anything fair unless it involves them eating small children.

CeCe, #22, you're not actually required to read the blog, you know.

P J Evans, #54, particularly if it has bits of peppermint candy in it!

Scraps #78: Would I be an asshole if I told you to write more on your blog? I don't care what about, just more.

(Somewhere in that is a "just kidding.")

Ed G. at 46: Hilarious.

I am your biggest fan . . . .

Charles @84, one of the points of disemvowelment is that anyone who so chooses can reconstruct the comment and see what was said. Deletion leaves room to wonder. If you're concerned that disemvowelment may give the appearance that comments which were merely dissenting with the opinion of the host, rather than rude, were being altered you're quite free to reconstruct the comments and see for yourself. Unless your command of the English language is limited (which is the one exception to my "anyone") laziness is the most charitable interpretation of saying "oh, that's too hard, so I'll assume the hosts were lying". You're not going to win too many converts by placing yourself in situation where being perceived as lazy is your best-case scenario.

(Or by using "censor" to refer to actions that have nothing to do with a governmental agency, but that's another issue.)

Thy rlly nd t hr mdrtr wth sm mtrty. f y srch hr nm, y'll fnd tht mjrty f hr psts r mr trllsh nd pnly nsltng thn nythng thy ctlly cnsr.

nd thy cnsr nythng tht dsn't gr wth thm.

Criticism is good and healthy. Both for content creators and those that consume the content. But there is, or at least should be, a proper time and place ('context') in which to present the criticism. I also came in late and wasn't able to read the offending comments before they disappeared, but what I've deduced is this:

Cory: This cool thing happened with one of my stories and it proves that CC works. This kicks ass! I'm excited!
Commenter: You talk about yourself too much and that's lame.

Whoa, hold on. Wrong context, my friend.

It reminds of a thread here on ML. Patrick posted an entry about Teresa getting a job with Federated Media. Most of us responded in the most appropriate way (i.e. "Congratulations"), but after a 100 posts or so, someone posts a comment to the effect of "FM is like a pay per post scheme or something, and that's bad."

Again, not appropriate.

As has been referenced many times in this thread, people's blogs are like their homes. Nobody likes to take shit from a guest in their home. It's amazing that Cory and the Nielsen-Hayden's let some much crap go on before putting their foot down.

There are plenty of good places to express your views and opinions on anything you choose. So exercise some discretion. Find a relevant post (i.e. a post titled 'How much self pimping is too much?'), find an open thread, or, better yet, start a thread in your own blog (no, you won't have the readership BoingBoing or ML or The Whatever have. Deal with it.) Don't crap on someone's carpet, you may find that you've worn out your welcome.

This is obviously different than expressing a contrary opinion than the one expressed by the blog author.

Good form:
Host: I think the Ford Taurus is the best car ever.
Guest: The Toyota Camry is better.

Bad form:
Host: I just bought a 2007 Ford Taurus. I've been wanting one for long time.
Guest: Ford's are lame, they break down all the time and guzzle gas. Toyota Camry's are better.

Please, use some judgement when posting comments.

Cnsr:
"2. T kp frm bng pblshd r trnsmttd: bn, blck t, hsh (p), stfl, spprss. dms: kp/pt ld n. S shw/hd."

t's cnsrshp whthr th gvrnmnt ds t r nt.

f y'r gng t cwr bhnd dctry, t lst gt yr dfntns rght.

@92,
Th thr f th dltd cmmnt bnt vr bckwrds t stt hs pnn n vry plt mnnr.

t smply bls dwn t BB'rs bng cmpltly gnst ny typ f crtcsm.

Whch bgs th qstn, "Why d thy llw cmmnts t bgn wth?"

Dn't sk fr npt f y dn't wnt npt.

Scraps @ 78:

"Anyone who tells someone, directly or by implication, what that person ought to be writing on their own weblog is an asshole."

Gee, Scraps, that's what I've always called "an _argumentum ad hominem_" and also "argument by assertion", so you've lost the Debate on two counts.

Of course, your statement is also Perfectly Accurate and identifies & settles the crux of the discussion. This seems now to be a Thread that can be of value only for its potential tangents & digressions.

Now I think I'll go and fix some food for the two kittens that the neighborhood semi-feral cat has left in my back yard, and maybe nibble on a bit of 78% cacao dark chocolate for my own delictation.

Does AFK stand for A Fucking Kook?

AFK
It's not about polite or impolite. It's about appropriate and inappropriate. And it's never appropriate for a reader to tell a content creator that he shouldn't talk about the things he feels like talking about. Or to dictate, in any manner, what sorts of content he should create. The comments are intended for discussions of the story in question, they are not intended to be a platform for criticizing the author. If you want do dis, snark, or otherwise criticize Cory Doctorow, there are many other, much more appropiate, places to do it than in his own blog on a story that he posted.

Isn't quoting the dictionary one of the squares on flamer bingo?

I don't imagine misusing "to beg the question" is a square, but it sure is something.

lorax @ 90: it would be easier to recreate the original text with some degree of certainty if it had been ROT13'd rather than disemvowelled.

"lrx s brd nd hck f nc gy" is terribly ambiguous: were the words "bored", "hack" or "hick", and "gay" -- or was I saying "lorax is a bard and a heck of a nice guy"?

Harry Potter wankery is funny. This is just....

Well, at least no one shot President Reagan in order to impress Cory.

Yet.

AFK@91: They really need to hire a moderator with some maturity.

And calling someone immature is... what, exactly?

If you search her name,

Just to clarify, what is her name?

you'll find that a majority of her posts are more trollish and openly insulting than anything they actually censor.

Did you seriously bumble your way into this blog and not even know whose house you're insulting? Seriously. Look around you. Go outside and check the name on the mailbox.

And they censor anything that doesn't agree with them.

I like you. You're silly. You make me smile.

AFK, CeCe, et al.: I must confess to a certain amount of puzzlement. If you are so incensed by Teresa's style of comment moderation (which style clearly must suit the Boing Boing bloggers, since they retain her to do it on their behalf), then why on earth have you put yourselves to all the extra trouble of following TNH home to her own native weblog in order to become yet further incensed at the style of comment moderation here?

It's a big internet. Surely there are other places in it where you could choose to be.

Translation of #102: Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

AFK@94: Don't ask for input if you don't want input.

Just because there's a box marked "Suggestions", doesn't mean you can drop your drawers, take a dump in it, and call it "input".

The CoB (Coefficient of Bozohood) is pretty damn high in here right now.

Freedom of the press belongs to the guy who owns the press. Or, in the Internet era, pays the hosting fees.

Don't like it? Buy your own press. Be as insightful, caustic, or funny as your personal talents allow (or can hire). With any luck, you'll attract your own audience of people who will think they're entitled to tell you how to run *your* press.

Amusingly enough, the top Google Ad link in the right-hand column here now reads:

Cory
Huge selection, great deals on Cory items.
shopping.yahoo.com

And that leads to a page that starts out:

# Cory at Amazon.com - Buy books at Amazon.com. Low prices and easy shopping. Search the full text of books.
Amazon.com/books

# Cory Areaguide - Your Cory Areaguide for Cory.
crossvillagemi.areaguides.net

# Find A Cory, $9.95 - Get phone number, address & more on A Cory. Instant results.
www.peoplesearch.public-records-now.com

# Cory - Over 11 million pieces of china, crystal & silver - old & new.
www.replacements.com

# Mortgage Troubles? - Mortgage Help Available in Cory. Fast & Free.

Well, I thought it was funny....

Jim,

If Cory will pay my mortgage, he's welcome to come post about himself on my blog!

"Your Cory Areaguide for Cory" sounds dirty.

cm hr bcs sh lnkd t. ddn't rlz t ws ls mdrtd by hr.

f smthng s mmtr, "mrkd by r sggstng lck f mtrty", 'm frd thr's n ncr wy t sy t.

Hwvr, ntc my cmmnt hs bn rpld t t @96 wth nm cllng, @101 wth dsngns, snrky cmmnts nd @104 wth rdcls hyprbl.

'v ntcd tht ths blg hs lt f cnvrstn, bt n dbt. Myb tht's fn fr hr bt 'd ht t s t sprd t Bng Bng, whr frdm t spk, ncldng frdm t crtcz, s lwys ndrsd by th dtrs.

r t sd t b.

And once the clock hits 0200 it'll be 0100 again, and we get and extra hour of wankery. Thank you, Daylight Savings Time!

AFK 109: Feel free to go elsewhere. Really. Any time now would be OK.

James D. Macdonald @ 100:

Well, at least no one shot President Reagan in order to impress Cory.

Yet.

Unless and until another Reagan (Ron? Michael?) takes office.

Umm, are people in this thread actually disemvoweling their own posts to make it appear that they're being unfairly moderated? If so, that's a bit more clever that the usual drive-by trolls ML tends to attract from time to time.

#109 I've noticed that this blog has a lot of conversation, but no debate.

Lots of debate, friend, but no trolls.

Please don't miss the difference.

BTW, Teresa isn't the only moderator here. She's undoubtedly gone to sleep by now, but I haven't.

AFK @109:

I came here because she linked it. I didn't realize it was also moderated by her.

It's not just moderated by Teresa; it's her personal blog. (One that she shares with others, but still.)

I've noticed that this blog has a lot of conversation, but no debate.

Are you making this call based on this thread alone?

AFK #109
If you didn't notice that the BB moderator's name was Teresa Nielson Hayden and that this blog is hosted on nielsonhayden.com, I can't put much stock in whatever else you haven't noticed, i.e. conversation v. debate.

That's fine, however. Conversation is good, not everything is a debate.

I have noticed that both you and CeCe refer to the editors of BoingBoing. Just so we're on the same page, they are not editors. BoingBoing is not a newspaper or magazine. It is a blog. They are content creators/authors, even posters is a better term. Yes, they may edit their posts or the comments, but they are not editors in that editing is not their primary function.

If you want a debate, here's my argument: Content creators have the right create, post, edit, or delete anything they so choose on their blogs, including comments. If a reader disagrees or dislikes the content of the blog or how it is managed, they are welcome to say so. If the blog owner, or his agent, tolerate it, one can even post his opinion on the blog itself, otherwise, they may post elsewhere.

Rebuttal?

AFK@109: I didn't realize it was also moderated by her.

And what does that say about you?

I've noticed that this blog has a lot of conversation, but no debate.

Since you just confessed this is your first time here (and your "view all by" reflects that as well), how, exactly, can you make any sweeping generalization about what goes on in this blog?

You didn't even realize who moderated this blog until we told you. So how exactly are we supposed to take your sweeping negative generalizations about this blog as being something based on your keen powers of observation when you have clearly demonstrated said powers are lacking?

And if your sweeping negative generalizations are NOT based on observation, aren't you, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from a troll?

CosmicDog @ 117:

If you didn't notice that the BB moderator's name was Teresa Nielson Hayden

AFK

By the way, in post 94 you said:
It simply boils down to BB'ers being completely against any type of criticism.

And in post 109 you said:
I'd hate to see it spread to Boing Boing, where freedom to speak, including freedom to criticize, is always endorsed by the editors.

Which is it? Or do you think that the moderators are acting outside of the authority granted to them by the content creators? Or do you mean something else entirely? I'm confused.

Pyre

Re: My mispelling Teresa's name. Oops. I should lower the resolution on my monitor if I'm going to post after 10pm. It looked like an 'o'.

This time change thing is a trip. Pyre's and Katherine's comments were inserted before other existing comments. Kinda screwed up the references to other posts. Oh well.

You've arrived on a rather special night. Patrick has set out some troll bait. You're lucky, he's lucky, I'm lucky, we're all lucky!

Xopher:

It's amazing
Trolls are fleeing
Flaming takes its toll
But in the comments

Greg:

Typing them quickly

Xopher:

I've got to keep control
I remember seeing the trolls flounce
Watching the postcount mount
The nonsense would stun me

Both:

And the vowels would be falling

All:

Let's do the Troll Flounce again
Let's do the Troll Flounce again

Narrator:

It's just a snark from the left

All:

And then a wank from the right

Narrator:

Put your hands on the keys

All:

Hit the send key in time
But it's "you're so immature"
That really drives you insane
Let's do the Troll Flounce again
Let's do the Troll Flounce again

Greg:

It's so easy
Their argument's cheesy
It's going to please me
To see them fall
Getting a Bingo
We have our own lingo
Can't outlast me
Having a ball.

Xopher:

With a bit of a bird flip

Greg:

It's better than bean dip

Xopher:

And piñatas are all fair game

Greg:

We'll give trolls education

Xopher:

Like there's strong moderation

All:

Let's do the Troll Flounce again
Let's do the Troll Flounce again

Fragano:

Well I was reading a blog saying just what I think
When a first-time flamer said I needed a shrink
I wrote a triolet, wrote a sestina too,
He stared at me with his brains turned to goo
Trolls meant nothing, never would again

Narrator:

It's just a snark from the left

All:

And then a wank from the right

Narrator:

Put your hands on the keys

All:

Hit the send key in time
But it's "you're so immature"
That really drives you insane
Let's do the Troll Flounce again
Let's do the Troll Flounce again

James, you have been possessed by the loa of Abi and I claim my five pounds.

Re #122

Can only snork in my whole-hearted appreciation of this post. Liquid throughout my sinus cavities leaves me unable to do more.

Jim, I just sang that all the way through for Alice and we both, quite literally, ROFLed. GENIUS!

I dunno.

There are a LOT of posts at Boing Boing that rub me the wrong way. And judging the people by the blog, I doubt I'd really get on with any of them. And sometimes, I get a bit irritated because their blog should CLEARLY be about "x" instead of "y". And I've even been tempted to comment to that effect. But I always stop.

Why? Because what would be the point? It's *their* blog. They aren't my upsatairs neighbours being loud. They write a blog. And it is, in my view, often self-indulgent (in a bad way) or boring or pointless. So what. Their blog, not mine. I read it in Google Reader and zip through the whole thing in a couple of minutes once a day. I get the tidbits I like and ignore everything else. And nobody has to put up with MY self-indulgent twadle that criticises THEIRS. I think we can agree that less twadle is a victory for everyone.

All that said, I am still composing the ultimate Boing Boing parody post IN MY MIND where each Boinger (?) gets a Nash Metropolian and then writes about it.

To think I missed this thread's fast&furious exchange because I was babysitting my 6-year-old nephew, Instead I sat thru episodes of Power Rangers. That's OK, since my nephew thinks I'm the coolest uncle. Now, what was this about Cory Everson and self-promotion?

Jim @122
*snort*

Bruce Baugh @ 123... The loa of Abi? Sounds like something for someone to rhyme about. Or the title of a Clark Ashton Smith story.

To answer A. R. Yngve's #65: Yes, Boing Boing the blog is the descendant of Boing Boing the magazine. Both were started by Mark Frauenfelder.

Obviously, moderating blog comments is no more "censorship" than editing a newspaper letter column. The Boingers are vehemently anti-censorship; this doesn't oblige them to pay the server costs for anything you, me, or my Aunt Fanny decides ought to be on their site.

Teresa's (and my) approach to online moderation isn't remotely about being "fair to all views." Some views are wankery. Some arguments aren't so much trenchant as tiresome. The object of the game is to create a space where good conversation flourishes. If some tendentious dingbats feel they've been unfairly shut out, that's a bonus a reasonable price to pay.

(As for the charge that there's "no debate" on Making Light: snort.)

If you want a place where your every word is golden, start your own blog. And I'm pretty sure every one of the Boingers will be right in there fighting for your continued right to do so.

#110: I've noticed that this blog has a lot of conversation, but no debate.

This is an interesting comment. As a reader and only very occasional commenter, I see a lot of debate on this blog.

What I don't see very often are belligerence, aggression, innuendo, narcissism, dishonesty, and general spite. Mostly because when they do turn up they're beaten back by force of reasonable argument.

I get the impression that modern culture has been trained to think of "debate" as a confrontational verbal cockfight, the point of which is to impress onlookers with your toughness and willingness to buck conventional wisdom. Contradicting everyone in the general area is proof of your brave iconoclasm and a desirable end in itself, even if you have to stake out and defend a really stupid position.

To anyone with this attitude, respectful, reasoned, genuine debate is invisible.

Wesley @ 132... Good point. This reminds me of the skit from Monty Python's Flying Circus where a man goes to a place where you pay someone to argue/debate you. He gets quite upset when all he gets from the other guy is contradictions and denials.

The Argument Clinic

Jim @ 122
I love this place. (Now that I have my assorted clocks reset: thanks for reminding me to do that!)

The Google Ads have gotten even more entertaining:

Christ’s end-time Word
Brings the chosen into Kingdom Age God is judging man with the word
endtimeworkofgod.org

Which brings us to ...

Typical Cases of Leaders in Catholicism and Christianity in Mainland China who Resist Almighty God Being Punished

Two hundred cases selected from among tens of thousands of cases

"Typical Cases of Leaders in Catholicism and Christianity in Mainland China who Resist Almighty God Being Punished"

And they may well have a good case, depending on what He was being punished for.

jdc, 126,

You know, you could just set up a paypal link - to buy them each a Nash Metropolitan. I'm sure it would be a big hit. I'd donate to that. I'd be cute!

Sadly, the two (!) boingbong parody sites I know of dissappeared. Your turn jdc.

The typical cases are ... astounding. They're divided up by province. They take a typical form:

[Name of person] a member of [name of denomination] in [city] came was approached by two sisters preaching God's end-time message. [Name of person] said "Take off, lusers!" or words to that effect, and later [Name of person] had a stroke! Whaddaya think about that, eh?

The names of the various denominations are ... not what we see around here:

• the Praise denomination
• the Great Praise denomination
• the Justification through Faith denomination
• the Three-Self denomination
• the Breaking Bread denomination
• the Three Grades of Servants denomination
• ...and many, many more (collect the whole set!)

And, of course, the Catholics, who for some reason aren't the same as Christians, but who seem to have strokes too after telling the sisters preaching God's end-times message, "Get a life, n00bs."

"...and later [Name of person] had a stroke! Whaddaya think about that, eh?

Ah, the persuasive power of uncheckable anecdotes piled high.

But sooner or later everyone suffers some kind of misfortune, gets ill, or dies (be it at 100+ or not) -- which only proves what, exactly?

So let's get this straight: after Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door and are disinvited, they hang around to keep track of your troubles and then gloat about them to the world via the Web? Creepy. Stalkerish. Even less nice than they'd seemed. What a great impression to give on their website.

I very much liked the one where the [member of denomination] dumped a basin of dirty water on the heads of the sisters preaching God's end-times message. (It wasn't very Christian of her, but boy do I understand the impulse.) It tells me that they have annoying door-to-door religious proselytizers in China, too, and that folks there enjoy seeing them come up the walk as much as we enjoy it here.

Jim Macdonald #122: Fortunately, I'd put down my mug of tea or that would have been a serious YOMANK.

Fragano @ 142: This is exactly why some places have policies forbidding beverages adjacent to critical system monitors -- to reduce the chance of accidental damage.

Why, oh why, can't everyone take that reasonable precaution?

From the self-reported cases on this blog alone, there seems to be an epidemic of liquid-spouting onto keyboards and screens.

Please, people, Just Say No! Resist the temptation to Drink-While-Blogging! Turn away from your screen, to your beverage on another table; drink; swallow; breathe; then, and only then, turn back to your monitor.

The computer you save may be your own.

The your-creation-is-mine-too-and-I-get-to-have-a-say types give me the willies. The syndrome seems to march on a spectrum from "it would have been interesting if X did Y" to "Kathy Bates with an axe", with the midpoint somewhere at "you're getting too big for your britches and I'm going to take you down a peg".

It's like those people who really, really believe they know a celebrity because they watch Entertainment Tonight every day. They develop an expectation that the celebrity will respond to them like a long-lost brother if they happen to meet in the street. Then they get offended when the celebrity acts as if they are strangers, so they DEMAND an acknowledgment. And forever more they bore everyone with the story of how that celebrity is a snot who treats everyone badly.

At the wrong end of the spectrum, it makes police blotter headlines.

James D. Macdonald @ 136:

Two hundred cases selected from among tens of thousands of cases

That's an incidence of 1% or less. Pretty good odds for the doubters.

Jim@122, my mother always told me to wear clean underwear just in case I accidentally break out into a Rocky Horror musical. All these years, and it finally paid off!

Two hundred cases selected from among tens of thousands of cases -- and those are just the ones we hear about. Imagine how many are spirited away into government research labs, where they're trying to figure out how to harness the effect for military purposes. All evidence of their existence erased from the public record.

It's all buried in The Xi Files.

@Mchl Rbrts 80 - t ws nt my crtcsm. t ws nthr prsn. 'd lv t jn ths dscssn bt, jst s t BngBng, prtcptn tks srs dv nc y'v bn cnsrd whl pltly prvdng cntr-pnt.

Wtch hw prd th ppl wh rn ths blg r f th prctc whn ths cmmnt hs ts vwls rmvd lk my cmmnt bv.

I'm not objecting to what's going on in this topic in regards to moderating comments. Cory D. may as well blow his own horn, because he can't rely on others to do it, and I'm either interested, or can skip to the videos of things blowing up. But I wish the level of discussion in comments threads or fora here and elsewhere could take some dissenting opinions without hurting people's feelings, or feeling like a football pile-up.

Thinking of this summer's Harry Potter #7 thread on Making Light, where I was interested to look at the book with some people who had more experience with speculative writing than I, to read about what it did well, and what it might have done better. But someone jumped in with a negative opinion at the beginning, and the discussion came to be all about him, and whether he had the right to do it. Left the book behind.

In the lone writers' workshop I've been to, was told to stay positive in comments, and that's a good idea in the situation, because we don't want writers storming out of the room in tears, and we also don't want flame wars on line. So maybe that's a good rule to follow, plus reading the FAQs and practicing 'netiquette.'

Still, when reading message lists, especially when a celebrity author shows up and adds a comment, it has the feeling of turning into a pure admiration session, unless the majority opinion is that a thing is bad. Then, as with that plagiarism thread here a few weeks back, it feels like a middle ages mob in front of the pillory. I suppose for me, the pure number of comments becomes overwhelming.

Anyhow, my point is that it seems to me that groups don't handle minority points of view, or dissent very well. At least I often find myself either on the dissenting side, or at least saying "yes you're all right, but it's not as clear cut as that...."

I'd be happy to see some counter-examples of discussions people here have participated in. Because a spirited, well-reasoned defense, or an honest expression of how something could have been better would make for better books and stories, to my mind.

Of course this is only possible if you believe in the good faith of everyone participating in a discussion, and considering the online environment with anonymity and "drive-by posting," it's difficult.

If I have doubts about JK Rowling's books, or want to take issue with something Eddie Campbell or Neil Gaiman has to say, I suppose I can put them in my own blog, or Lifejournal.

Of course, the important thing is that everyone has to listen to each other, the dissenters as well.

The "it's free so the creator owes me" meme
seems to appear in software support too. The
Evil Twin contributes to a (free) mailing list
that provides support for a (free) RDF toolkit.
Most users of the list are perfectly reasonable,
but some get uptight when their URGENT REQUESTS
are met with silence because, say, they posted
them on Saturday and it's already Sunday, or
their problem (let alone an actual solution)
can't be determined from their message.

Does it seem to you-with-some-plural-marker
that it's the same mindset or am I in the wrong
nest?

Jack@149: But someone jumped in with a negative opinion at the beginning, and the discussion came to be all about him, and whether he had the right to do it.

That was me. And none of my posts were disemvoweled or deleted.

my point is that it seems to me that groups don't handle minority points of view, or dissent very well

Sure they did. I told people what I thought. They told me what they thought.

If you disagree with someone's view, you've got to allow them to disagree with you back. Which is exactly what happened.

Alice: I love Britney Spears.
Bob: Me too.
Charlie: She's awesome.
...
Dave: Britney is a musical train wreck.
...
Alice: no, she isn't.
Bob: Britney keeps the trains running on time.
Charlie: She's the steel wheel on a smooth track.
...
Dave: You aren't allowing my dissent!

If Dave's gonna disagree with Alice, Bob, and Charlie, then Dave has to allow Alice, Bob, and Charlie to disagree with him. Otherwise, it's Dave who has a problem with people who disagree with him, not Alice, Bob, and Charlie.

Dave: Britney Spears sucks. And anyone who disagrees with me can't handle disagreement!

Er, no. that isn't how it works.

Just a random drive-by anecdote (I'm away from home and a bit too busy to read every comment in this thread) ... I've had blog posts on my own blog BoingBoinged, and I have comment threads too, and I have to say, some of the pond scum who drift in from that direction have a truly remarkable ability to cause offense with their content-free effusions.

I don't know what it is about BB, other than (possibly) its size, but it attracts nutjobs in sufficient numbers to overwhelm a normal blogger's patience and endurance. And my heart goes out to Cory for his patience in putting up with these fuckwits.

(Full disclosure: not only do I know Cory personally, but one of these days we're supposed to finish our collaborative novel. So, obviously, I'm biased.)

Cory D. may as well blow his own horn, because he can't rely on others to do it

This? This is not helpful. It distracts from what you're trying to say, and it undermines the point you're trying to make.

There are problems inherent in the weblog comment format, and the dog-pile and derailments are both problems with the form. I think they spring from more innocent sources than being unable to tolerate minority opinions. In one case, multiple people reacting in similar ways to the same post. In the other case, not being willing to let someone else have the last word ('agreeing to disagree', to so speak).

I have seen a few sites that let you know during the composing/previewing process if other people have posted on the thread. I think that's a good thing, but it's hard to completely solve social problems with a technological solution.

this is only possible if you believe in the good faith of everyone participating in a discussion

Why would anyone believe that? I think your hypothetical discussion rules need to handle the case where that's not true - and Ms. "I'll sue you for pointing out that I plagiarized" is not the best evidence for universal faith in good faith.

I notice you're vague about whether the reaction to dissenters is hurting the feeling of the dissenters or the dissentees. There's no right to read or post to the Internet without getting your feelings hurt, and that goes for all sides.

the important thing is that everyone has to listen to each other

In the land where everyone is forced to listen to everyone else, the person who Will. Not. Shut. Up. is king.

Ww - th dltn prty t th bng-bng thrd s nvr-ndng. vn wht sm t b dcnt, thghtfl psts r dspprng. Fr xmpl, cmmnt frm 'Tmr R' (nt tht hv ny prf ny lngr tht t ws thghtfl, r tht th nm s crrctly rfrncd) syng th cmmnt dltns md sm f hr wn rpls lk nchrnt, nd ls ntng tht wth dltng bng th wy t sms t b, t st whch tnds t trmpt frdm, thr ws n rsn fr hr t bthr ctlly rdng t n th ftr. Sh sndd bt wstfl - s f sh ctlly thght bng-bng ws smthng thr thn bsnss pltfrm.

Prsnlly, th whl thng s strtng t tk n crtn crpy lmnt - n, csl rdr s nlkly t knw wh s dltng cmmnts - ftr ll, th c-wnr f ths st sys sh ddn't, t lst t th strt, nd t vn mks th pst whch prmptd ths cmmnt srrl - n n cn vn rd th cmmnts whch csd sch trg.

wndr f th plgy frm mdrtr bt th rgnl dltn f n pstr s stll thr - r f tht gt dltd t.

Thr s smthng fr t msng n wtchng ths sprl nt nnty. spclly t st whch ls mks hbby f pntng t hw sm Wkpd dtrs mk mckry f thmslvs thrgh dltng ny cmmnts whch pss thrgh th dtr's bs.

At some blogs, the deleted posts are marked as 'deleted by moderator' or 'deleted by request' (where 'request' is probably best understood as 'I want to take back what I said but can't edit it out').

At ML, the deleted posts don't actually disappear either (except for comment spam). But for a post to be deleted seems to require a fairly high level of trollishness, more even than simple disemvowelling does.

At BB, maybe the various people with edit access are handling it in different ways, so it's a bit confused about what's going on. (I don't hang out there.)

I don't find every post on [BoingBoing/Making Light/Instapundit/Brad Delong/...] interesting or relevant because [not everything in the universe interests me/even Jove nods/I can see a wankfest coming from a mile away/self-congratulation gets boring/catblogging bores my cats/...].

So, when I see such a post, I ignore it and/or avoid the comments.

Amazing how many people demand that every post on every blog they read be interesting to them.

I wonder how they manage to read a newspaper or a magazine without steam coming out their ears.

Greg #149: Yes, they respected you. That's also why I feel comfortable posting my opinion, though I'm not a regular member, or much of a known quantity here. My point was that the Harry discussion got derailed, and suffered. Though I guess it beats what you can read on Youtube, or "Aint it Cool News."

Here are Never-Ending Deletion's prior appearances here.

Charlie@153: I think Boing Boing suffers from the Assholes-From-The-United-States Syndrome. See, when I lived in Canada, I had to explain to my Canadian friends that, no, the United States wasn't full of assholes. But, if you granted that 1-in-10 persons from the US was a loud asshole, than you had 28 million assholes out of 280 Americans....a number which is almost as big as Canada's entire population of 30 million. (Well, the population at the time I lived in Canada.)

In other words, Cory's blog doesn't necessarily attract assholes, but the assholes percentage of its readership is still enough to overwhelm the regular readership at a smaller blog.

Hmm... Cory's 0wnz0red post struck me as nothing out of the unusual for BoingBoing. Why is it that, just now, a BoingBoinger posting about his own work has become controversial. AFAIK, they've all been doing this for as long as I've read the blog.

[Or if this is specifically Cory hate, I'm curious where it comes from. He has been remarkably consistent in what he evangelizes. What is he doing now that he hasn't been doing? Why is it just now that it has started to anger people?]

As for CeCe et al., they strike me not so much as trolls but people who felt hurt, and, inexplicably, have decided that to hurt other people was the best way to make themselves feel better, or at least to get some restitution or satisfaction. I hope they've realized now that hurting other people, in the long term, really doesn't help anyone in any way. I think the failure to recognize this is how trolls are born.

[To the people arguing against disemvowelment, it's a gentle art, purely self-defensive. The allegedly offending text is there for all to decipher, assuming a certain amount of human intellegence and context. The "why can't they just leave everything up unaltered" scenario sounds appealling in theory. In practice, that's to argue for no moderation at all. There are lots of examples, all over the web, to show that no moderation does not lead to the utopia of rational, intelligent, and honest discourse.]

midori, 138:

I could do that. But I don't actually want to hear what they have to say about the Nash Metropolitan. Rather, I wish to put words in their mouths in a manner that reinforces my prejudices and is reasonably amusing. For example, Cory's would be some sort of Haunted Mansion-themed papercraft Metropolitan. Or something.

From my prior post: Er. 280 million Americans. Wow, one little word missing makes a huge mathy difference.

Also, it gets posted regularly but once again, PA's law of green blackboards, just in case anyone missed it: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Pyre @ 143, I think you have the start of a really fine James D. Macdonald parody.

Jack@158 My point was that the Harry discussion got derailed, and suffered.

That depends on how you define "derailed". The thread was still discussing Harry Potter, just that the subthread I was in was me raising issues I had with the plot and others saying why they didn't have a problem with those plot turns.

You can't say Making Light has an issue with disagreement, then point to a thread where I disagreed and was never disemvoweled or deleted and say that's proof of intolerance, and say that's an example of a minority opinion being disallowed.

The thread goes ever on and on, Down from the post where it began...

*ducks*

Yeago: 'look what they're going to do to me' is not a particularly appealing argument to attempt to push.

I put the vowels back in and read your comment on boingboing, and I think the person you're quoting is probably right about Cory's fiction writing; a lot of it is self-indulgent, and plays to a very particular crowd who are in some sense easy fish to catch.

But pointing people uninvited at privately-published bad reviews of their work is in no sense civil, and here and boingboing are some of the few blogs whose moderation aims at civility.

If you want a vigorous but mostly civil argument in this sort of direction, wander over to Charlie Stross's blog at www.antipope.org and read "New York City Math Teacher"'s contributions to the comment thread on the most recent post.

Nomie @ 116

(AFK @109:) "I've noticed that this blog has a lot of conversation, but no debate."

"Are you making this call based on this thread alone?"

I'd make a similar call (using "little", rather than "no"), based on several years of reading ML more-or-less regularly and being acquainted with some of the participants for up to almost 50 years -- _if_ I were defining "debate" (as some people do) as a "score points & defeat your opponent" game.

Not that we don't sometimes use techniques of the Formal Debate in our conversation, but the major point here is, generally, quite different. Mostly, I think, we want to express our opinions, discover other people's opinions, and maybe learn something & modify our own attitudes. For that, I'd say, Discussion works much better than Debate. And yes, it seems to me that this is exactly what ML (ideally) accomplishes.

Everyone's mileage is likely to vary.

CeCe disappears, AFK appears. AFK is fond of using mature/immature as a heavy-duty insult. So is Booch (50):

I've been a reader of BB for a few years now and the reaction by them to what I thought was an honest criticism was a bit jarring.

Yes it's their blog, but I feel people shouldn't be censored, provided the comments aren't offensive.

Also, I do find it a bit hypocritical that BB has posted several entries on censorship relating to Google or Youtube, but when Boing Boing does it, we're told that they can do whatever they wish, and chew out those with an opposing opinion for having a sense of entitlement.

I also feel that the "disemvoweling" to be somewhat immature, as I saw this blog as a collection of professionals who wouldn't waste time doing such a thing.

(Note: the two main disemvowelled posts at Boing Boing were by Yeago and Nutkin, who turned up there in tandem, writing in not terribly dissimilar styles. Yeago had first appeared on BB the day before; Nutkin was posting there for the first time. By itself, this doesn't prove anything. It's just a pointer.)

Nonesuch got disemvowelled here and on the thread in question at Boing Boing. Here's a reconstruction of his comment at Boing Boing:

It's funny, really. If YouTube threatens to revoke your ability to post, BB editors post about it like it's a violation of the constitution. Yet here they are, happily screening their own content for even less reason than YouTube. At least YouTube had an excuse: they can be sued over the stuff they're revoking. What's the excuse here?

At the point that I suspended TC for two weeks on account of some serious bad behavior, he went spla and started spawning sockpuppets, among them CantStopTheSignal, FreeTibet, Mr.Universe, and TruthFriction. (By the way: in situations where TC was uncertain of himself, the sockpuppets tended to turn up in tandem to support each other.)

Whenever I identified another one of TC's sockpuppets, I'd take down all of that identity's comments. Here's one of them reacting:

Oh say, I noticed the moderator deleted my other posts, including the ones she replied to. Why can't you have a mature discussion without silencing anyone who disagrees with you? I am flabbergasted that such draconian censorship is occurring on BoingBoing, which features "DEFEAT CENSORWARE" as a prominent link on the main page!

He has no idea how I'm able to spot him.

Even if I identify a sockpuppet long after the period during which it was posting, I'll still go back and delete its comments. This will continue until I'm certain that there's been a two-week period during which TC did no sockpuppety posting at all.

People have understandably complained that this leaves holes in the discourse, and screws up the message numbers. I keep telling them to blame TheCynic and his sockpuppets. He's known almost from the start that that's what would happen if he ignored the suspension.

If trolls weren't slow learners, and earless to boot, they wouldn't be trolls.

I think there's an important distinction to be made here, between the right to say whatever you like, and the right to somebody else's audience. Cory is a staunch defender of the former, but he's not censoring anyone if he doesn't let every angry moron share the attention of his audience.

Yes, his audience. Cory owns his readers' attention in a way that very few people in this world own any commodity. The reason so many people read him is a direct consequence of his hard work and the high quality of his writing. He is completely entitled to use that attention to make money by putting ads on his blog, or to promote his books, or to reward commenters who have something intelligent to contribute. But why should a troll who has done nothing to earn that attention get a share of it?

#154, FungifromYuggoth (hope I got that right). It was an observation, not the opening premise in a tightly-reasoned argument.

I'm not understanding your objection. If I'm reading someone's message, or visiting their blog, and they seem interesting, of course I want to find out more about them. Even buy their books, if I want to. And P.R. people, critics, and journalists can get facts wrong. So why not push one's own stuff? Too many writers are far too modest.

Hiya, TheCynic, a.k.a. "never ending deletions" (155). It's bleepin' remarkable how often someone who's never been seen before in online discourse just happens to come along in time to read a short-lived comment in Boing Boing before I make it vanish.

I don't believe in you for a second. All you've done is reduce my belief in the reality of the person who posted that comment.

Teresa @169, quoting "TheCynic":

I am flabbergasted that such draconian censorship is occurring on BoingBoing, which features "DEFEAT CENSORWARE" as a prominent link on the main page!

Wow. It's been a while since I saw somebody missing the point quite that badly.

ctlly, ths r nly fw f my psts hr - d y hnstly thnk pst frm sngl ddrss? (Thgh t lks lk th P trckng s prtty gd - nd ntc 50% f my psts cncrn dt rtntn nd frdm.) hv bn pstng hr fr yrs - nd y cn nly fnd 4 f thm? Mst b prt f tht wrld fms mdrtn sklls whch r s n dmnd t hgh trffc sts tht fl thy hv mjr nflnc.

spclly msng ws th rply frm Hydn (s h nts ''m nt "Mr. Hydn."') t n f my psts, syng hw shld b lk nthr pst -

'Y'r nttld t fnd th mg lss ppst thn d, nd thr's plnty f rm fr snsbl dscssn f jst hw mch lrm r trrr w shld fl s w mv nt wrld f lss nd lss prvcy. s Tssrct bsrvs n #40, sm T rgnztns r lt lss blndrng thn th Strlng qt mpls.'

hv lwys wntd t pnt t tht lttl jxtpstn, nd thnks fr th chnc. s mttr f fct, pntd t tht lttl stry n n f th frst dltn fsts t bng-bng, whn t smd s f ll cmmnts crtcl f mdrtn wr dmd t b frm n r tw srcs - whch ws wrng.

d wndr f th crrnt #29 pst t th bng-bng thrd wll b dltd - lt m chck - np, 'tmk' s stll thr - wndr hw mch lngr?

gn, thnks fr lnkng t fw f my prvs psts - spclly th 'Thr r lt f fcts whch r smply nt dscssd n pblc - lk th fct tht vry sngl -ml snd hr s mntrd.' r n ths cs, vry P ddrss. Wh knws, y mght vn nt tht fct smwhr n th st - nt tht t wld mn nythng, nywys.

n th ntrnt, t s prtty sy t fgr t wh th dgs r.

Trs-
y knw, ths sn't th frst tm y hvn't blvd tht smn ctlly xsts - nt th pnt bt th stry bv, whn y wr gn crtn tht ny pnt whch ddn't ft yr frmwrk ws wrthy f dltn, nd ths y gn dsmssd my cmmnts s bng fbrctd.

ctlly, t ws vgly dsppntng, nt tht dltng psts wtht cmmnt s xctly nknwn whn pstng cntrry pnns n th rght wng wrld - s ntd bv, bng-bng cld b mprvd by t lst ntng cmmnt ws dltd - thn ppl cld s hw ftn tht hppns.

My gss, t hppns lt mr thn mst ppl knw.

Bt s wht? 'm mch mr cyncl thn y, t lst n trms f dt ntwrks - pnt prvd bv - nd hv nvr hd ny nncnt dlsns whn t cms t hw ppl wh rn thm ct.

One of the wonders of the modern age is the number of people who are proud of being utter jerks.

Jack Ruttan @149 "I'd be happy to see some counter-examples of discussions people here have participated in."

I started to try to answer this with some examples, but gave up due to lack of time. However, please note that threads on this site regularly reach into several hundred posts and sometimes pass a thousand. That's unlikely to be happening so frequently if people were not having discussions about the topics in question. The threads would get boring if everyone was just agreeing with one another, and would fizzle out much faster.

Of course, the wanderings into poetry, cookery, knitting etc. help as well!

JDC, #162
I wish to put words in their mouths in a manner that reinforces my prejudices and is reasonably amusing. For example, Cory's would be some sort of Haunted Mansion-themed papercraft Metropolitan. Or something.

That sounds fascinating! Good lord, get started already, I want to read it!

alternatively...

Cory, if you are still reading this, I'd love for you to get/make a Haunted Mansion-themed papercraft Metropolitan, preferably life-size, and available for reproduction under a CC-SA-BY attribution.

re:that 3th post prior to mine

Ugh. How vulgar.

mdr -
vry tm smn cn't rfrnc ln nmbr, t 'rdcs my blf n th rlty f th prsn wh pstd tht cmmnt.'

s fr vlgr - dltn sn't vlgr, t sms t b vr mr n fshn. spclly whn th prsn n chrg f dltn nts 'nvr bn sn bfr n nln dscrs' whl nthr n f hr c-blggrs lnks t psts hr vr cpl f mnths frm n P ddrss.

trly clssy ct, n whch my vlgrty stnds t.

Surely if Teresa (or other moderators) really wanted to suppress all dissent/debate/discussion, they would have to delete all subsequent comments that mentioned a deleted post, or stop comment threads, or I'm sure many other things that really would stifle debate. I certainly haven't seen anything like that happen here.

Making multiple posts under different names doesn't strike me as showcasing one's authenticity, either.

mdr -
vry tm smn cn't rfrnc ln nmbr, t 'rdcs my blf n th rlty f th prsn wh pstd tht cmmnt.'

s fr vlgr - dltn sn't vlgr, t sms t b vr mr n fshn. spclly whn th prsn n chrg f dltn nts 'nvr bn sn bfr n nln dscrs' whl nthr n f hr c-blggrs lnks t psts hr vr cpl f mnths frm n P ddrss.

trly clssy ct, n whch my vlgrty stnds t.

mdr -
vry tm smn cn't rfrnc ln nmbr, t 'rdcs my blf n th rlty f th prsn wh pstd tht cmmnt.'

s fr vlgr - dltn sn't vlgr, t sms t b vr mr n fshn. spclly whn th prsn n chrg f dltn nts 'nvr bn sn bfr n nln dscrs' whl nthr n f hr c-blggrs lnks t psts hr vr cpl f mnths frm n P ddrss.

trly clssy ct, n whch my vlgrty stnds t.

TomB @ #164, I misread your suggestion as "John D" MacDonald, which made me wonder what Travis McGee would have thought about torture.

Nkk-
Jst gt Mvbl Typ rrr mssg bt rbldng pg, nd whn rldng ths pg, s th sm pst pprs mltpl tms - ths wld b nrml cs f dltng nntntnlly mltpl psts.

Bt n trms f tht bng-bng thrd - n, thr r ctlly psts stll lft (lst tm chckd) tlkng bt dltd psts.

Th whl thng lks mtrsh, s cmprd t my vlgrty.

Shorter "Neverending*"

Nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah nyah!

James 122: Brilliant! Anybody else up for performing it at Worldcon? All I need is a hump to look like Riff-Raff, though making Greg look like Magenta would definitely be a chore, and Fragano looking like Columbia...not gonna happen.

JESR 176: I share your croggle at this phenomenon. I wonder if she/he/it (say that fast) realizes that she/he/it has just announced "Hey, everyone! Not only am I a total asshole, I'm an even bigger asshole than you realize!"

nd t kp th vlgrty lv -
Tmr R, th prsn wh pstd dcnt mssg whch ws thn dltd hs wrttn t ll sx dtrs f bng-bng, cncldng -
' dn't wnt t blv th dtrs spprt th dltn f ll dssnt.'

lk sch blf n hmn dcncy, n prt bcs dn't rlly shr t. (Bt thn, dn't rlly xst, ccrdng t t lst n prsn, nd f d, 'm vlgr, ccrdng t nthr.) Hr cmmnt #29 bt hw dsppntd sh ws t bng-bng's dscnnct s nlkly t b rnsttd, snc sh dsn't xst, t lst n th ys f th nly ppl wh mttr - th ns wth th dlt ky.

Stll, cmmtng hr s bttr thn brkng th lw (s sggstd by n bng-bng wnr) nd dwnldng wrtchd psd f th T Crwd - thgh th d f svt cmmnt r sms lk brllnt strcl d t ths pnt.

Why is it that never_ending is reminding this fiendish writer of mrkyrk? Is it the neediness for attention? The ability to condense jerkitude into a few phrase? All of the above?

And having given the crumb of attention, I turn back to more interesting tasks. Ta.

Never-ending @ 185: I'm not sure I understand your point. Or maybe mine wasn't clear.

What I meant to say was, I've never seen Teresa (or any other moderator) try to stifle debate or dissent on Making Light, and that if she wanted to, she could. So accusing her of doing that seems to me to be plain wrong.

Also, I don't think Teresa meant to say that the person posting your comments didn't exist, only that your various online personas don't exist as real people. At least that's how I understood it.

I roll to disbelieve in "neverending?". He must be a parody of himself.

shld dd, t hs bn fscntng wtchng th rvrs sd f th ntrnt - th crtnty tht ppl dn't xst.

Trs s lkly t rmmbr th stry bt pstng wth tw dffrnt thrl vcs, snc wrt t ftr sh dsmssd my cmmnts s bng trckry ftr bng-bng's frst dltn fst. McDnld mrly gv m chnc t brng t p n n pn frm. Jst lk rght wng blg ws s dsgstd wth my pntng t tht Grmns n lngr blv n mss slghtr s wy t mprv th wrld, h pstd th (fk - 'm nt dmb) -ml ddrss t pnt t hw cwrdly ws, ftr th sbmssn frm sd -ml ddrsss wld nvr b pblcly shrd. (Th rght wng s rlly tchy whn y brng p xmpls f scts tht rjct mss mrdr - g fgr, t b trt.)

Thgh hv n ccss t ny lgs, 'm prtty sr ths Tmr s rl prsn, f pssbly bt nv, nlk th sphsctd dnzns f th ntrnt hr. nd f wht sh wrt s tr (mght nt b, ftr ll - 'm nt n pstn t chck ny dt), thn t lst Trs wll b n pstn t s f sh md mltpl rrrs n dsmssng ndvdls wh sh thnks dsn't xst, bcs thy dn't sm t ft nt hr wrld vw. mght b cyncl, bt tht dsn't mk m th cync.

Gd ngh fr m.

Bsds, Slcktvst s lt mr fn. f y wnt rl prsn wh s bynd blf, chck t th wrld's mst Cmpssntly Whckd t Lbrl Lbrtrn (TM). t lst t Slcktvst, w ll thnk h s rl prsn - hrd s tht mght b t mgn t tms, h hs dstnctv styl ll hs wn.

Things have taken a turn for the surreal. It's like looking under the bridge and finding, not trolls, but eight year old kids dressed up in poorly made troll costumes, carrying, not an axe or club, but a large inflatable version of same.

I guess that's what happens when you turn the lights on.

Hm. Was it worth it? Yeah, I think Jim's little musical number at 122 made it worth it.

Only thing is, with little more than rugrats with conspiracy theories for opponents it seems like shooting fish in a barrel. Fish too stupid to know they've been shot. Ah well. It was fun.

neverendingdeletions @ 174:
"Actually, those are only a few of my posts here - do you honestly think I post from a single address?"

Wow.

Someone who admits he posts under multiple identities, and not only seems to see nothing wrong with it, but to feel that it's normal.

That is... disturbed.

This is one of the most "EWWWW!!!" inducing comments I've ever read.

Seriously, it made me draw back from the keyboard with a "What the fuck...?" and the hackles rising on my neck.

I'm not using "disturbed" casually here. This is genuinely sociopathic behavior.

Patrick, remember that correspondence we had about a common acquaintance who you described as "a feral nut"? I think we can add another name (and a LOT of aliases) to the list.

Teresa, I'd be very happy to see this character not just disemvoweled, but deleted and banned.

Ewww. Just... ewwwww.

...this sockpuppeting idiot posts on Slacktivist? Well, that does explain a lot about the endless flamewars over there. Much as I like that blog, I'm nearly ready to give up on reading the comments because there doesn't seem to be any moderation except to remove spam and HTML errors.

I'm still not sure what s/he means to achieve by proudly declaring the Sockpuppet Nature. Wouldn't it be more efficient to just say "Please, ignore all of my posts under these names" and give a list?

rlz ths s gttng cnfsng.

Ths thrd strtd t tlkng bt 'cnsrng' (dltn s bttr - nd sr, th ppl rnnng th st cn dlt whtvr thy lk, ny tm thy lk) t bng-bng, whr n f th blggrs hr t lctrlt (yh, mkng lght ws th nfrr blg - tht s hw lng 'v bn rdng hr) sms t hv dy jb.

hv lrdy hd sm xprnc t nt bng bl t cmmnt t bng-bng, nd th rny f thrd hr dscssng dltn wtht ctlly lnkng t llw ppl t rd th 'hrrbl' psts ws t mch t pss p.

Thn whn nthr blg wnr hr pstd lnks t my prvs psts t mkng lght (sm cncrnng hw sy t s t s ntwrkd dt fr thr prpss thn rgnlly gvn), t gv m chnc t pnt t hw ws th thr f tw psts, smthng hd cmmntd pn n nvr pblshd bng-bng pst - nt xctly dmnstrtng my xstnc, bt t lst prvdng crtn bss fr Trs t qstn hr crtnty tht ppl wh dn't gr wth hr dn't ctlly xst.

Sm f s r ctlly qt dstrbd t sm f bng-bng's rcnt ctns (rsl L Gn cms t mnd), thgh why w cr s prbbly nfthmbl - ftr ll, nlk th wnrs nd mplys, w dn't hv ny fnncl ntrsts.

Ths sms ncmprhnsbl t ths wh gt pd t b nvlvd, bt sm f s blv(d) n wht bng-bng smd t b spsng. Bt whch n prctc sms t hppn vr mr rrly. Lk t rl blg - ncldng ths n - hndrds f psts. Lk t bng-bng - Th Rgstr ds bttr, nd t lst n thr thr mcks mch f Cry's cncrns - nd th fct tht rlwsk dsn't llw cmmnts sn't dstrbng, s h sn't th n strdntly prclmng frdm s gd n nd f tslf.

Sdly, t sms s f bng-bng s slwly strtng t rprsnt wht s wrng wth th ntrnt, nd nt wht s rght wth t. nd d ntc tht th mst srs pstr, Pscvtz, hs prtty mch drppd ff - bng-bng sn't rlly plc t fnd mch n th wy f hrd scnc nymr, s t?

#177 Dcb: "I started to try to answer this with some examples, but gave up due to lack of time."

That's okay. Silly request. I hang around here a bit, and there is interesting stuff. Sometimes, however, it gets a little like the bar in "Star Wars." Esp. when commenters do verse, or casually slip into ROT13.

I'm very sensitive, and the political topics can be dismaying, not to mention all the writing scam and bad "agent" stories. It's addicting, though, as you probably know! And the response time and rate is pretty phenomenal.

Still, I get too verbose in comments. Should save it for my own blog (or better yet, my 'real' writing), to avoid littering the internet with words I might not want to have hang around. Not that any of it's easy to control, but I haven't dropped too big a brick yet, that I'm aware of.

Ack. Totally blew the web address thing. I want to blow my own horn, or at least let people see a little of what I'm about, so am correcting it here.

'Smn wh dmts h psts ndr mltpl dntts, nd nt nly sms t s nthng wrng wth t, bt t fl tht t's nrml.

Tht s... dstrbd.'

Jst bt my bd tm, bt y knw, wht dstrbs m s smn wh thnks tht thy shld nt kp thmslvs prvt n th Nt, t th xtnt cslly pssbl. spclly s th thrw wy sr nms r mnt t b t lst ptntlly n xtr lvl f txtl cntxt.

My chldrn hv fr ntrnt ccss - n fltrs ('m lkly rlly bd prnt n yr ys t) - bt thy hv t drlld nt thm t nvr s thr wn nm, -ml tc. spclly t ny st tht ggrgts dt - s hs bn prvn tht ths st ds. nd thy shld nvr hv th sm 'dntty' - f nly t stp th mrktrs frm sly cllctng dt.

Smtms, t s dprssng t s hw mny ppl sm nwr f wht vst cmptr ntwrk/dtbs mns. Prsnlly, nvr s cks, mgs, Jvscrpt, r ny Mcrsft prdcts. vn mr dprssng s hw ld ths mks m fl. Ds cln nstll frm stndln systm n rglr bss mn nythng t y?

Lk t th lnkng f my P ddrss, s cslly md - nd thn lk t th rctn. pst frm hm, nd frm fw cmptrs t wrk - lk mst ppl, hv mr thn n P ddrss.

s fr dntts - hp my txts r wrth rdng by thmslvs, nt sm md p prsn. Why wld y pssbly ssm tht nythng prt frm th wrttn wrds n th scrn s 'rl?'

W wll vd th phlsphy, bt th d tht mst ppl wh sm t b mrcn hv n cncpt f th mprtnc f prvcy s trblng. t s smthng tht rpns dn't nd ny lssns n.

Just a couple of factual points which might be left dangling without referents:

1. Jon Pescovitz's most recent BoingBoing post was made just a little while before a comment here mentioning that Pescovitz had mostly stopped posting.

2. Ursula K. LeGuin's unhappiness seems to have been directed toward Cory Doctorow in particular, not BoingBoing in particular. The paragraph which refers to this unhappiness conflates it with the unhappiness of various persons whose reasons, such as they are, appear to have nothing to do with LeGuin's personal and legitimate response to the unrequested and unauthorized republication of her writing on BoingBoing.

People are certainly entitled to be disappointed when their hopes for (say) the way BoingBoing will operate are not fulfilled. This is not the same as an entitlement to have the angry, insulting, and moronic comments with which they respond to having their unjustified expectations not met preserved intact and presented as part of BoingBoing's content.

Bruce @ 194 I'm not using "disturbed" casually here. This is genuinely sociopathic behavior.

Speaking of sociopathic behavior... I have Google locked and loaded.

Who wants it?

never @ 196 Sadly, it seems as if boing-boing is slowly starting to represent what is wrong with the Internet, and not what is right with it.

Right, which goes back to what a very earlier commenter had to say: Start your own blog. You don't like boing-boing, that's fin --- move on. Boing-boing doesn't belong to you. It isn't a public free-for-all. Register your own domain and have a hay day. Just stand-by for the same dose of criticism you're happy to dish out.
Lastly, quit trolling about the internet for attention. Conduct unbecoming -10pts.

Guys,

I'm sure Teresa doesn't mind you having fun, but do remember to put the bat & blidfold away and tidy up afterward. Last time we had papier maché, little strips of tissue paper and candy wrappers all over the floor.

My father used to say 'Yu put a fool in a mortar an' poun' him, him wi' come out di same fool'.

'Never....' is one more instance proving my father was a man of great wisdom.

To tell the truth, abi, this pile of mouldy socks doesn't make a very good piñata. Not hard enough to make a satisfying sound when you hit it, no candy inside. They're just kind of vaguely obnoxious in a less than coherent way.

Trollolets:

I'm disemvoweled rather frequently,
but that's the lot of the iconoclast.
(My several dozen sockpuppets agree.)
I'm disemvoweled rather frequently
because I dare to say that none are free
when trolls like me are scorned, mocked, and outcast.
I'm disemvoweled rather frequently.
but that's the lot of the iconoclast.

I'm killfiled by everyone I meet
Which only serves to illustrate my point,
Since I'm so wise and handsome and discreet!
I'm killfiled by everyone I meet---
They're clearly nazi censors, who compete
to squash my eruditic embonpoint!
I'm killfiled by everyone I meet
Which only serves to illustrate my point.

I get banned from a blog or two a day.
It must be since I'm so mature and smart,
with grace and rhetoric both in my sway.
I get banned from a blog or two a day,
by jealous thugs who can't stand repartee,
or anybody who won't take their part!
I get banned from a blog or two a day:
It must be since I'm so mature and smart.

(Line 6 of stanza 2 is sic.)

I find perspectives interesting. Me, Never-guy, I /don't/ use my (full) real name on the 'net. But on the other hand, having a, for lack of a better word, persona which I can hang my hat on, a presence in a community, seems reasonable to me.

So yeah, I don't hand out my full real name, or my main email address... But I do have a consistent personality and (when I choose to be part of a particular community) a consistent experience in that community.

You seem to have a stake in not fully participating in online communities. Is this accurate?

never(whoever)@199
As for identities - I hope my texts are worth reading by themselves, not some made up persona.

I wouldn't be too hasty to make that assumption, if I were you.

Whoever you are.

This is the internet; you can call yourself anything you want. But if you're going to call yourself Little Bo-Peep one day, and SheepGirl the next, and Ms. Peep on the third, you can't expect readers to give your assortment of shifting identities the same good faith and credit that they would have done if you'd picked one name and stuck to it.

Well, actually, you could expect it all you wanted (and based on your past performance here, you probably would.)

Actually getting it, though . . . not so much.

The neverending trollery....

The only voice worth hearing now is mine,
you have not said one thing to make me think
that in my argument there is a chink
since all you do is complain that I whine.
Of course, I could my words and sense refine
and take a pause to wash and eat and drink,
but then I might miss knowing nod or wink
and that would not be in any form fine.
I've got to force you all to suit my whim,
compel your awe, and see you all bow down
although i've never been an honest guest.
I'll shout and slobber in pretence of vim
disguise the fact that I'm another clown,
and not think for one second I'm a pest.

Jim @ 139
"[Name of person] a member of [name of denomination] in [city] came was approached by two sisters preaching God's end-time message. [Name of person] said "Take off, lusers!" or words to that effect, and later [Name of person] had a stroke! Whaddaya think about that, eh?"

And even later, [name of person who had a stroke] plagiarized David Gemmel and then was attacked in a Making Light thread!

Jack Ruttan @ 149:
"In the lone writers' workshop I've been to, I was told to stay positive in comments, and that's a good idea in the situation, because we don't want writers storming out of the room in tears."

Heh. I'm in a gradute writing program. The semester I started, I took a course called "Writing for Film" with Irvin Kerschner, and he made not one, not two, but three students cry. None of whom stormed out.

Now, whether or not that's good or bad . . . I've been on the receiving end of criticism. Kersch called one of my scenes "Nothing but 'As you know Bob' expository scientific gobbledygook," which I found amusing, coming as it did from the director of The Empire Strikes Back. In another class, Syd Field basically criticized ten pages of my screenplay for more than an hour, the moneyquote of which was "With all due respect, it's just bullshit," after which he continued to delineate all the ways it was, in point of fact, bullshit.

Wasn't fun, exactly, but I learned way more from those moments than I did when I got feedback like: "These were great pages. Keep writing. But add more subtext."

(my reaction to that is: "WTF is subtext, and can I blow it up?")

Positive comments can be encouraging, but you don't really learn much from "that was awesome." You can learn a bit more from "x worked, and y worked, and I think you should continue in that vein," but I think one learns most from "well, this worked and this worked, but this didn't work, and here's why." Or, anyway, I always have (and yes, of course I know different people learn different ways).

Waayupthread, Ian @ 18 said "that the referenced thread ... started out "My Nebula-award-nominated story...". That sounds self-congratulatory and is likely to attract adverse comment."

Which struck me as odd. "0wnz0red" was nominated for a Nebula (in 2003, for best novelette). Cory, more than congratulating himself, was really just stating a fact.

Fragano @203:
I was thinking more about the two reasons you don't mud-wrestle a pig. One, you just get muddy, and two, the pig enjoys it.

There is an interesting discussion to be had about moderation at the beginning of the life of a community, when one must be looking to both the short term (content of the thread) and the long term (tone of the community). Should one take a slightly lax tone to encourage more people to come in? Or a more stern tone, to weed the trolls out until the community can help police itself?

Unfortunately, we're not having that discussion, because we're indulging Quoth the Raven's self-absorption. Waste of bandwidth, IMHO, but I'm enjoying the poetry.

Jim:

Let's do the time warp again. What's your preference, Kingdom Hearts, or with ninjas?*

Note: see also Alice in Wonderland, Tiny Toons, chipmunk speed, Fullmetal Alchemist, Slayers, Sailor Moon (cosplay) Star Trek (classic & Voyager), and of course, The Doctor

Also, disturbed to find the number of music videos synched to "Fergalicious" - using Disney characters.

*honorable mention.

abi #210: What amazes me is the degree of self-absorption some people seem to have. They constantly search the intertubes for references to themselves, since they can only be validated in their own minds if the World Wide Web knows that they can break wind on a variety of subjects.

The poetry is, I think, generally the best part of such discussions.

You should stop posting such interesting stuff, and people here should stop writing comments that make me laugh; it distracts me from my writing. I'm already behind on Nano.

:)

#209 Will Entrekin: Come to think of it, the 'positive comment only' policy had us reading volumes into what was said, and we could still be as crazy as we would have been, if ripped into non-passive-aggressively.

I had a producer who would read and say to you "it's goo-od" but you had to watch out for the drawn-out dropping and rising tone, which meant there was a lot of work ahead.

If you want a real person who is beyond belief, check out the world's most Compassionately Whacked Out Liberal Libertarian (TM). At least at Slacktivist, we all think he is a real person - hard as that might be to imagine at times, he has a distinctive style all his own.

Wait a minute! "Never," are you "Scott" on Slackivist? Because that explains a lot in terms of tone and attitude. And honestly, I can only imagine Scott calling Fred (Slackivist) by that sort of ridiculous title. (For those who don't read Slackivist, Scott is a mega-libertarian who brings up points completely irrelevant to the thread with a similar snide attitude.) Of course, Scott only seems to use one name, so perhaps not. But please don't pollute Making Light with your rudeness either way. Even if your points are valid, your attitude in making them is quite condescending, even to people outside of this thread. There was no reason to bring Fred into this.

oooooooohhh....
You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd.
You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd.
You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd.
But you can be happy if you've a mind to.

This, this, thing that is clogging up the thread with pointless blather is choosing to be miserable. I say give it the freedom to be miserable.

Jim @ 139 -

[Name of person] a member of [name of denomination] in [city] came was approached by two sisters preaching God's end-time message. [Name of person] said "Take off, lusers!" or words to that effect, and later [Name of person] had a stroke! Whaddaya think about that, eh?

Fred* wrote about that story in his Left Behind series a few weeks ago. Apparently it's one of the prime end-time signals for the dominionists.

*the, um, world's most Compassionately Whacked Out Liberal Libertarian (TM) - nevermore @ 192, announcing that you've managed to pick a fight at Fred's place is not really a great way to make the case that you're wandering around the internet with a lantern looking for reasoned debate.

Person cycling through handles: Blogspot and LiveJournal are still free. If you think there's an audience for what you want to write, go for it! People start up new blogs every single day.

It's just that you're not entitled to Cory's audience, or to Teresa and Patrick's, just because they're in some sense handy.

The rest is just self-justification for stupid bad behavior.

two-hundred posts on this thread, half of which are from one or two people, and their sock puppets, whining endlessly about how they're being censored because their posts are being deleted.

That makes a good 50 or more posts in this thread that all are diligently fighting "the man" and shouting from the rooftops that their posts are being unfairly deleted, that they are suffering the slings and arrows of censorship because their posts are all being deleted for disagreeing.

At what point does irony set in?

I'm just asking, is all.

I mean, does it take a hundred posts that don't get deleted before these yayhoos figure out that they're not getting deleted?

Maybe when CeCe comes back, I'll ask what the ratio for this thread is of posts by people complaining that they're being censored versus total posts in the thread.

I mean seriously, you get some yayhoos who think that CNN suppresses criticism, so they get together and make a commercial that says CNN won't show criticism, then they get that ad played on CNN, and then don't get the irony that they just got criticism aired on CNN?

(at which point, all the trolls are covering their ears going "blah, blah, blah, you keep talking, but I'm not listening, blah, blah, blah")

I almost feel sad for the little creeps.

Almost.

Never-whoever's comment @199 is sort of sociologically fascinating* (while also creepifying) as a glimpse at someone who sees the internet as a pool of potential enemies and predators to be thwarted rather than a community to join in. Forgive the hyperbole, but I wonder if such a diametric opposition of assumptions about the virtual space we inhabit renders Never-whoever and people like him conversationally varelse - no real communication possible.

*More fascinating than the review of The Invention of Hugo Cabret that I'm supposed to be writing for class tomorrow, anyway.

Rdng Dctrw's lng-wndd "nln cnrshp hrts s ll" ftr ths mshp s rlly n rny mst cn njy.

'm hnstly nt gng t b bl t hv lng cnvrstn wth th ppl t thr wh smhw dn't qt rmvng ll vwls wth cnsrshp. W dsgr t t fndmntl lvl.

T ths wh g n frthr nd cndmn cnsrshp xcpt whn ts ppld t "Scrd", "flms" r "bs", wll, f th cmmnts wr lft ntct rlly dbt y'd b bl t ssgn ny f ths dscrptns t thr tn. Thy wr vry rspctfl, blncd, nd wll-thght t. Vry dsppntng t b blwn t f th cnvrstn wth frhs. Sdly, s tht whn th srcs r fdgd, llgtns g lng wy.

Bt whn tblt th rspnss, vryn nvlvd wth BB r Cry ll sm t ln-p n dfns f t (wht r th dds...). ht t nvk Rmsfld bt t s jst ths srt f clbbshnss mxd wth ntlrnc f cntr-pnts tht mks ths whl ss s plrzng nd dststfl.

Typng knwng tht thr s gd chnc th thghts cmng frm yr hd--whch y fl r gnn, msrd, nd nt htfl--r gng t b dsmssd trght nd cnsrd / rndrd nr-nrdbl s nt nly dshrtnng bt vry txc t th bsc d f cllbrtv, pn, dmcrtc ntrnt, whch s strngly th sbjct f s mch dtrl n ths prts f t.

Sm f y tk strngly Cthlc stnc f "w cmmnt t th bhst f th ns mst hgh, nd w r ndsrvng". Tr ngh, sm blgs dn't ccpt cmmnts. T ths sy chs n, nd f smthng rlly vltl cms lng, by ll mns dlt t. Bt whn yr wn cmmnty gvs y lt f blwbck vr t, hv th dcncy t ntrtn thr cmplnts.

Mary Lou Klecha, 220,

I had never heard of The Invention of Hugo Cabret before. Thank you for bubbling something interesting to the surface. (Pity the official site is Flash encrusted.)

Yeago, you demonstrate a common fallacy well with "But when your own community gives you a lot of blowback over it, have the decency to entertain their complaints." There is a tremendous difference between one person saying something a hundred times and a hundred people each saying something similar once. Once the reasons, actually, for stable handles and against sock puppets is that the latter undermine the ability of bystanders to trust what they see. It's a form of ballot box stuffing, basically, from people unwilling to deal with being in the minority on a particular topic or exchange, and preferring the illusion of popularity to accepting reality.

Likewise, the ability to post again and again and again about a subject doesn't tell us what most people think, only that someone posted a lot.

Yeago, 221,
The U.S. Zipcode Database you have in your blog looks pretty interesting. Where did you find it, and what uses are you putting it to? (Seriously, this is a pretty neat bit of datapr0n.)

Once again, trollishness is made to serve a higher purpose as inspiration for poetry and satire. Thanks to all poets here, especially Fragano and Lighthill, and thanks for keyboard liquid-proofness testing to Jim Macdonald* and to Xopher for the rodents. I can't think of a better use for trolls, unless maybe it's to cut them up and make crazy quilts out of them.

* and for a new slant on my very favorite music video.

#194 ::: Bruce Arthurs winced:
Someone who admits he posts under multiple identities, and not only seems to see nothing wrong with it, but to feel that it's normal.

Hm. I can't say that there's anything wrong with posting under multiple identities in different fora, -in general-. Posting under multiple identities to the same blog and thread, OTOH... that's well into WTF territory.

Midori @222,

Glad to be of help, or at least of interest! Hugo Cabret is the first book in a long time that I've randomly picked up at a bookstore, flipped through, and then been absolutely unable to walk away from - it's a pretty attractive piece of bookmaking, aside from the actual story. It honestly never occurred to me to look for an official website, though; I've just been looking at reviews on Amazon (sadly, it doesn't currently have a Search Inside option, which might give a better impression of what's so cool about this book).

I was going to post this around the time of comment #157, but our (shared) server was having hiccups, and then I had to run off and attend the World Fantasy Awards banquet here in lovely Saratoga Springs.

There's been a certain amount of confusion inside Boing Boing over implementation details, resulting in cockups like the deletion of the first post in the thread about Cory's Swedish translation. This is inevitable when multiple people are using newly hand-rolled software. Also inevitable: people who think every stumble is an example of the violence inherent in the system, help help I'm being repressed. Anyone for whom an argument in a blog comment thread "feels like a middle ages mob in front of the pillory" has left reasonable perspective about six interstate exits behind.

As for the rest of it, neverending and his or her many sockpuppet friends: oy gevalt. This is mental illness, and one thing I've learned in my long life is that mental illness is catching. You engage too much with crazy people, and the crazy rubs off. Bruce Arthurs and I have had many occasions to disagree over the years, but he's spot on as far as this particular kook-a-palooza is concerned.

Mary Lou Klecha, 227,

Well the description of the plot plus the length + lots of interior illustrations fills me with hope.* I'm a sucker for illustrated stories, which has led me to read almost exclusively manga (like Fullmetal Alchemist) or webcomics (like Girl Genius). I remember well my disappointment as a child that the older I got, the fewer (and often, worse) the pictures were in the books I read. I have a hunch that I wouldn't have read nearly so much SF in my youth if it hadn't been for the inevitable map a the front of each book.**

Now that I think about it, my delayed entry into hard SF probably had a lot to do with dull, uninformative illustrations. Have I mentioned, that as a reader, I despise inaccurate cover art? Sorry. Rant over.

*last February ‡, there was a rumor Sorsese was going to direct an adaptation(!)
**the imagination needs some seed to grow upon, aside from the text.
‡ I wonder why I don't pronounce the R in that month?

Yeago@221: it is just this sort of clubbishness mixed with intolerance of counter-points that makes this whole issue so polarizing and distasteful.

Yes, we understand, you find us clubbish, intolerant, polarizing, and distasteful. Message received. The thread is full of posts by you saying how Making Light doesn't allow criticism, the irony of which still escapes you.

Anything else?

Unless you want us to throw ourselves on our swords or something, I think you've pretty much covered everything.

Must we confess to your accusations before you'll leave? Or can you tolerate dissent and allow us to disagree with your opinion of us?

#209 (my reaction to that is: "WTF is subtext, and can I blow it up?")

Subtext is a vulgar heresy. The belief in the real existence of subtext is a sign of insanity.

Thus, no, you cannot blow it up. Only real things can be exploded.

Myths can be exploded. Therefore myths are real.

Subtext does not rise to the level of "myth."

never-thing 199: My children have free Internet access - no filters (I'm likely a really bad parent in your eyes too) - but they have it drilled into them to never use their own name, e-mail etc. Especially at any site that aggregates data - as has been proven that this site does. And they should never have the same 'identity' - if only to stop the marketers from easily collecting data.

O my gods.

Yeah, you're a bad parent in my eyes, but not because you don't filter the internet from your kids. I think you're a bad parent because you're teaching your kids to be paranoid nutbars like you.

But then, I guess it would be pretty unusual for an abusive, obnoxious, troublemaking, rude fugghead troll like you to be a good parent, so I'm not surprised.

But seriously...you're in tinfoil-hat land. I hope your kids eventually recover from the damage you're doing them every day.

Sockpuppets are a foe the like which Hercules would know;
a Hydra-headed monster looking for a place to crow.
What nonsense comes from many mouths they hold to be a truth.
But those who have to listen just feel that it's uncouth.

"Stay thy sword!" the heads all shout, "do not my posts delete!"
"You must allow the multitude to hear my grand conceit!"
"Removing all the vowels as well would be just immature."
"Besides," they say, "without them, I'll lose my bingo score."

The Moderator takes no note, she's heard it in the past.
It all comes down to trollishness, impoliteness unsurpassed.
So many heads have reared up now the point is hard to see.
She'll cut off one or two of them to be replaced by three.

Eventually the socks run out or get lost in the wash;
'Cause no one's even listening to all the puppet tosh.
The threads have turned the trollery to poems and to song,
The monsters all have gone away, their act has got the gong.

Never-whatever,

Let me help you out for a second. Every webpage, blog, forum, etc. you visit has the potential to collect and aggregate data regarding the visitors and commentors to the site. Every server has access logs, which collect the IP addresses of everyone who has visited the website. You see, the site must have your IP address in order to push out content to you. Most of the blog and forum software I've dealt with records the IP address of each poster, specifically for moderation and preventing abuse.

So I don't really see your point about using multiple identities. How does this help? 'They' are still going to know who you are and what you said. You cannot hide from 'Them'.

If you are really worried about blog owners collecting data about you and selling it to marketers or the government or whoever, the only 100% effective method is to STFU. Otherwise, you may as well give them your name and address, because they can get that info without your consent, anyway.

What you said smells like a steaming pile of crap anyway, but I figured I'd help out, just in case online security is an actual concern of yours.

Shorter CosmicDog: "Never-whatever...STFU...you steaming pile of crap."

Oops. Should be an ellipsis between 'you' and 'steaming'. Xopher regrets the error.

Hey, by the way, the disemvowelled post, the one that started it all from Flying Squid, is back up on BB.

BngBng sms t hv bcm fr y mstly PR vhcl fr yr strs. 'm sr y r bsltly thrlld vry tm n f yr strs gts trnsltd nt nthr lngg, bt t m, t jst sms lk ndlss slf-ggrndzng.

"...but to me, it seems like endless self-aggrandizing."

Calling someone self-aggrandizing in his own blog is not polite, calm, reasonable, or any other of the words used to defend the comment and fight against censorship. It's not criticism, either. It's just a rude comment. The fact that the commentor calls it 'honest criticism' does not make it so.

Why not just send Cory an e-mail, instead of posting it for everyone to read, if not to build support for your perspective and/or start some shit. Neither of which falls under the umbrella of 'criticism'.

There once was a troll from Nantucket,
whose posts were as vile as a muck bucket.
He posted far and wide.
The moderators he would deride:
Don't censor my sock puppets!

There once was a troll from Nantucket,
whose posts were as vile as a muck bucket.
He posted far and wide.
The moderators he would deride:
Don't censor my sock puppets!

Greg #165: You can't say Making Light has an issue with disagreement, then point to a thread where I disagreed and was never disemvoweled or deleted and say that's proof of intolerance, and say that's an example of a minority opinion being disallowed.

That's not what I meant to say. I meant that the disagreement seemed to dominate the thread in that one case. People were trying to get back on track, but it certainly killed my enjoyment, at least.

And seeing this going on, one is a little less eager to venture into the conversation, for fear of getting singled out, too.

There once was a troll from Nantucket,
whose posts were as vile as a muck bucket.
He posted far and wide.
The moderators he would deride:
Don't censor my sock puppets!

Terribly off-topic for Mary Lou and Midori:

Hugo Cabret looks wonderful-- I recently had that same experience Mary Lou described with The City of Dreaming Books . It's whimsical and gruesome and all about loving books and words and reading. It also has many fabulous illustrations, so I thought I should share, just in case you haven't encountered it yet!

#170 (Individ-ewe-al) and some following point out a contradiction that had been bothering me; the analogy between visiting/speaking at a blog, and at a home, breaks down when the blog is selling advertising, which gains an iota of its worth from my presence.

(At least, I have never considered invitations to be sold plasticware/timeshares/Landmark anything but shaky imitations of social life. Of course it's natural to have one's professional and personal lives intersect, but it's also naturally fraught and vexed.)

So semi-professional blogs are veering, more or less weakly depending on their success, into a different patch of the "Voice, choice, or exit" continuum. No party involved should be allowed to hop between definitions to gain advantage; most humans will try to instinctively; and we'll usually disagree about where on the continuum a blog is, let alone what OK behavior is.

'endless' could also be 'needless'.

It doesn't really change the tone of the comment or my point, but I just noticed that and figured I'd call myself on it before someone else did.

221: to take that article on online censorship as an 'irony' when viewed in the light of this thread is a bit absurd, I think. That article referred to artists and their work, which is quite pointedly not what is occurring here (although never-whatever's sock-puppetry and most of the posts in this thread do seem to nearly elevate trolling to an art [for varying defintions of 'art'. Seems it's really like that Virgin Mary painted with dung fiasco a few years back; you can call it art if you like, but it still doesn't make it any good]).

I've reread the BoingBoing post several times, and I can't for the life of me think of it as self-congratulatory nor self-aggrandizing. I'm not familiar with Cory's work save Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, but characterizing him as an 'enthusiast' seems terrifically appropriate. The tone I got from the post was nothing so much as "Hey, this neat-o story I wrote just got translated! How rad is that?"

To which I say: rock on. Rock on indeed.

But there's something else: given the sock-puppetry, I wonder if this is all the work of one troll named Scott who posted first as "FlyingSquid" and who also frequents the Slacktivist. It seems that much of the argument in the comments section of the original BoingBoing post cites "honest" or "balanced" criticism, as if calling someone "self-aggrandizing" is actually either. I know the IP addresses mightn't match, but given the comments made here by never-whoever, I'm not sure it matters.

Jim @ 232:

Posts like that are precisely the reason I've convinced at least half of the USC writing program to read Making Light. The other half; well, I think our program is unique in that the work is so divided and just about anyone can find a home. Sure, there are the smaller, more "literary" stories one might find in MFA programs, but me, I've been writing about time machines and vampires and things that go boom in the night as long as I've been there.

Jack @ 241:

I understand the sentiment, but one guest to another, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm often intimidated by the sheer number of distinctly intelligent people who frequent this site (to be honest, I sometimes feel like the kid who scored a place at the adult table), but rarely do I feel unwelcome to contribute (and heck, even the moments I lodge my foot in my mouth [which doesn't happen often only because I don't post often], people are generally pretty understanding). I think it's at least partially because the one thing that gets singled out is not ignorance but rather rudeness. Everyone's ignorant about something, but not everybody feels the need to be an asshole about it.

CosmicDog 238: I agree with your analysis, but I doubt the steaming piles of crap will.

"neverending_deletions" (174):

Actually, those are only a few of my posts here - do you honestly think I post from a single address? (Though it looks like the IP tracking is pretty good - and notice 50% of my posts concern data retention and freedom.) I have been posting here for years - and you can only find 4 of them?

I have to leave right now. Yog, Avram -- if either of you feel like disemvowelling yon self-confessed liar, do please.

Yee gawds. Sorry about the triplicate post! It was maybe funny enough for half a posting. No where near as good as the Time Warp revamp.

My internet exhaust port seems to be packed with lint and I haven't cleaned the trap lately.

Greg 249:

(Christopher, remembering that Greg is straight, thinks better of making "tailpipe" jokes.)

;)

Will @ #246

I wrote that, decided not to post it, then pushed the wrong button after previewing because something was neglected on the stove. Oh, well.

Something I shouldn't do, which I did on the old usenet "writing" group was to write in and complain the discussion wasn't to my liking.

Well, back to poetry, cats, and knitting for me (at least the first two).

Nevereverwhatever @ 199: My children have free Internet access - no filters (I'm likely a really bad parent in your eyes too) - but they have it drilled into them to never use their own name, e-mail etc. Especially at any site that aggregates data - as has been proven that this site does. And they should never have the same 'identity' - if only to stop the marketers from easily collecting data.

Try this instead; it's quicker:

Ingredients

2 cups packed brown sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons ground cloves
2 tablespoons ground allspice
2 tablespoons ground nutmeg
4 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon zest
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup brandy
1 1/2 cups raisins
1 1/2 cups chopped nuts
1 1/2 cups dried mixed fruit
1 1/2 cups butter, melted
1 3/4 cups brandy

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 225 degrees F (110 degrees C). Grease and flour a tube pan.
In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour, soda, spices, eggs, lemon rind, vanilla, 1/2 cup brandy, fruit, nuts, and melted butter or margarine. Mix thoroughly. Pour into prepared pan.
Bake for 1 hour, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.
Wrap cooled cake in foil. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons brandy over the cake everyday for 2 weeks.

Paul 253: Elegant.

Lisa Spadafora, 243
Terribly off-topic for Mary Lou and Midori:
Off topic? This is Sparrrtaaaaa!, er, Making Light. Nothing's off topic, it is merely exposition!

I recently had that same experience Mary Lou described with The City of Dreaming Books . It's whimsical and gruesome and all about loving books and words and reading. It also has many fabulous illustrations, so I thought I should share, just in case you haven't encountered it yet!
I had not yet. Now it is on my Amazon wishlist, as a reminder to find it. (Hmm. I wonder if my new library has a wishlist function. That would be a useful bit of Web 2.0)*

*Question for copy editors: I think the construction "Web 2.0." with the period arriving after the 0 due to the end of the sentence looks awkward. Is there a preferred usage other than rewriting?

Midori: nothing helps but rewriting.

midori (#255): Since in my opinion "Web 2.0" should always have the scare quotes, and because I use logical punctuation rather than typesetters' style, I'd write that as:

That would be a useful bit of "Web 2.0".

Of course, I'm not a copy editor. This may be a good thing.

Greg London, 249,
My internet exhaust port seems to be packed with lint and I haven't cleaned the trap lately.

Midori: Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snub limericks going to be against that?

Greg: Well, the Piñata doesn't consider a small one-man posts to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the ip addresses provided by Princess Nielsen Hayden has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station.

The approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver straight down this thread and skim the text to this point. The target area is only two paragraphs wide. It's a small internet exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the humor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should
destroy the keyboard.

A murmer* of disbelief runs through the room.

Midori @ 258: That's impossible, even for a man from Nantucket.

There's an impression I get from the rants of some fans who feel a strong sense of entitlement, more a vibe I guess, that disturbs me deeply. It may be just that my antennae are a little too sensitive, and it's just my imagination running away with me, so I'd like to describe it and see if anyone else gets the same feeling, or if I need an antenna realignment. Pardon me if this description isn't as clear as it might be; I'm trying to translate a feeling I've gotten into words that make sense, for the first time, and I might get it a bit confused.

ISTM that the reaction of such a fan to a blogger or other writer who doesn't jump through hoops to provide whatever content the fan wants is very similar to the reaction of some customers of prostitutes when the prostitute tries to place limits on the kind of services provided or acts performed. The thinking, as I see it, is that anyone who provides pleasure or entertainment to another is in some sense selling themselves, and such a sale cannot, by its nature, have any limits.

Similarly, if you give something away, you're in some sense submitting yourself to the recipient, maybe subjugating would be a better word, and they have the right to demand more and better. I want to be clear that I think this notion is outright batshit lunacy, but I know it exists in the case of some customers of prostitutes*, and I get the impression of it in some of the things that this sort of fan says.

So, am I overly sensitive or maybe in need of a new foil hat, or has someone else felt this too?

* and sexual predators and criminals of other sorts, too.

midori@258, now that's funny.

;)

Paul Duncanson, 259:
It's not impossible. I used to bull's-eye BBS Π-rats in my TRS-eighty back home. They're not much bigger than two paragraphs.

Pyre: I got my Medal (w/ V device) for Sino-Nasal Liquid Retention when I was about 20.

My girlfriend (with whom the sexual aspects of our relationship had recently begun) told me her father wanted to meet me, and so we went to his place for dinner.

Over the course of same various stories were told, one of which was my girldfriend telling him (a few years earlier, when she was about 16) that she was going to her boyfriends place, and wouldn't be back until morning.

He then said, "I knew, when the doctor handed me a baby girl that someday she was gonna get laid."

I damn near shot '79 bordeaux across the table cloth. I think he may have timed the comment to just when I was drinking on purpose.

That training is the only reason I've not lost a couple of keyboards.

Some notes before I quit tonight:
A murmer* of disbelief runs through the room.
is [sic]. The spelling, and the mental image.

Greg, 261
Thank you!

Bruce Cohen, 260,
I agree with the general thrust of your argument. If you haven't read it yet, check out the essay I linked early on in the discussion. Precisely this kind of problem of entitlement has been a problem for the webcomics community for many years. I would love to discuss it further, and I can provide examples. Just not now :)

257, Chris Davis,
Thank you for the example, that was interesting. Do scare quotes always take "double" quotes, or do you sometime use 'single' ones? I would have thought single was more akin to how quotes are used to delineate an example of a word rather than a verbatim quote.

256, Teresa Nielsen Hayden,
Ah, that's what I thought. Thank you.

258 - 262

I'd say y'all owed me a new keyboard, but in fact I'd swallowed before I got to that point in the thread. [LOL!]

#265 ::: P J Evans, 265,
Yay! I wins teh internets!

Well, you know, you could continue the theme...a reference text to abuse exists here

...I mean, we haven't gotten anywhere near "Evacuate now? In our moment of triumph?"

Midori @ 266: The exact same link is open here in another window... but I am supposed to be working right now.

Good luck, and may the Verse be with you.

Why the disemvowellings? Not because we don't allow criticism. Really, what pushed it over the line was the hydra casually confessing that he constantly posts under false names.

Does anyone here need an explanation for why that makes me feel like I neither need nor want to read his comments?

#260: I think it's "The customer's always right" gone amok. It's become a case of "I'm paying you money, therefore I should get whatever I want." (This is as opposed to whatever the person has actually contracted for.)

My parents first opened up a restaurant when I was 7. They finally sold the business and retired when I was 25. This means I'd been doing service sector work since around the age of 10 or so. I like to think I have some experience behind me when I say this:

The customer is not always right.

Just because you're paying money in exchange for goods or services does not suddenly make you incapable of being unreasonable. However, there are people who think precisely this. That they have handed over their coin allows them to have their way with whom they've paid.

These are people who get righteously angry because Apple has the gall to lower the price of iPhone, even though they bought it at what they had considered a fair price. (If they hadn't considered it a fair price, then why did they choose to pay that much for a cell phone?)

So, yes, these are the people who get angry because a blogger didn't blog about what they wanted to read. (Wouldn't it be more sensible just to read a blogger who is blogging about what you want to read instead? It's not like there is a shortage of blogs.)

Interestingly, this ties into the discussion about who owns the characters in published works. Lots of fans clearly feel they do. So they get annoyed at the author for going in directions they would not have. (Again, in that case, wouldn't it be less stressful just to ignore the author and go on your own alternate path? Or read works which don't annoy you?)

I don't have the historical perspective to know if it has always been like this. However, I do see it everywhere.

[BTW, just so I don't get taken as espousing an extreme position: Obviously, if you are poorly served, or the other side doesn't live up to its end of the contract, complain away and get restitution. I'm talking about people who've gotten what they've asked for, what they said they wanted, then it suddenly turns out not to be enough. I said the customer is not always right, not that the customer is always wrong.]

Midori @ 255: my first question as a copy editor would've been "What's Web 2.0? So far as I know, the Internet isn't software, and can't come with a latest version. Was there a beta, and can we expect a version 2.1, or perhaps Web 2.0 SP1? If not, please use more specific terminology."

But then again, I was copy editor for a psychiatric nursing journal, which just goes to further show what do I know, anyway?

Teresa @ 268: can I speak for lots of people to say "'Course not"?

This thread is muy disturbing.

The notion that all this is due to one guy, posting from different IPs with different names -- that's just kinda scary. And I've been around the Internet for a long time now (not, like, since BBS days, just since 1994 on a professional basis) and I've seen some scary, but this guy makes me shudder. Reminds me a lot of my dad when he's drinking, the weave-and-bob and changing the subject without saying so, and crap like that.

My kids have free Net access, too, and no filters, and nothing except their word that they won't give contact information without asking me first. And they do. But frankly? I don't worry about it, because the Internet is not actually that dangerous -- physically. But Patrick, you're right about the crazy rubbing off. I can feel a little slick coating on my neurons tonight.

Anyway. Entertaining! Not always the way you imagined it, but ... entertaining.

Teresa @ 268: Does anyone here need an explanation for why that makes me feel like I neither need nor want to read his comments?
Of course not. Alas, that doesn't mean some jerk won't come along and demand one with a side of undeserved apology.

Previous hydra comments cause me to have this strange vision of you pulling the sock off Neverwhatsit's hand to reveal five fingerpuppets, all babbling the same nonsense.

That they have handed over their coin allows them to have their way with whom they've paid.

Absolutely. What you said. "I bought your book/saw your film/played with your action figures - you therefore owe your success to me, and I am The Piper, so dance to my tune, you pixel stained techno-peasant."

It's bollocks, of course. What next? Should Cory take a poll on what book should write? How the plot unfolds? Or is he simply obliged to refrain from telling his fans, via the medium of his blog, when cool things are happening to his work?

Wow, that has to have been one of the most surreal exchanges I've ever seen on the SoT, even on the fabled veldt of Making Light. A truly dramatic troll unveiling. It's not the revelation of puppetry or the successive vomitus that shocked me, just the sheer abandon with which the Crusader mask was dropped and the Fiendish Puppeteer mask was taken up.
This Never-babble persona isn't particularly impressive or creepy as far as trolls go. It's only disturbing to see the same vice and fervor applied to the new cause of self-congratulatory assholery as had been evident in the post after post of wounded priggishness.
Just because we know you're a troll doesn't mean you then have to cackle and rub your palms together, friend.

Also, Paul@253, that was hilarious.

This is mostly unrelated to anything else, but I just noticed that on the Post In Question at BB, there are a few comments from someone named Ethan! Does BB's registration allow multiple people to have the same name? Because I totally had first dibs on that one.

The other Ethan seems pretty reasonable, at least.

#271 ::: Michael Roberts winced:
This thread is muy disturbing.

The notion that all this is due to one guy, posting from different IPs with different names -- that's just kinda scary. And I've been around the Internet for a long time now (not, like, since BBS days, just since 1994 on a professional basis) and I've seen some scary, but this guy makes me shudder. Reminds me a lot of my dad when he's drinking, the weave-and-bob and changing the subject without saying so, and crap like that.

It's not -quite- a Sybil attack, but it's pretty close, yes ;)

Paul Duncanson @ 253:

Took me a bit to figure out why total quantity of brandy listed in the recipe didn't match the amount added to the batter. (Well, maybe it goes into the cook?)

I've saved the recipe, and may try it (I like fruitcake, if home-made and not full of citron and other artificially flavored and colored substances).

Glinda: Some of the brandy has to go into the cook. That's the quantity that isn't listed in the recipe. it's for quality control purposes.

I should point out that I have not actually tried that recipe and cannot vouch for it. I was at work, nowhere near my recipes, had an idea for a joke and had to go with the first one I could find that sounded decent... but it does sound good, it's simple and it doesn't contain anything I don't like in a cake or anything notably fake.

Glinda,

Completely off topic, but I've been meaning to ask you: you've been switching back and forth between "not necessarily good" and "occasionally good". Do these involve different levels of good, i.e. are you getting better or worse? Or are you just getting bored with the same old monicker?

Fragano @208, even when you're not explicitly writing verse, your prose has impeccable meter.

"The neverending trollery"
results in great hilarity:
''The greatest jerkwad, that is me!
Along with my sockpuppets three
(or more; it's all the same to me)
There's more to me than what you see
Which proves my cleverosity.''
Before we can cry "woe is me,"
Madam Hospitality
makes posts go disemvowelly.
Rule for aye, civility!

If I dream tonight in iambic tetrameter, it's your fault.

--

Xopher @ 247: Given the going hypothesis that the troll hydra du jour has a connection to that one Scott who plagues Slacktivist, I think the phrase "steaming pile of crap" will need to be rewritten as "steaming piles of produce, drenched in butter" in future.

Mind you, when I read his post, I couldn't decide whether he was Scott, or was talking about Scott, when he referred to "th wrld's mst Cmpssntly Whckd t Lbrl Lbrtrn (TM)" whom we all believe "is a real person." Scott wouldn't call Fred a Libertarian, but someone making fun of Scott wouldn't call Scott "Compassionate" (though they might make reference to his use of the term Compassionate™ that's become his--no pun--trademark).

--

Paul @253, that was *wonderful* and I may have to try that one this year rather than my usual procedure. Too, the wonderfulness only increased when I tried to pass it on. I only chuckled when I read it, but when I tried to say to my husband, "Any blog can call a troll a fruitcake, but only at Making Light do they hand you the recipe," I broke down into squeals of laughter with tears running down my face. Now my husband thinks I'm a fruitcake. (He's thought this for some years, mind you. But thanks to you he now has additional evidence.)

Teresa #268: Why the disemvowellings? Not because we don't allow criticism. Really, what pushed it over the line was the hydra casually confessing that he constantly posts under false names.

I think you'll find that an increasing cause for posting from different accounts (but in this case, usually from different IP addresses) will be people who post from home, from public libraries, from work sneaking around a nanny filter, and from mobile devices while commuting (hopefully not while driving, though). Not sure the "view all by" feature can handle all that yet, though. I wouldn't mind a future upgrade to ML where we just logged in to the website before viewing and posting. That might give you a better database resource for sock puppet outing analysis.

Earl, I can attest to posting from my laptop at home, at cafes all over the Boulder area, and at work, and from the desktop computer at work. I'm sure my posts show up with many different IPs therefore. But my (view all by) remains, as far as I can tell, without gaps.

I am guessing that (view all by) mainly works on similarity of what I put in the three text inputs. I would presume that not being taken for a troll masquerading as me works on the stylistic similarity of what I put in the textfield box. (I'd say, "works by the virtue of", but that sounds a little self-congratulatory. For all I know, all my posts read as stylistically similar and consistently non-virtuous.)

...I take it back. Looking at my (view all by), specifically the ones on Open Thread 93, I do not in fact see all posts by me from that thread. I see the one that starts, "Can I vent a bit?" but not the follow-up to the responses to that.

But I do see posts I could swear I remember posting from work alongside posts I know I posted from home. So there you go: confusion!

Wait, no, they are all there, just not all together in one "Open Thread 93" block, which is why I missed 'em. Nevermind, I revert/retreat to my first theory and retract my admission of confusion!

Good night, all, before I eat my toes again!

Shnnn -
'm Scttbt (nd Scttbt Mk , , tc, lng wth Scttbt_wth_th_flty_dd, tc - nt tht sbtxt hs ny mnng hr) t Slcktvst, nd ls nt_scttbt - jst md cpl f rcnt psts cncrnng ntrsts f mn - th dvlpmnt f th .S. nt trtr stt, lng wth hw mrcn scty s grwng ncrsngly dmntd by mb thnkng - th rctns t my fw psts hr bng n ntrstng xmpl.

Fr th wnrs f ths blg -
snc ths s Grmn T-nln ccnt, t s lkly tht th P ddrss chngs vry 24 hrs, bt pls, d lnk t ny f my ldr psts tht cm frm t - lkly, thy wll b cncrnd wth trtr, dt prvcy, nd th cntrsts btwn Grmny nd th .S.

s fr fw gnrl cmmnts -
my chldrns' ntrnt PC s n th sm rm s r PC - dn't hv ny fltrs bcs thr ntrnt s s pblc (nd bcs thy nly s Lnx). Strng hw sm ppl thnk th ntrnt s prvt spc n trms f th wrds n scrn, whl n trth, t s th lrgst dt cllctn systm vr crtd. Cll m prnd - bt thn, t s prn whch s cnsdrd hstrclly wll fndd n Grmny.

nd s fr nttlmnt - thgh cmmnty s nttld t dfn tslf s t wshs, why r th mmbrs nttld t nfrmtn whch s nt thrs?

s hv wrttn n nthr st dply cncrnd bt ts cmmnty mg, my vwpnt hs bn qt cnsstnt - ppl wll frm thr wn pnns, rgrdlss f th fcts r trth, nd wrryng bt wht thrs thnk s gnrlly wst f tm. (nd tht st ss th 'm' tchnq fr trblsm pstrs, whch sms t m t b mr cmmnty bsd, nd nt sbjct t th whms f 'sftwr prblms.')

wll rfrn frm dng mr thn mrly ntng tht th dltns t bng-bng cntn, wth t lst 2 ppl nw hvng cmmnts 'ncrrctly' dltd, th scnd ftr bng ccsd f bng sck pppt f th sm drk nd mystrs ntrnt frc t whch sppsdly blng.

t mst b fscntng t lv n wrld whr nyn tht sms t rsmbl sm drdd nmss/fl s prt f vst ffrt t dstry wht s rght nd gd. Lckly, th clsst cm t tht xprnc n dly lf s rdng mrcn bsd wb sts. My wf thnks ths s prtty sck hbt, nd s vry trd f hrng bt llgl mprsnmnt, trtr, wrtppng, gvrmnt bss nd ncmptnc - s sh sys, w dn't lv n th .S., s why shld sh cr?

Sh hs gd pnt. Tschs.

Jack Ruttan @ 149: "But I wish the level of discussion in comments threads or fora here and elsewhere could take some dissenting opinions without hurting people's feelings, or feeling like a football pile-up.

Thinking of this summer's Harry Potter #7 thread on Making Light, where I was interested to look at the book with some people who had more experience with speculative writing than I, to read about what it did well, and what it might have done better. But someone jumped in with a negative opinion at the beginning, and the discussion came to be all about him, and whether he had the right to do it. Left the book behind."

I understand your frustration with the HP7 thread--it's irritating when neat discussions get side-tracked into nit-picking or point-wrangling. But discussions aren't about what 'you' want to talk about. They're about what 'we' want to talk about. So when you say they left the book behind, what you mean is they left what you wanted to talk about behind. From what I could tell they were still talking about Harry Potter, albeit an esoteric facet. There's nothing wrong with being irritated by that, but there is potentially something wrong with thinking that that's our problem, and not yours. The people on the HP7 thread manifestly wanted to discuss Greg's arguments, viz. they were doing so. Why should your desires weigh more heavily than theirs?

"Anyhow, my point is that it seems to me that groups don't handle minority points of view, or dissent very well."

Depends on what you mean by dissent. There are a great variety of opinions expressed on ML regarding the quality of various sf and fantasy stories. There's a lot less variety of opinion on, say, the moral worth of the Iraq war. Venturing an opposing view regarding one will meet a lot more, ah, blowback than the other. This has nothing to do with a Fascist-like adulation of the party line, but with the basic fact that people who enjoy discussion with each other, and thus end up hanging out at the same website, tend to have similar views on subjects of importance.

One subject of importance to MLers is forum moderation. It's frequently discussed here, and our hostess TNH is something of an expert on it (so good that Boing Boing hired her to moderate their comments, don'tcha know!). So when someone blows in and starts talking nonsense, they'll be smacked down pretty hard. We have zillions of hours of discussing moderation under our collective belt, and as a result, we're pretty well-equipped to tear apart a troll's half-formed bloviating. It's kind of like going to Ezra Klein's blog and saying, "Well, but is single-payer healthcare REALLY any better?," or going to Pharyngula and voicing doubts about the merits of evolutionary "theory." You'd be lucky to even receive the privilege of being ripped a new one: far more likely you'd just get banned. Because they have better things to do, far more meaningful arguments to have, than rehashing their basic precepts for the zillionth time just because some clueless idiot popped up. So are we hostile to dissent? Only when we perceive that dissent as being primarily an attempt to waste our time.

Xopher@48: Interesting that you should use that example. The woodchuck question has been a joke between me and my SO for a while, and I sometimes throw in references to woodchucks in other contexts. I consider this amusing surrealism, she considers it an annoying tic that sometimes eats my brain.

I in fact once filked a Christmas carol thus:

Woodchucks we have heard on high,
Cordwood flinging o'er the plains.
And the ferrets in reply,
Echoing their joyous strains:

Lignum, jacentes marmotae!

Never-ending: I think that you are now deliberately trying to be offensive. How you've managed to drag this into a debate on how bad America is is utterly beyond me.

Generally, it doesn't seem to be what you're saying that annoys people, but how you're saying it. You sound accusing, defensive, rude and whining - and you have sounded this way, to me, in every comment you or your sockpuppets have made in this thread and on Boing Boing.

If you at least made some attempt at politeness and manners, I think you would find that your comments did not get deleted or disemvowelled and that you would not find commenting privileges suspended. You would also find that people wanted to engage with your opinions instead of your behaviour.

Try it and see.

Ethan, that wasn't you at BB?

Onward.

Consider Never (285): I'm starting to agree with the people who think it's a sociopath. Notice how it makes its motives sound almost reasonable? What it's actually talking about is massively selfish and disruptive behavior. This thing tells lies as naturally as it breathes.

This weekend, it launched a vicious, spiteful attack on Cory Doctorow that appeared to be coming from multiple readers of Boing Boing. In form, it was the kind of emotionally crushing nastiness that takes all the joy out of having a weblog; and because it appeared to be spontaneously coming from several different commenters at once, the attack had extra impact and apparent credibility.

This isn't just some guy who doesn't want to give out his true identity.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf Little #280: It was completely accidental, I assure you. But that's a nice little piece of verse you've got there.

never #285

Being German has nothing to do with being paranoid. None in my extended family is, and we're all online.

Teresa @ 289

Sociopath? I'm not too sure that I would call it APD, but it does feel like Cluster B. Like most toxic trolls I would lean more toward narcissism that's well on the way to NPD. High functioning and way too much like some people I am dealing with these days.

Gbrl- s y wll hnd smn yr Prsnlsws th nxt tm y ntr pblc bldng smply bcs n rmd grd stndng t th dr dmnds t? Y knw, th nxt tm y g t yr twn's rdnngsmt fr smthng? Ths s rtn n n vr grwng nmbr f mrcn lctns - ddly, ll th Grmns knw wh hv xprncd ths n th .S. n th pst yrs r shckd t sch rtn mrcn prcdr. Ths Grmns r thn cnsdrd prnd by th mrcns rnd thm, spclly whn th Grmn rfss t shw thr sws t mrly ntr bldng t t lnch wth smn t pblc rstrnt.

Bttr s th nw frly cmmn prctc f sng mgnt strp rdr t gthr nfrmtn frm drvr's lcns bfr cstmr s llwd nt br - ths nfrmtn s nt prtctd by ny dt prvcy lws (Dtnschtz s frgn wrd n th .S., f nt dngrsly n-mrcn), nd yt, f y dcd nt t hnd vr th lcns, y cnnt ntr th br.

wn't vn gt nt th fct tht f yr mplyr pys fr yr hlth nsrnc, ll mdcl nfrmtn cncrnng y nd yr hlthcr blngs t yr mplyr, nt yrslf.

r th fct tht s n prvcy t n mrcn wrkplc cncrnng tlphn cnvrstns r -mls. Snc th tlphn r PC blngs t yr mplyr, yr mplyr hs th lgl rght t mntr ll yr cmmnctns - whch s nthnkbl hr, f crs, nlss y rmmbr wht Sts ws lk.

cld g n, nd n - bt why bthr? n mrcn wh bjcts t sch dly ftrs f lvng n th lnd f th fr s gnrlly cnsdrd prnd. s th thngs hv dscrbd r ctlly nt lgl n Grmny (wll, f y hnd yr sws t smn s yr chc - bt n n wll fl th plc shld b nvlvd f y dn't shw t whn ntrng pblc bldng), 'm nt sr wht y mn bt Grmns nt bng prnd. Grmny frbds mny cmmnplc prctcs n th .S., gss bcs Grmns cn't mgn why sch prctcs shld b llwd.

s fnl xmpl - th sländr-/rdnngsmt dsn't rlly kp cmptr rcrds (thy r bgnnng t, thgh), nd ths s n prps, t lst ccrdng t n prsn spk t, svrl yrs g. f th plc nd prtclr fl plld t 3m, Bmt s clld, bt thr s n rsn fr th gvrnmnt t hv trly ffcnt rcrds cncrnng ctzns - Rstrfhndngn r stll cnsdrd prblm n Rchtsstt, ftr ll. dn't knw hw mch lngr tht wll b tr - Schbl s prtty mrcn n hs dtrmntn t wrtp vryn nytm, fr r wn gd, f crs.

John Chu @ 269

The formulation I've heard was, "The customer is always right. Logically, this means that if you are sufficiently wrong, you are no longer a customer."

Our Ethan's linked site is less flashy (or Shockwave-ey, I suppose) and a thousand times more endearing.

never #293
I fail to see what your paranoia about using online identities has to do with showing yor driving license if you want to enter a public building in the US. Since you said you have a German T-online account, I assume you live here, so what's the problem?

If you don't like how things are handled in the US, don't go there. It's the same as with blogs. :)

I quite liked Rebecca Ore's depiction of the character of a Usenet troll who finds himself living in the future in Time's Child. That character's combination of cowardice, aggression, intelligence, self-interest, and self-stupidity has come to mind quite often over the last couple of days. A sick, sad, frightening (and frightened) mind.

Midori @ 264

I'd like to discuss it too, but also not now. Right now I need to dip my brain in dilute hydrofluoric acid to get the slime from neverhydra off it.

it@285: why are the members entitled to information which is not theirs?

That you're a troll? We could pretty much figure that out. That you're a multi-headed sockpuppet? I was going to suggest that a few hours before you were officially outed. You're a troll. And if a troll puts on a pointed hat one moment, and then a bowler the next moment, you're still a fricken troll.

Seriously. You. Are. A. Troll.

people will form their own opinions, regardless of the facts or truth

Right. Back. At. You. Babe.

Whatever opinion you've formed about BoingBoing or MakingLight, they werent based on observation. We've already established that. You've got some burr under your saddle about Cory, and you just won't let it go.

There are some people -- me, for instance -- who are occasionally driven mad by their fellow human beings. In the old days, we could flee into the desert or some other suitable wilderness where we could clear out whatever had gotten up our mental and/or spiritual noses.

The great advantage of the old days was that once you were in the desert, it took some considerable effort to come back out of it. There were serpentine arroyos to be followed, water holes to be found, small rodents to be caught and cooked. Plus humping everything out you humped in.

This made it harder to head back to civilization than it was to stay in the desert engaging in contemplation, spiritual-renewal, and all the rest of it. In short, going into a real desert was far more likely to lead to enlightenment than going into the fake desert of swearing off the internet for a while.

These days, it actually requires will power, for heaven's sake, to stay in the desert. The horror is: all you have to do is read one comment thread and you are instantly removed from the therapeutic wilderness. No heavy humping required. It's a breeze to never have to look at yourself in a spiritually intimate way.

It's great that the web has brought humanity together in a new way. Now all we need is a way to reliably pry ourselves apart again.

Yes, indeed, Datenschutz is a foreign word in the US, I'll give you that.

However, employers do not own health records here, and indeed there are health record privacy laws in the US (though handled with the usual American sloppiness in practice).

The requirement for presentation of a government-issued identification to enter various places of business is indeed onerous and for the most part of no practical use. As a friend of mine pointed out to me recently, most people in this country had never given a thought to their security from terror attacks and are at best catching up with what's needful and useful. I have some hope that practicality and the need for security from corporate data collection will occur to more of the population as time goes by.

ID checking at bars is related to astoundingly draconian laws regarding liquor licensing and the way the burden of keeping out the under-aged is placed on the proprietors in the US. Card readers are an easy technological fix and raises the bar on ID forgery while shifting some of the burden of liability for letting children become inebriated away from bar owners.

Really, every society has to explore the consequences of social control decisions for itself. The DDR (no, not "Dance Dance Revolution!") learned, among other things, that a full-blown Stasi has costs far beyond its benefits and far more than German society could afford. The US and post-reintegration Germany have lessons to learn about the cost of data collection and integration and we're still working though the early part of the curriculum.

The actual exam will be a snap quiz, not scheduled ahead of time. Our test in the US will be written differently from yours in Germany, and may be given on a different day.

#293 ::: never was unsurprisingly confused:
Better is the now fairly common practice of using a magnet strip reader to gather information from a driver's license before a customer is allowed into a bar.

I have to admit to deep curiousity about what a 'magnet strip reader' is. I've recently discovered how lovely welding magnets are as a fence for my drill press - are magnet strip readers similar?

Th lnk s frm S Tdy, 2002 - http://www.stdy.cm/mny/jbcntr/wrkplc/rls/2002-11-07-prvcy-rghts_x.htm

'"Mdcl prvcy s jk n th wrld f mplymnt," Mltby sys.

Bcs mplyrs nrmlly prvd mdcl nsrnc, thy ftn hv ccss t yr cmplt mdcl rcrds. Thy r, hwvr, rqrd t kp yr mdcl rcrds sprt frm yr prsnnl fl, nd yr sprvsr shld nt hv ccss t thm.

mplyrs my ls rdr crdt chcks n mplys r jb cnddts nd, n mny css, gthr bckgrnd nfrmtn ncldng rcrd f th lwsts y'v bn nvlvd n, yr crmnl hstry, vn yr prscrptn rcrds.'

f crs, ths s ld nfrmtn. m sr tht sch dt prtctn lws hv bn mprvd ndr th Bsh dmnstrtn.

Jst lk th fngrprntng t th brdr fr ll nn-ctzns ntrng th .S. s mttr f fct, n prsn wrk wth dcdd n 2004 t n lngr trvl t th .S., mch lss by rtrmnt hm, smply bcs f hw nn-ctzns wr bng trtd.

r th dt ntry f ll nfrmtn prtnng t ll ndvdls flyng wthn .S. rspc, vn f th flght s btwn ttw nd Mxc Cty - tht's rght, crtn mscl prfrmr wll nt b bl t fly btwn ths pnts, bcs h s n th lst whch ds nt spk ts nm.

dn't hv ny plns t trvl bck t th .S. ny tm n th ftr - twc n th pst 8 yrs ws ngh. Nthng hr mks m mss th plc.

#286 Heresiarch: My apologies. See my note #252 about criticising other people's fora. (I feel like a librarian keeping up with all these reference numbers)

P.s. Was that Martin Luther King in the "Stand Up" speech in your "blowback" link? Being dead in 1968, how could he have been talking about Afghanistan?

Bob #301
And the flip side is that in Germany often enough 12 year old kids get away with buying the hard stuff like vodka, and that's definitely not good. A bit more control won't hurt.

As I read all this criticism of supposed editors editing, I find myself wondering what all those complainers think editors are supposed to do? (I mean, putting aside the little problem that moderators are not really editors and that the blog is not a magazine or similar.)

MAO

David 287: That is nothing short of brilliant. I will be singing that come Solstice. One thing though...would it be equally correct to say "Lignum, marmotae jacentes"? It sings a little better, but I don't want to be singing incorrect Latin.

Bob #301: The DDR learned, among other things, that a full-blown Stasi has costs far beyond its benefits and far more than German society could afford. The US and post-reintegration Germany have lessons to learn about the cost of data collection and integration and we're still working though the early part of the curriculum.

AFAIK the Stasi did it with bits of paper - costly in manpower and difficult to search. What's happening now is totally different. The Land of the 'Free', and similar advanced societies, are doing it with computers which, as Google has demonstrated, can collect vast amounts of data very easily and very cheaply. Google, however, is an unstructured collection of data linked by a very smart search mechanism. Surveillance data is more structured because it includes 'keys', like SSN, ID card number, driver's license number, credit card number, etc., which link together data from different sources. This enables mass surveillance on a scale that the Stasi could not have dreamt of, though they would have loved it.

never @293: Schäuble is pretty American in his determination to wiretap everyone anytime, for our own good, of course.

Yeah, right. As if evil, or just plain wrong-headed, practices couldn't possibly be conceived independently by people of other nationalities. Must be the water or something.

In case anyone's interested in what he meant with the Schäuble reference, you can read a couple of articles in Spiegel Online here or here.

Yes, data collection, ownership and privacy are issues everyone is facing, and definitely worth discussion. That's the point. Discuss the issues, don't sidetrack a legitimate debate with accusations of censorship and ill-will. Especially when the accusations are unfounded.

Heseriarch @ 286:

I understand your frustration with the HP7 thread--it's irritating when neat discussions get side-tracked into nit-picking or point-wrangling. But discussions aren't about what 'you' want to talk about. They're about what 'we' want to talk about. So when you say they left the book behind, what you mean is they left what you wanted to talk about behind. From what I could tell they were still talking about Harry Potter, albeit an esoteric facet. There's nothing wrong with being irritated by that, but there is potentially something wrong with thinking that that's our problem, and not yours. The people on the HP7 thread manifestly wanted to discuss Greg's arguments, viz. they were doing so. Why should your desires weigh more heavily than theirs?

I weigh in on Jack Ruttan's side here. Multiple people in that thread expressed a desire to have a conversation that wasn't about Greg's arguments, and some of us tried very hard to post about other things. But when every time I go back to see what's new on the thread, and there's one response to "Wasn't this cool?" and seventeen posts of people being very articulate about something that makes me angry...

Well, even if I really want to talk about what's cool in the book, and Jack Ruttan wants to talk about it, and a few other people want to talk about it, it's hard to continue happily doing so when three people have seventeen posts that are all about something that's making me angry.

At which point I either:

1) Respond to the what's making me angry and bury the thread further in the snarl;
2) Try to continue responding to something eighteen posts earlier and hope that other people haven't given up, which seems unlikely by the time I've repeated this process a few times;
3) or give up myself, in frustration.

I don't think that the people on the HP7 thread "manifestly" wanted to discuss that argument; I think that a very aggressive argument was made, people responded emotionally, and people who can and want to post very, very quickly made it impossible for anyone who didn't want to discuss that argument to hold a conversation.

It may well be a fact of internet life that all threads will belong to those who post most often and most quickly. It's sort of how in real life, conversations tend to belong to whoever talks the most loudly over everyone else. But I still find it very frustrating that one person with an emotional argument can remove the fun from a thread. It takes exactly two people to get into an argument that's heated enough that twenty people who wanted to talk about other things will leave rather than trying to work around the angry. And usually there's more than two people willing to argue, if one person's willing to keep poking until they do.

I suppose someone can point out that it's a moral failing on my part to not be able to ignore posts that make me angry and respond to ones I like. They're probably right. I do not have the zen calm necessary to read through eighteen posts that make me angry and then post a happy little "And I liked this too!" at the end.

But I'm still frustrated by it, and still annoyed by the implication that if a thread devolves into angry nitpicking, it's because "The people on [any particular thread] manifestly wanted to discuss" the angry nitpicking.

Fade Manley at 310: you make an interesting point. At what point does dealing with such an issue as you describe become the job of a moderator? Should a moderator jump in and redirect conversation, or should the thread be allowed to continue as it is going as long as posters remain reasonably polite and are clearly not abusing privilege?

Or, in a less tl;dr fashion, let me try that again:

The people on the HP7 thread manifestly wanted to discuss Greg's arguments, viz. they were doing so. Why should your desires weigh more heavily than theirs?

Just because the torture thread turned into everyone arguing with CRV, it doesn't mean that everyone who read that thread and wanted to participate in it really wanted to discuss CRV's views on torture.

And some of us who post more slowly than others do get frustrated when it seems all threads belong to the first person to express a sufficiently controversial opinion to turn the thread into the Story About Them.

Lizzy L @ 310:

I honestly don't know. I'm a moderator on one forum elsewhere, and I have occasionally stepped in to tell people that they're getting too hostile, and they can either take a breather or get the thread locked. Or that if they want to discuss Item X, when the thread is explicitly about Item Y and there are people still trying to talk about Item Y through the midst of all the X, they can go start their own new thread on Item X and take the conversation there.

But that's a set of official company forums, which is a very different thing from a personal blog. And I don't know how much of my frustration here might come from having different cultural expectations.

Gursky #295: Aw, shucks. Thanks. I like you too.

TNH #289: Nope, not me. I was just surprised, as I had assumed (based on no information at all) that only unique names were allowed in the BB registration system. Not a big deal. On, as you say, ward.

As I read it, the point against jumping into a thread and making a general complaint that it gets people defensive. The topic becomes more about you saying they don't measure up, and obloquy results. Especially if people are already irritated.

It's a matter of etiquette, like announcing "this party sucks," turning off the host's tunes and putting on your own music. You might think it's what's needed to liven things up, but more likely than not, you'll get kicked out.

Better in such a case to ignore the fight, and just post your opinion as if the badness was never happening. If it's interesting, people will take it up, and the argument will peter out on its own.

If not, well, there's nothing you can do about it, and you may as well not draw attention to yourself, because you'll start having rotten cabbages thrown at you.

I'll give a lot more latitude to someone who's been an engaged and thoughtful participant in conversations, even if they're currently bending a conversation way out of shape. If it persists, I'll say something. If they persist, I'll say something more. After that, it's on a case-by-case basis.

Anyone who wants to save vowelled copies of Never's comments should do it now.

I'm surprised this entity is also Slacktivist's Scottbot. Scottbot is a usually-funny, transparently-pseudononymous response to a persistent and disruptive troll (Scott) in that community. I don't read the comments there as often as I do here, but the impression I had was that Scottbot's presence had taken much of the damage out of Scott's presence -- people were now able to laugh at him rather than finding it necessary to argue with him to the point of derailing the threads.

Todd, we don't know it's the same troll. What we know is that this guy says he is -- but then, we also know that this guy is a chronic and habitual liar.

277: I believe some (if not most) is poured over the cake after (often WELL after) it is baked. If this counts as "Grief Counseling", it explains much of GladOS's behavior, to say nothing of "her" descriptions of the cake (obviously fruitcake or a relative). And yet, I still read bb, and am happy that he posts about these things, because while the content of the post may be skim or roll-worthy, the existence of the post is quite informative.

As to the actual thrust of the discussion:

No one can accuse me of being an uncritical Cory Supporter, but count me boggled as to the complaint of the trolls. I read Overclocked, and liked it, ditto about 60% of Cory's output, but I still skim over the "X translated into Y" or "X as a Z" (where X is a Cory Doctorow-authored writing, Y is a language, and Z is a format) posts. Even more apropos, I just roll my eyes at much of his IPLaw posting, as I've made my views known (here and on my own LJ, mostly), and I (unlike these Trolls) don't feel the need to freak out and spawn a score of sockpuppets every time Mr. Doctorow prophesies the doom of scientific innovation, or the western critical tradition, or radio.

Also, if that comment by TNH with the sockpuppet-tracking analysis is a preview of The Book on Comment Moderation, I'm even more looking forward to it than I was before.

Todd @ #317:

Well, while I'm quiet sure that Scottbot is very often not the person posting as "Scott" at Slactivist or the multi-named-idiot-of-the-day-who-may-or-may-not-be-Scott here, it wouldn't surprise me if it/either occasionally posted as Scottbot as well.

This type of name-swapping is really messing with my head - how can one be sure that the name I recognize isn't this idiot posting under the name? Is Teresa really Teresa? Am I really me?

Help!

Bruce Cohen, 260;

Well, your metaphor is a really visceral, button-pushing example of the general issue I was trying to bring up; I would say, blurred distinctions between gift transfers and paid ones. (And in your example, it is my assumption that submission and helplessness are the actual thing being paid for; there's a horrifying SF short about genegeneered living ...muffs... in a boarding school, and I can't remember the title or author; Willis? Tiptree?)

clew: If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's Willis. Don't remember the title, though, I'm afraid.

277/278

I didn't notice any extra brandy, beyound what would be left in the bottle. The numbers all balanced for me. (1 3/4 cups is, um, 28 tablespoons, divide by 14 days ... yup, nothing left over but what's in the bottle. I wonder about basting it with Triple Sec instead, a few times.)

clew 321, Jennifer 322: "All My Darling Daughters," perhaps?

Ursula: yes, you're you. If you're ever in doubt, click the "view all by" link on your latest post and see whether it's all stuff you'd say.

clew: can't remember author or title, but it was the first story in the "Future on Fire" anthology edited by Orson Scott Card, IIRC. It looks like I gave away my copy in my last move.

Was the last line "naq vg fpernzrq?"

Xopher@307; Your word order is absolutely as valid; that's the wonderful thing about Latin - it's so carefully constructed that any word order at all is fine, as long as they're the right words.

Somewhere ... (rummage rummage ... ah, here) there's a paper on turning Perl into Latin from my favorite mad scientist, Damian Conway; word order doesn't matter there either - the programs still run.

I told you he was mad.

Xopher, 324:

*heads to Google*

Looks like that's the one I was thinking of, yes. Thanks.

Jennifer Barber, Xopher, Rikibeth; yes, thank you. Ew that story gives me the creeps.

Joe McMahon, that is an interesting example of why treating code and speech as legally distinct is so illogical.

Joe McMahon @ 326... I told you he was mad

"They laughed at me at the University! But I'll show them. Bwahahah!!!"

Xopher: If the rules of latin word order (which I never really mastered. I can decipher it but I don't think in it), the shuffle will change some of the connotation, but not the "absolute" meaning.

In russian "ya ne znaiyu" = I don't know.

"Ne znaiyu ya" = it is unknown to me.

There are plenty of shocking things the German government does, never, if you want to be a jerk about it. I'm a proud expat, too, and I don't like what's become of the US, but if you say that that is why Boing Boing and Making Light won't let you be a jerk, well, you're one of the stupidest freaking morons I've ever seen who still manages to put words together.

Please stop. You're just embarrassing yourself and giving the rest of us the heebie-jeebies. Go get offline. Spend some time with your kids, take them outside, for God's sake, while the weather still permits it. Instead, you're spending time trying in vain to convince a bunch of people that you have the right to be a jerk in at least three venues you don't own, that we know of. Twenty years from now, when your kids are grown and gone, you'll say, what the hell was I thinking, wasting their entire childhood trying to convince other people I had the right to be a jerk?

Note to all: yeah, I know don't feed the troll. But that's because of the Usenet trollery-for-fun thing. Real people with psychological problems, like this prize case, deserve heartfelt replies, I think. But Nielsen Haydens, feel free (ha) to correct me if you think otherwise.

Hmm. But then -- if he is a sociopath, then nothing I say will make him change his mind, right? Can anybody with some notion of psychology clue me in on this? Am I being too much a softy when I respond to this kind of person?

Incidentally, in re entitlement of the fannish. Yes. I once had a Web comic (and may once again) with a readership of, oh, at least ten people. One of them was such a fan. Big time. Two, actually, come to think of it, because the one I wasn't thinking of complained that I was too disdainful of his conservatism and never came back. Wow.

Teresa, if this isn't Too Much Info, is the FlyingSquid also one of never's puppets? I'm thinking no, but it's hard to say.

xeger@302: s/strip/stripe/ will make the sense a little more clear.

If you found your way here: http://stripesnoop.sourceforge.net/ , for example, you might be reassured to know that there's a community of people who want to defensively read their own magnetic stripe info to find out what they're revealing when they let someone else "swipe" their driver's license.

The funny thing is, I didn't have to Google that. I read that story as a result (IIRC) of Patrick bemusedly commenting (after someone called Connie Willis a "wimp") "The author of 'All My Darling Daughters' a wimp?" (Blatant fucktardity still had the power to surprise a little, back then. These were the old days, before the internet, when you had to blow smoke signals into your modem to communicate. Uphill, both ways, in the snow.)

Anyway, I went and read the story, and never forgot it. Creeped me the hell out.

clew @ 321

As I said, I may be too sensitive, and am seeing more than is really there. Some of the ranting I've seen seems to me to go beyond a mis-evaluation of the importance of one's own desires, to a denigration of the humanity of the provider relative to the consumer. As if the very act of providing were an admission of lesser worth. And I'm wondering if the common denominator is that what is being provided is entertainment, or pleasure in some sense, as if that's less dignified than providing physical goods or more abstract services.

It may very well be that you are right, and what I'm talking about is simply an example of the type of entitlement thinking that pushed my buttons and led me to see a connection that's not deep as I thought. I'm just curious if anyone else saw that connection.

How interesting - "Nebula" and "Nobel" disemvowel to the same thing.

That confused me too!

In re the discussion of Latin and Marmota monax. I was under the impression that the usual form of this was:
"Quantum materiae materietur Marmota monax si Marmota monax materiam possit materiari?"

I think materiae is used instead of, say, lignum to retain the idea of the rhyme & alliteration of the original; one of those translation issues.

BTW the standard for biological Latin binomials is for the first word to be capitalized and the second and others, whether or not they are based on a proper name, to be lower case. Named hybrid varieties or cultivars, put in quotes, get their registered capitalization, like Pandorea jasminoides "Bower of Beauty"

Eleanor #336/ethan #337:

Mr/Ms never is very unlikely to receive either.

Fragano @ 339... Mr/Ms never is very unlikely to receive either.

Never?
Well, hardly ever.

Terry 331: Yes, there are differences in emphasis. I had understood that in Latin last is the least marked position for the verb (that is, putting the verb in the final position in the sentence carries the least meaning).

Russian is more inflected than English, but word order matters MUCH more in Russian than in Latin. "P'at dollarov," five dollars, but "Dollarov p'at," about five dollars.

Epacris 338: Yes, I have that on a t-shirt. That's what made me think of using it. So is "Materiae Marmotae jacentes" correct too? That would sing even better!

@Grg Lndn Ys, w ndrstnd, y fnd s clbbsh, ntlrnt, plrzng, nd dststfl. Mssg rcvd. Th thrd s fll f psts by y syng hw Mkng Lght dsn't llw crtcsm, th rny f whch stll scps y.nythng ls?

Ys, lts t sy... bt t nly gts mr trrfyng =). nd vn sng plt tn rnd hr s ngh t gt yr vwls rmvd. Th rny stll scps m, nd s ds th rsn fr my cnsstnt cnsr.

Bt 'm nt rlly n fr hstl cnvrstns, nd ths thrd s ssntlly bst-frnds gng-bng f smrm nd cndscnsn. f y hv rl qstn, y'r fr t ml m bt f crs tht's prvt mdm, nd y wll gt n grndstndng pnts.... =(

Call Orkin.

Yeago -

On the assumption that you have a faulty understanding of politeness:

Making threats (Yes, lots to say... but it only gets more terrifying) is not polite.

Making accusations without evidence (And even using a polite tone around here is enough to get yer vowels removed) is not polite.

Being dismissive (around here, yer vowels removed) is not polite.

Name-calling (best friends gang of smarm and condescension) is not polite.

Assigning suspect motives to people (grandstanding) is not polite.

I don't understand how you can possibly think you're using a polite tone. If you do think you are being polite, then I'm afraid you're just wrong.

Also, did you notice that Flying Squid's polite and genuine sounding posts - apologising for causing offence - on Boing Boing were left alone?

Yeago @ 342

Why, if this place treats you so badly, do you keep coming back?

Is it actually a magnetic stripe on drivers' licenses? My CT license has what looks like a Magic Eye puzzle, bracketed by a bit of barcode.

I don't mind it. It's cut down on the "out of state license, more likely to be fake, let's delay the line" trouble for me.

And, knowing the thin operating margin some of these clubs have, i doubt they can spare the effort to do data mining.

"Ya ain't just here for the huntin', are ya?"

I knew it. None of you people are real.

Rikibeth@346: That would be a two-dimensional barcode. (Of PDF 417 format perhaps?) I was working on a similar project many years ago, and so am guessing yours contains all your license text and maybe even part of the photo, compressed, encrypted, and encoded.

Rikibeth@346: That would be a two-dimensional barcode. (Of PDF 417 format perhaps?) I was working on a similar project many years ago, and so am guessing yours contains all your license text and maybe even part of the photo, compressed, encrypted, and encoded.

Although I am intrigued by the use of the essentially English slang word `wanker.' I've come across it elsewhere, if you'll excuse the expression, and if any of the people I'm obviously imagining right now could give me some background on how it managed to cross the Pond I would be honestly grateful.

*curses fiendish self for double-posting*

I knew it. None of you people are real.

Of course, if we're all figments, then we are all equally real to each other, and therefore, relativistically, we're ALL real.
Now if only I had tangible hands with which to make that fruitcake...

Why, f ths plc trts y s bdly, d y kp cmng bck?

dn't t trts m 's bdly.' Crtnly, cn hrdly pprct hvng my vwls rmvd bt ll-n-ll y sm lk gd ppl wh hppn t dsgr.

@nkk

Mkng thrts (Ys, lts t sy... bt t nly gts mr trrfyng) s nt plt.

Thrts? Y msrd m. (whch s why ws ds'mv'd n th frst plc).

Bng dsmssv (rnd hr, yr vwls rmvd) s nt plt.

Rmvng vwls s k, bt hvng prblm wth yr vwls bng rmvd s mplt? Gtch.

Nm-cllng (bst frnds gng f smrm nd cndscnsn) s nt plt.

Y'r rght. m srry. tk tht bck. Lt's s f th zlln-r-s thr stbs tkn p tp r ls tkn bck. r f Thrs vr plgzs fr wrngly ccsng m f sck-ppptry[sc] nd dl'ng my ccnt.

ssgnng sspct mtvs t ppl (grndstndng) s nt plt.

W'll s bt ths n. f h shts m prsnl pn-ndd dscssv[sc] ml, 'll tk ths n bck.

dn't ndrstnd hw y cn pssbly thnk y'r sng plt tn. f y d thnk y r bng plt, thn 'm frd y'r jst wrng.

lrdy ndrstnd th crrltn y nd mny mk btwn th ds f 'dsgr' nd 'mplt'. hppn t dsgr ( gss tht mns 'm mplt t).

ls, dd y ntc tht Flyng Sqd's plt nd gnn sndng psts - plgsng fr csng ffnc - n Bng Bng wr lft ln?

nly hs sbmssv, slf-dsmssv psts wr lft ln.

Greg, #104: Just because there's a box marked "Suggestions", doesn't mean you can drop your drawers, take a dump in it, and call it "input".

That's wisdom which should be inscribed on a marble plaque and inlaid with gold. Bravo!

Pyre, #119 & James, #122: SPLORFLE!

Wesley, #132: Not only that, but it's perfectly possible to disagree without debating at all. Sometimes, for example, all I want to say is some version of, "I don't agree with that statement because of X," and (having added my datapoint) go on to other things.

Emma, #144: "It would be interesting if X did Y" is one of the mainsprings of fanfic.

Individ-ewe-al, #170: Yes, exactly. If J. Random Kook stood up at the Hugo Awards ceremony and tried to trash-talk Cory (or anyone else) -- they'd be shown the door in short order, because they don't own that audience. The fact that the same principal holds online seems to be lost on a surprising number of people.

There's also a disturbing tendency, increasingly frequent in recent years, to conflate "the right to say what you like" with "the right to MAKE other people listen to you, in any venue, whether they want to or not." Correlation != causation, but I do notice that this seems to correlate very strongly with the rise of Christofascism in American society.

Lighthill, #205: Brilliant! Triolets -- er, Trollolets -- are even harder to do well than villanelles.

Midori, #230: I believe that whether or not to pronounce the first "r" in February is a dialectical distinction in America -- some linguistic subgroups do, while others don't.

Jack, #241: What you're describing here is a good example of "thread drift". It happens -- and if you're a Usenet veteran, you should be accustomed to it by now!

John Chu, #269: Well said. The fact that bad service does happen does not mean that there aren't sucky customers as well. Question: Have you ever known it to occur that the owner or manager of a business establishment finally lost their patience and said something to the effect of, "Having your business isn't worth putting up with your attitude -- there's the door"?

Epacris, #338: That's the form we use on our bumper sticker.

Lee #355, I've worked for large corporations that have written policies that precisely delineate at which point a customer isn't worth the trouble, and which door they are to be shown.

Bill@353 - Of course, if we're all figments, then we are all equally real to each other, and therefore, relativistically, we're ALL real.

NO!!! *Puts aching head in hands. Goes to bed.*

Have I ever explained my theory of trollishness as a hardwired cognitive disorder?

Michael Roberts -- and goodness, I enjoyed that -- if Flying Squid turns out to be another sockpuppet I'll be very disappointed. He's one of the most reliable posters on Boing Boing.

Bruce Cohen (335), I think you're on to something. In the game wherein one undertakes to assign relative rank to all human artwork along a single linear scale of respectable to disreputable, one of the strongest determinants is whether the art form acknowledges that it gives a damn whether you enjoy it. Ballet is thus more respectable than Broadway musicals, and Gainsborough is more respectable than Hogarth and Rowlandson.

Columbina (who writes an interesting journal) wrote about the recent dustup. I only disagreed with her a little bit. Later, I went on to disagree quite a lot with one of her other commenters. Here's what I said to Columbina:

I don't think it's inarguable that people have a right to hold celebrities to some higher standard; but whether or not they have that right, the fact is that they do it, so those who are on the receiving end have to cope with it.

My take -- and in my experience, what I'm about to say holds true even down to the tunneling electron microscope-gauge celebrity of fandom -- is that as soon as you're perceived as a celebrity, there will be people out there who believe you can't be hurt. To them, you're now an action figure, not a human being.

If you decide a writer is a celebrity and can therefore be held to some kind of higher standard, what you say to or about them in pursuit of said higher standard will hurt just as much as it would if you were dealing with a non-celebrity writer. Celebrity has no analgesic value whatsoever.

I gather the thing that started this was a fan complaining that Doctorow was trying to sell carpets from his free ice cream truck.

No. It was an extremely nasty multipart attack by one sockpuppeting troll who's fixated on Cory, pretending to be a half-dozen people at once. Saying that Cory was doing self-promotion was just the excuse for the attack.

... the flipside of saying to the fan, "If you don't like it, don't read it," is saying to the professional blogger, "If you don't like criticism, turn off the comments field."

Would you say that to any of your friends on LJ if the same thing were happening in their comments?

When one seeks celebrity, one can't simply turn it off when it becomes inconvenient. Princess Diana could have lived a perfectly anonymous existence, but instead chose to take a very public job as Princess of Wales, used that position to advance her agenda, and then got all unhappy when she couldn't turn off the paparazzi spigot. Boo hoo. If you seek celebrity but don't want fans bothering you or criticizing you, become Thomas Pynchon and/or get a thicker skin.

I've known a number of people who became celebrities. None of them were seeking it. They were trying to write good books or good comics, or play baseball well. They wanted to be good at what they did, and succeed in their chosen field. That's not the same thing as wanting to be a celebrity.

What you don't understand is that celebrity is a function of the way the celebrated person is perceived. It doesn't inhere in that person. The status is bestowed by the people who see them as a celebrity. It's the ones doing the perceiving who are in control of it, though they don't like admitting that because it spoils the illusion for them.

I can prove this. Let's go back to that phenomenon I mentioned earlier, where people who perceive someone as a celebrity will lose track of the fact that they're still vulnerable and human. Here's the proof: it's completely unnecessary for the "celebrity" to have any real fame or prominence or privilege in order for this to happen. All it takes is for people to perceive them as a celebrity, and the effect kicks in. That's got nothing to do with the supposed celebrity. It's 100% simon-pure fairy gold.

Look at the way you're talking about celebrity. You're envious of a gift which you've bestowed, which you control; and you think it gives you the right to be unkind. It doesn't. That permission to be unkind is a gift you've given yourself. If that's what you truly want, then that's what you'll do; but don't pretend there's anything but your own desires at work.

Yeago, you do understand that even when you change pseudonyms, we can still tell it's you?

Dork.

Yeago@332: this thread is essentially a best-friends gang-bang of smarm and condescension. If you have a real question, you're free to email me but of course that's a private medium, and you will get no grandstanding points.... =(

This from the guy who invented a bunch of sockpuppets to grandstand how important his opinion of someone else is? It wasn't anonymity, or some fear of privacy, you nutball, you were trying to stuff the ballot box, you were trying to make your opinion have far more weight than it really did.

You're a lone nutcase, and you have a gaggle of imaginary friends to keep you company. And when you use these imaginary friends to reinforce your sole opinion, you really are doing nothing more than an electronic version of self-gratification. The British might call you an internet wanker. "Why, yes, I do agree with myself."

Just to make it really clear so that you'll have to block your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth to keep this from getting in:

Did you publicly post your criticism to Cory?
Or did you email it privately?
Did you publicly criticize everyone on this blog?
Or did you email them privately?

Exactly, you grandstanding fool, you made your complaints public. And you continue to make them public. Because the game you're playing is to see how many imaginary friends you can get to agree with you on a public forum, so as to make you look more important to yourself.

It's called Narcissism. Look it up.

#333 ::: John Aspinall wrote:
xeger@302: s/strip/stripe/ will make the sense a little more clear.

I'm clearly hoist by my own dry sarcasm here :)

If you found your way here: http://stripesnoop.sourceforge.net/ , for example, you might be reassured to know that there's a community of people who want to defensively read their own magnetic stripe info to find out what they're revealing when they let someone else "swipe" their driver's license.

... or the interesting collection of cards from various hotels, to see what the hotel shouldn't be storing on the magstripe in question, or any number of other cards with magnetic stripes on the back :)

This is reminding me that I need to get a USBgame port dongle so I can get my reader going again...

Teresa@358: one of the strongest determinants is whether the art form acknowledges that it gives a damn whether you enjoy it. Ballet is thus more respectable than Broadway musicals

not to sidetrack, but my parser jams due to a lack of contextual experience with either ballet or musicals. Ballet gives a damn if you enjoy it and musicals don't?

The immediate question that follows is what to do if you give a damn, but no one seems to enjoy that art you created? Because at that point, not giving a damn might actually feel better, if you could somehow make it true.

Teresa @ 358

Is there any chance that the word we're groping for here is objectification?

Yes, indeed, that's exactly where I was going, without quite knowing it. Not only is it turning people into objects, it's considering those objects as important for only one attribute, in this case whatever product the fan wants from the celebrity. All else is invisible to the fan. So even if the celebrity produces other things, if they're not part of the obsession, they really don't exist for the fan.

There is another thing going on here, though. There's the need to punish the celebrity for being or having more than the fan. That's a phase change like the one Remus Shepherd was talking about @ 55. At some point, even if the celebrity continues to produce what's wanted, it isn't enough, or it's too much, or something, and it becomes necessary for the celebrity to be taken down a peg or two. Hence the cycle of praise and criticism that writers and other artists get from critics: at first, if accepted, they can do no wrong, after awhile it becomes their turn in the barrel and they can do no right.

What I learned from the best of my art teachers was that art is communication, which is I suppose another way of saying that you give a damn what people get from what you create. Ballet vs broadway - ballet is trying to communicate something. Broadway is trying to get your money out of your pocket.
It's a pretty big generalization across a genre, but it could be argued that generally some art, and some art forms, are more about money than talk, and vice versa.

Teresa @358: I'm reminded by Columbina's remarks about fame of Stephen Fry's recent blessay on the subject, mostly the bit in the middle about how the famous are treated by the public. In fact, this whole affair put me in mind of it, though perhaps the connection is oblique.

Yeago, 342,
What the heck? What did I ever do to you? See comment 224.

Rikibeth, 346, et al.
re: magnetic stripe driver's licenses
And, knowing the thin operating margin some of these clubs have, i doubt they can spare the effort to do data mining.
Sue Grafton used that very bit as a plot device in one of her more recent* books. Does anyone recall which one?

Dave Hutchinson, 351,
...I am intrigued by the use of the essentially English slang word `wanker.'...could give me some background on how it managed to cross the Pond I would be honestly grateful.

A huge part of the U.S. trade imbalance with the UK is due to the import of British Humor by local PBS affiliates. I don't know for sure, but I bet we can blame Red Dwarf and East Enders. (Possibly Chef, The Vicar of Dibley and Ballykissangel.) A more parsimonious explanation would be to just blame Hugh Grant.

Unless you mean, why it became popular? That's easy. Imported swear words sound silly more than threatening. I suspect the increased awareness of the 'incorrectness' of conventional swear words - that it's now obvious that they can easily be harassing, something not permitted as much in the workplace - leaves an void that must be filled with something that at least sounds vulgar. A bloody bunch of sodding hypocritical buggers, if you ask me.

*er, post 1995?

Yeago: What I see in your most recent comments is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

You want everyone here to agree to play the game by your rules, most notably that you get to define who it is who is "sincere" by demanding they step to your tune and send you a private e-mail. That will prove their good faith.

That's a sucker play. You get to make points, and the only dispute you will accept is that which is invisible. Silence = assent and you are dismissing all those who won't let you have the last, public, word, as being possessed of dishonest motives.

I call that impolite (I also call it rude, and it borders on trollish; but that's my opinion)

Me, I don't have much of a dog in this fight. I don't think dis-emvowelling is evil. I happen to think it a good thing. I've borrowed it, when possible, to show disapproval, without actually censoring. Part of it defensive. No one can come along and say I refused to admit there were those who disagreed.

I think your assertions about the level of debate allowed here are risible. We just had a couple of threads which were full of heat. There was some fairly snippy commentary. In none of those threads was there the need for anyone to suffer the lost of vowels.

Most telling, when the heat spilled from one thread to another we (the denizens, not the hosts) took each other to task, for letting baser emotion bleed into places it wasn't deserved.

The thing I see most here, is that each post is treated sui generis (though in a given thread it may be that one is trying to dig out of a hole, and that colors the starting value). I've disagreed. Been told I was being an idjit. I've been part of a "dogpile", and usually hold some spot in the middle.

Of the places I hang out, this is probably the one I like best. People who have ripped into me for one thing, have supported me (both qua me and in argument) in other threads, at the same time.

So, from my personal experience, your claims of narrow mindedness are nonsense (literally, they make no sense to me). Your assertions that we, as a group, insist on things being in accord... well that's either wilfull ignorance (given that you have had some days to poke around), inability to digest the facts, or mendacity.

None of those option speak well for you; but that's how it looks to me.

No, I take it back, it's not bordering on trollish, it's worse than that.

It's more than just impolite. It violates the social contract of interactive discussion; establishes a double standard, and is, fundamentally immorral.

So all in all, I'd say you've gotten far kinder treatment than such behavior warrants, not least from me.

Hll,

ws lnkd t ths cnvrstn v Bng Bng. m n f th ppl wh hs bn ccsd f bng sck pppt t Bng. m nt nd d nt lg n s mltpl ppl n BB r hr.

Lt m ssr y tht ths s th frst tm hv pstd n ths st, nd hv n dsr t rgstr mlln nms t try t mk pnt. f cn't d ths n fw prgrphs, thn wht wll b th rslt f hndrds f mssgs?

nly sk tht y, th mdrtr, gv m jst ths mssg t pst my pc wtht t bng dltd r grbld.

hv bn wrngly ccsd f bng sck pppt. Th rsn s mst lkly d t th fct tht my frst fw psts n BngBng wr md sng th Tr ntwrk. hv sttd my rsns fr sng Tr n Bng s t prtct my P ddrss.

Snc ws nmd sckpppt hv trd t d vrythng t prv tht m nt t n vl. hv ffrd t snd y cpy f my d, t gv y phn cnvrstn, nd hv vn stppd sng Tr s tht y cn s th cty nd stt pst frm.

hv n dsr t b trll. jst wnt t b bl t pst. Nn f my psts hv bn ffnsv, mn-sprtd, r bltnt cnjctr.

smply sk tht y drp whtvr y hv gnst m. Whtvr dd, r wht y thnk dd, dd nt d. m nt mltpl ppl. brly vn pst t Bng nlss hv slw dy t wrk.

Pls tll m why y cntn t thnk m smn ls? thght tht whn strtd pstng wth my rl P tht y wld sly s tht m rl, lv, nd brthng prsn. vn thght tht w hd tht ndrstndng s y llwd m t pst s TrthFrctn, nd vn rpld t my psts?

Wht chngd, nd why? D y wnt m t scn n d nd ml t t y?

m n f th cslts f y wr n trlls, nd m dng my bst t rmn clm nd crdl dspt th rspnss hv bn gvn.

f y nswr s n t gvng m th chnc t prv myslf, thn pls t lst gv m nd xplntn s t why.

thnk tht Yg nd sm thrs gt dltd bcs f my lst psts dfndng thm, nd wnt t ssr y tht m nt ffltd wth ny f thm.

Thnk fr yr tm nd th spc t wrt ths.

midori 366: Yeago, 342, What the heck? What did I ever do to you? See comment 224.

midori, with respect, which part of the word 'troll' don't you understand? Yeago doesn't need any provocation at all to attack someone, because he's a troll.

Greg London, 362

Teresa@358: one of the strongest determinants is whether the art form acknowledges that it gives a damn whether you enjoy it. Ballet is thus more respectable than Broadway musicals

not to sidetrack, but my parser jams due to a lack of contextual experience with either ballet or musicals. Ballet gives a damn if you enjoy it and musicals don't?

No, the other way around. It's like the old argument about literary fiction vs. common genre fiction. Genre fiction usually has two things going for it: a frame of expectations for what kind of story it is (mystery, romance, etc.) AND a focus on storytelling that pulls you in. If you don't enjoy it, chances are the author screwed up.

Literary fiction means you have to bring your own frame, set it up, check if it's level, and carefully usher the experience through. Storytelling chops became more or less optional over time, as the storytellers became more dependent on the frame manufacturers (the literary-industrial collegiate complex) than a close relationship with fans. In other words, if you don't enjoy it, it's your fault.

Note: the preceding two paragraphs are a parody of reality, presented strictly for illustrative purposes, and not intended to reawaken that flame-winged strawBalrog of lit vs. genre arguement.

Anyway, ballet is accessible if you know how to decode what you are looking at - or if it's really, really, good - human beings moving around to music can be pretty neat. Once upon a time, the genres in ballet were commonplace enough that you didn't need lots of training or experience to decode it - still true for some people, in much the same way the original Star Trek series is still watchable to people my age, but not my younger cousins.

The genres in musicals are pretty accessible to us - most of the tropes are still in use in modern sitcoms and romantic comedies. Really hummable tunes, clever wordplay, and spectacle are the equivalent element to the focus on storytelling in genre fiction. Those properties are transitive when musicals are filmed, unlike ballet.

TruthFriction,

Start your own blog. Write clever interesting things and build a following, and you will then be able to communicate with as many people as you would on BoingBoing. Quit crying about being banned and quit trying to get around it. It may be unfair, though I highly doubt it, Teresa's powers of observation are not to be underestimated.

Moreover, this is really not the right place to make your appeal. If Teresa will not respond favorably to an e-mail from you, why on earth would she respond to an off topic post on her personal blog?

If you are trying to build support for your case over here at ML, then you are really barking up the wrong tree. We guests at Making Light may disagree over a great many topics, however we all respect Teresa (and Patrick, Jim, and Avram), otherwise we wouldn't hang out here.

So, I tell you what. Start a blog. Post the address here or go to my blog and leave a comment with the address, and I will come over and read it and engage in discussions with you.

Other than that, you need to knock it off. Seriously. I've seen you on BB, and you really need to stop.

mdr 366 - Thr's sm msndrstndng, wsn't tlkng t y. trd t ml y bt my dtpr0n. ml m, w'll tlk =)

^^ ppnd bv: wld tlk t y bt t hr bt vrythng 'v pstd s fr hs ts vwls mssng.

Gabriele Campbell, #305: Some degree of regulation definitely seems like a good thing to me. What I see happening in the US, though, is that vendors are expected to be better about securing liquor sales than the airport screeners are about finding weapons. When the inspectors smuggle a fake bomb or imitation gun past a security checkpoint in an airport, it does not seem that the screeners are dismissed from their jobs or heavily fined. Selling to a mature-looking 20 year old in a liquor control test easily costs employees their jobs, and the fines to the establishments where the liquor was sold seem frequently to be huge.

John Stanning, #308: The costs I had in mind go far beyond the implementation costs. There are less immediately obvious costs associated with massive surveillance: for the HUMINT part you have a lot of indirect costs due to making everyone worry that everyone else is an informant. Me, I just inform on myself and cut out the middleman.

Teresa, #318: Cue Fred Astaire singing, "How can you believe me when I said I trolled you, when you know I've been a liar all my life?"

Shorter recent comments on BoingBoing generally and from TruthFriction here, "I am NOT Spartacus!"

One of the lessons about data security is that identity can't lift itself by its bootstraps: source IPs, postmarks, copies of identity papers sent by fax or in the mail, none of these are worth anything. Plausible content and stylistic markers are probably as good as it gets and more than good enough for blog comments. Unfortunately, a nose for stylistic markers is probably not something that Teresa can give anyone through a book, though she has a superabundance of nose for style herself.

N.B. I'm nobody's sock puppet but my own.

*sigh*

I keep trying to post comments on BB. I'm registered. I just keep getting redirected to some weird page with what looks like a comments log.

Ah, well. I shall try again tomorrow or so.

I'm wondering if we've been using the wrong analogy for blogs such as Making Light.

I think they may be more like restaurants or bars than living rooms, in that anyone can wander in, and anything you say may be overheard by complete strangers. (In general I don't let just anybody into my living room.)

A blog owner determines the menu of ideas and the commentators can pick and choose among them, or in the case of open threads, make suggestions as to interestiing topics.

At the same time however, a minimum of polite behavior to the other diners is required and those not meeting it will be escorted to the door. Those with a history of bad behavior may be requested not to darken that door again.

What constitutes bad behavior is determined by the owner and is subject to their whims and fancies. (This is a haute cuisine restaurant! Do not discuss novelle cuisine here!)

If you don't like what the restaurant serves or how it's decorated you're not required to go there.

I'm thinking that this analogy is a little more workable than the living room one, in that it's my perception that people behave a little bit better in public spaces (Yes, I realize that this shouldn't be true, but it's my opinion that it is.) and a little more likely to remember that their behavior is witnessed.

I also think that people might find it a little less raw to be tossed out of a restaurant than out of someone's living room. On the other hand, would a troll care? Probably not.

And the thing that started this all? A restaurant/bar/coffee house is expected to advertise; behavior that some people find grating in a living room. (Grating or not, it does not excuse subsequent bad behavior.)

Of course, analogies are suspect, and I may be whistling in the wind.

CosmicDog, you're right. There is no way for me to make my situation right, or to prevent my situation from happening to others, which makes me wrong. You can never confront power directly, you must find more creative ways to effect change in this world.

I have been whining and it serves no purpose.

Goodbye.

For the sake of disambiguation, the Tor that TruthFriction mentions in #369 is an anonymity product supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and not meant to refer to Tor the publishing house.

Bill @ 364

generally some art, and some art forms, are more about money than talk, and vice versa.

I don't agree with this statement at all. I will agree that some artists, and some impresarios, patrons, whatever are more about money, or talk, than art, but an art form is an end product of human work; it has no bias towards any purpose beyond that of the creator or the user. There are Broadway plays and musicals written and produced strictly for money, and there are others* done for the love of the work.

* Julie Taymor's plays, and Bob Fosse's musicals to give just two examples.

Margaret Organ-Kean @377, in many ways it doesn't matter if one is at a private party or in public: as long as one is in company, there are expectations of consideration and, for want of a better word, modesty- or at least being open to discovering that others have better skills than oneself. The guy that walks in and assembles his three piece custom made pool cue and beats all comers may be sung of in legend, but in the bars where I used to play it was the guy who shared his a pitcher and waited for a table to open up who was considered an asset.

Bill, #364: Art is a form of communication. Sometimes all it says is, "Don't quit your day job."

(Not original with me, but I don't know who said it.)

Midori, #371: That's a good description of the difference between "literary" and "genre" fiction. The point at which we disagree is that I believe "literary" is now a genre, subject to its own tropes and stereotypes -- one of which is that the story no longer matters. And I'm very much an elitist about that; if the author can't write a decent story, then I refuse to accept the blame when I fail to enjoy it. IMO, that author is not living up to the terms of the (implicit) contract between author and reader.

Note that "decent story" != "my enjoying it". It's quite possible for an author to write good, solid stories that simply aren't to my personal taste, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Secondary note: I don't know how old you are (and I'm not asking!), but I'm over 50 and most ClassicTrek episodes aren't very watchable for me either. Way too much outdated sexual stereotyping.

Margaret, #377: I think of my LJ as the online equivalent of my living room; more precisely, of my living room in which I'm having a party. My friends are all welcome, and they can bring their friends, and I get the occasional drop-in from someone who just thinks it looks like an interesting place to be, and that's a lot like my annual Chocolate Decadence party. OTOH, I don't allow anonymous posting on my journal, and I've thrown a couple of people off (permanent ban) for bad behavior, just as I would out of my home. I think, however, that the structure of LJ is more conducive to that approach than the structure of most blogging software. For example, I can make locked LJ posts which are not open to the public, but can only be seen by a group of people I select; I don't think that can be done on most blogs.

midori @ 371

Those properties are transitive when musicals are filmed, unlike ballet.

If you're saying that ballet can't be filmed so that all of its interesting properties are apparent, I'd say instead that it's very hard to film ballet (or modern dance, as opposed to show dance) well, but it can be done. It's not the same experience as seeing it live, any more than a live production of a Busby Berkeley musical could capture all the spectacle of a film. But I can think of one or two films that were reasonably, if not greatly, successful. The Royal Ballet Company production of the Tales of Beatrix Potter was one of them, I think.

Lee @ 382

Ever since I had to request some people leave a party, I've been more careful about who I invited in the first place.

And my home is a very personal space. I may be more private than some, but I don't want all and sundry dropping by, even if I'm having a party. I'm not saying this is good or bad, or better than how you do it; it's just how I am.

This may be why I'm more comfortable with the restuarant analogy.

I have been banned from boingboing. I think that means I have been accused of not being a person. I think when she talks about sockpuppets on mobile devices, she is speaking of me. I connect via a sidekick and do not have any other home access.

I assure you, I am a person.

A minimal amount of research on teresa's part would have turned that fact up. Had she looked up my boingboing login name, "mecenday," or my email, she would have seen my path splashed across the internet. I'm a recently outted mtf transsexual so she would have only seen 6 months of my current name, but had she really wanted she could have traced me back further via associated names.

I don't get why she doesn't think I'm a person, and she won't tell me via private email.

Scttbt s sd t nt bng trtd s prsn, bt tht s bcs Scttbt s fgmnt f rl prsn's mgntn.

Th sm wy nthr rl prsn sms t trt nmbr f ppl wh r (lkly - sh hs th srvr lgs, whl Scttbt s nt prgrmmd t rspnd n tht r) rl s prt f hr mgnry drk sd f th ntrnt, whthr t s hydr r scpth. Th smpl nswr tht myb fw ndvdls hv bn flsly grpd nt tht rl prsn's wn mgnry wrld s th srt f rny tht Scttbt cld nvr mng n ts wn.

Scttbt ssms prt f th prblm s tht n dbt t nthr frm, Scttbt nt nly vgrsly spk t gnst Wb 2.0 (nt t mntn prvcy cncrns, pt pv f Scttbt's fmbl fngrd bldr), bt md fltng rfrnc t ts pln fr ntrnt dmntn - lng wth shwng Scttbt's wn ptntd(TM) ntrnt shrkng. Mrcflly, Scttbt wll rfrn frm dmnstrtn hr.

Nnthlss, Scttbt ndrstnds hw sm ppl jst cn't chng thr vw f thngs - fn rfrnc s wht hppnd t Jms ngltn t th C, wh ftr bng srsly brnd by Km Phlby, strtd sng hs wn nghtmr vsns vrywhr - http://n.wkpd.rg/wk/Jms_Jss_ngltn#ncrsng_prn
(Bt y ddn't knw tht th hd f th C cntr-ntllgnc blvd Kssngr cld hv bn KGB gnt f nflnc - wr crmnl, sr, bt KGB?)

Scttbt s nt ll tht cncrnd bt whthr nyn blvs n ts mgnry xstnc, nd cnsdrs ll ths prtty phmrl, t pt t mldly. Thgh ths dt wll b strd n vrs dtbss fr lng tm, n n wll cr bt t n th lst, ncldng Scttbt. nd s nly mkng gst pprnc bcs t sm pnt, t lks t sy 'tld y s.'

Bt Scttbt s nvs t th xtnt tht y t lst pprd, f fr mr thn yr 15 mnts f Wrhl tm, snc nn f th psts Scttbt's bldr md (myb 5? 8? mst n Sptmbr - nd dmttdly wtht rgstrng s sr) hv vr bn pblshd t bng-bng, snc rmrkng t hw hvy hndd th nw mdl mdrtn ws. Scttbt s prd f tht nw phrs, vn thgh n Grmny, w rn't brnng ny ffgs f nyn.

Tamara and others...

This is getting tedious. What do you hope to accomplish by coming here and bitching about being banned or disemvowelled on BoingBoing? If TNH is the ogre you think she is, how exactly are you helping your situation by complaining about her on her own website? I don't know why you were banned and I don't care.

Fucking. Get. Over. It. Already.

I see you have a LiveJournal account, why don't you talk about it there? You can post whatever you want there, with no fear of the evil Teresa or any other of the monstrous BB'ers trying to block or censor you.

I still your think that you are a sock-puppet whose hijacked a real person's online identity for your own twisted ends. I've bookmarked your LJ page, if an entry about this shows up there, I'll be suprised. I still won't feel sorry for you being banned from BB, since you clearly have your own forum for communicating your ideas. Use it.

never-scottbot-whatever: You are obviously mentally ill. Please seek help before one of your delusions causes you to hurt yourself or others. I thought you were leaving this thread anyway. Who asked you to come back?

Bruce (StM): There are Broadway plays and musicals written and produced strictly for money, and there are others done for the love of the work.

Not to mention the fact that those two things can quite easily go together. People can have more than one reason for doing the things they do, and there is no reason that a desire to make money can't go hand in hand with a love of the work.

Lee@355:

I used to work for a full-service financial planner who used client tracking software designed specifically for his line of work. You could call each record a Prospect, Green Cherry, Red Cherry, Client, etc. There was also a special category called Jerk.

CeCe: "Cm pn ths thrd frm lnk t th rgnl BB stry. my nt cntn t ths blg, ths s my frst tm hr nd cn't sy f 'll b rnd lng. f tht dscrdts m smhw, s b t. s my cmmnt t BB ws cnsrd by nn-pblctn, thght mght cmmnt hr, whr m nt rqrd t sgn p fr nythng. Cnvrs wy, my r my nt rspnd, f tht mks dffrnc n yr dcsn t vc yr pnn."

Sorry to go OT. Lurked on this blog a long time, drifted away and just came back, but...

When did we stop using English in here?

Sorry if I'm tragically unhip and so 20th century, but wtf?

Latecomer to the thread, ah well...

This guy and his interaction style reminds me very much of the run-ins I've had with various Usenet kooks in past years. It's not the good-natured trolls or even the petty vandals you have to worry about, it was the ones who would create endless subterfuges and identities because they saw themselves as vengeful freedom fighters out to protect the Internet from anything that would get in the way of, well, themselves, creating endless subterfuges and identities to spew vengeful venom from. I was stalked all over the Internet for quite a while by one character who called himself Jai Maharaj, because I'd helped create a moderated newsgroup, and that was an intolerable restriction on his freedom to spew random lunacy onto all newsgroups, not just some.

So, harking back to Bob Webber's comment @ 297, I think he's certainly nailed the personality connection. I believe Rebecca's said that character in Time's Child (a very fine book) was modeled closely on a real person she got to know through her anti-spam activity.

Teresa @ 289 & Claude @ 292: The current thinking seems to be that the major personality disorders are never really distinct conditions; rather, they fall into clusters and blur together. You'll rarely find someone who has pure antisocial personality disorder without strong narcissistic tendencies; the narcissistic form may be blended with borderline personality or histrionic, etc. I believe my wife (professional psychologist) said they're thinking of lumping them into much broader diagnostic groups in the next DSM release.

The kind of people who are attracted to disrupting online fora, while fervently believing that they're making it all better and liberating it, I think inevitably combine some narcissistic, histrionic and antisocial aspects. Fundamentally what CeCe, Yeago, never, and aliases object to is that BoingBoing is not about him, and that's deeply offensive to him. (And it is usually a him, in my experience.)

S.W.E: Teresa disemvowelled the earlier posts after they'd been up for a while; it's her preferred penalty for severe offensiveness, sock-puppetting, etc. It leaves them in a form where you can still read them, if you really want to, but the meaning doesn't jump out at you.

Personally, I think it's a great invention. Some of the recipients disagree. (Not all and not always; I've seen some people here occasionally ask if one of their posts could be disemvowelled, because they'd said something intemperate and regretted it.)

Thanks for explaining it to me. I just got back from a stint in the middle east, bought "Old Man's War", saw PNH had edited it and thought, "Hey, that's that hep blog I used to read."

I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Won't happen again.

Tamara @ 385: I assure you, I am a person.

Perhaps you are a person, but you are not a particularly polite one. I haven't seen what you might have posted at Boing Boing and I don't care why you were banned or whether the reason has any basis in reality. I say you're impolite because you, having been banned at Boing Boing, have chosen to follow one of the employees there back to her home to bitch about it. If this were happening in the physical world, police would be en route right about now.

SW Erdnase: See Disemvowelling .

Oddly, while Googling for an explanation of disemvowelling I came across How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community. The people who still want to sputter about Cory and Boing Boing and censorship and alleged hypocrisy should probably read it, note the author's name and the fact that it predates this current kerfuffle and realise that they had it coming.

A huge part of the U.S. trade imbalance with the UK is due to the import of British Humor by local PBS affiliates. I don't know for sure, but I bet we can blame Red Dwarf and East Enders.

Eastenders would be a lot more enjoyable if it had a laugh track.

Xopher@307: Thank you! As others have noted, there's no problem with reversing the wording if you think it sounds better. Do remember that the "j" is really a "y" sound -- "yahkenteez".

Xopher@341: "Materiam" not "materiae" (in the original context "materiae" is okay -- I could explain why, but anyone interested probably knows already -- but here it needs to be "materiam"). That doesn't seem easier to sing to me: it's easier to stretch the two-syllable "lignum" out to fit the space occupied by a three-syllable "gloria" than to squeeze "materiam"'s four in, isn't it? I guess you could make it "ma-ter-yam".

I believe my wife (professional psychologist) said they're thinking of lumping them into much broader diagnostic groups in the next DSM release.

Is the next DSM going to include MIPD (Modem-Induced Personality Disorder)? I've been observing it in the field since the late '80s.

Tamara (385), yes, I deleted your comments and temporarily banned you. No, you're not a sockpuppet. Here's what happened:

Over the weekend, Cory got hit with a really vicious multipart attack in one of the BB comment threads. I wound up spending most of the World Fantasy Convention in my hotel room, dealing with the mess.

What I eventually sorted out was that almost all of the initial attacks, and almost all of the protests over the actions I took to deal with those attacks, were the work of one person. He's a sockpuppet-generating troll, and has been making a pest of himself at BB for some time now.

I knew there was a chance you were real. There was also a chance that you weren't. Troll Sockpuppet Guy puts a lot of work into generating false identities. Also: (1.) you instantly assumed that any moderation was censorship and therefore oppression and hypocrisy; (2.) you kept insisting that this had happened solely because the commenter had "disagreed with the moderators"; and (3.) you suggested I be replaced with a Slashdot-style rating system. Those responses are all characteristic of this troll.

(Of course Troll Sockpuppet Guy favors a Slashdot-style system: it would never detect him.)

I made your comments disappear because they were inextricably part of a larger and uglier mess I was cleaning up. I temporarily banned you until I could figure out whether you were one of the sockpuppets. You would have received a note telling you it was a temporary ban, but the WiFi service at the hotel didn't connect with my mail account.

I've seen your denunciatory letter to Boing Boing. My entirely sincere advice to you is to always remember to spellcheck your flames before you send them.

Here's the scoop: I don't know of a single online forum worth reading that doesn't have a firm moderation policy. (I except the forums that are so difficult to access, or focus on such specialized subjects, that even the idiots stay away.)

As far as I'm concerned, most of the people who complain about moderation want to simultaneously have the behavioral latitude they enjoy on junk message boards, and the kind of audience that only exists on moderated boards.

In short, they're making the not-grown-up-yet wish: I want to stay exactly like I am, and do exactly what I want to do, and have that get me the results I desire.

Picking up on Ethan's #388:

It's very unusual for people capable of and inclined to do commercial work at all to have precisely one viable idea for whatever their field of work is. Usually there's a whole spread of things you and whoever you need to work with might do, and a big part of the creative process is figuring out which one you want to try next, whether it might pick up pieces of works that overall seem not so good for right now but have these elements you'd hate to leave behind, and so on. At least among those of us who have commercial and artistic ambitions, "What can I do that there's an audience for and will satisfy me?" is the stock question. It's basically the same impulse as having fun cooking for a mixed crowd or hosting a successful party - you want it to be rewarding to all involved, creators and audience alike, whether the reward is laughter, cathartic tears, stimulation to fresh ideas, or whatever.

When money's involved, there are times when it's more important to satisfy the customer than to have fun just for oneself along the way...but a lot of the best work does reward people on both sides of the creative and commercial process. It is certainly a thing to hope for, and to work to achieve whenever possible.

Mr. Yeago has emailed me offline with more insults. The one that stood out was "smarmy". As an added bonus, he's going to review my book Hunger Pangs.

What's the emoticon for rolling your eyes? All I can do is wink.

;)

Teresa, I just wanted you to know that I am having a sordid intense relationship with the phrasing "In short, they're making the not-grown-up-yet wish: I want to stay exactly like I am, and do exactly what I want to do, and have that get me the results I desire." What would be appropriate procurer's compensation?

Greg London, 402
Try: 0_o

CosmicDog,

I stumbled in here to find some sort of explanation of why I might have been removed. Y'all were talking about me here, so I posted a reply. I hope that can be understood.

I was going to leave BB after my third comment. That comment was retracted by the mod. So I stuck around slightly longer trying to be heard. I'm not some vindictive monster... I'm just someone trying to get their voice heard where it is most relevant to the conversation, and where I don't really make the rules.

I'm sorry if I'm out of line to bring my discusion here. But teresa how now given me at least some sort of explanation and that's enough for me to be satisfied.

Teresa,

You've bullet pointed my views pretty fairly. I think they're valid, you think they constitute trollery. It's a difference in opinion that's unlikely to be resolved.

But I guess I've always been taught that trollery is personal attacks, and griping without explanation. Sure, I've been griping. But I thought I was reasonable in my explanations.

As to the spellcheck... I noticed some of the errors too after I sent it off, "hypocracy," lol. But understand, I *am* on a mobile device without integrated spellcheck or easy access to a 3rd party spellcheck. Also understand, I was quite upset when I wrote the message and wasn't at my best. I missed some things.

It's been typical of your tone to pick at something like spelling. That was one of my complaints, as you have read, that the tone isn't the issue, only the viewpoint. My tone probably did get out of line at times, but you and the others matched me blow for blow, yet those posts stand.

It is almost universally accepted that griping over someone's typo, spelling, or grammar is the emptiest and pettiest of flames. And now you've thrown that out there. I hope it doesn't reflect the dialog behind the scenes at BB, because that's a weak defense against what I had charged.

I've mainly been skimming this discussion, but can't resist one bad pun (that *isn't* about bread): We're making a mountain out of a troll-hill. Feels more like an ant-hill, though.

Amazing, its like watching a recapitulation of the metamorphosis of rpg.net's forums from a free wheeling anything goes place (which was pretty nice and entertaining - until the trolls and wreckers showed up) to the regulated place it is today. To get an idea of the current set up http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=90683

tamara r @405:
You've bullet pointed my views pretty fairly. I think they're valid, you think they constitute trollery.

I am not Teresa, but I'd just point out that that is not what she said. She said, "Those responses are all characteristic of this troll." (emphasis added)

You came up with a set of arguments and opinions that made you sound like a particular troll who was active in the thread at the time. It's like if I dressed up in the uniform of a football team and wandered onto a football field, then wondered why everyone assumed I was on the team.

-----
* I hereby promise to pay Xopher a kudo every time I use the term

At long last, Faren, have you no shame?

f y cn rd ths, y'v bn hngng t n Mkng Lght!

Lee 382: I'm with you on Star Trek TOS. I can't stand to watch it. The sexual stereotyping hits you in the face, but add to that the terrible acting, the ham-handed writing, and the cardboard-and-silver-spraypaint sets, and it's really intolerable.

David 396: I was thinking of using Church Latin pronunciation to match the original: "yah-chen-tes."

David 397: In the original, you sing a long melisma on the 'glo' in 'gloria', with a long stressed note at the end (still on 'o'), then you sing the 'i' and 'a'. I would sing the melisma on 'ma', but the long stressed note on 'ter'. Then the 'i' and 'am' match the 'i' and 'a' of the original exactly.

The best filks are assonant with the original text, don't you agree?

Teresa 400: That reminds me of the place most Americans want to vacation: lush vegetation, no rain, low humidity. Such places do exist (unlike totally free but moderation-quality fora), but they're completely artificial and waste important resources in an unconscionable way.

It also reminds me of what Judy Harrow has called the "last house in Staten Island" syndrome: many people in Staten Island certainly thought THEY should have a house, but then they wanted all further development to stop, so they could have their house on the edge of undeveloped land.

A friend of mine was once working the door at a WorldCon art show. Up came Famous Guy, who my friend had heard of but never seen, not displaying his badge. She asked to see it and he lost his temper and became abusive. I don't know whether he just thought his name recognition should translate automatically into face recognition, or whether he just thought badge-checking was for everyone except him, but either way he was being a jerk.

abi 408: I hereby promise to pay Xopher a kudo every time I use the term

The term...? Which term? Or are you just trying to make me shiver with anticip

abi @ 408... What are you asterisking back to? And what's the exchange rate for kudos and qwatloos?

I think I heard a live troll on the radio this afternoon. You may have heard about the toxic shock over Bindeez? It's a craft toy involving beads which have been found to generate a harmful chemical in stomach acid, and hospitalized a few children. They were recalled and banned from sale in a few Oz States this morning. There was some difficulty about different stores – large or local – not hearing about it, and there being quarrels with customers saying they shouldn't be selling it. (Not helped by it being a public holiday in some areas for Melbourne Cup.)

I don't listen to the "shock jock" and confrontational talkback stations, but someone rang up the local ABC radio in Sydney claiming to be a shopkeeper with Bindeez in stock, and proceeded to very loudly and forcefully deploy "it's the customer's responsibility to look after themselves" and "I have to feed my family" and "I haven't received any official notification" and a few others in a hectoring and contemptuous tone. He really got a rise out of the Radio Guy, and was successful in getting himself cut off because (the radio guy claimed) he started swearing. His voice seemed a bit familiar, and his whole attitude reminded me of one I've heard propagated at different times across my local ABC radio listening. My impression was shared, 'cos RG later on said a number of people had called/emailed/SMS'd to say they thought it was a "prank call".

...pation

But seriously.

I deleted the paragraph using the term "jackhole"*, but left the footnote. Oops.

-----
Xopher.kudo++

Tamara,

I know that you think that picking on spelling is petty, but you need to realize that you are dealing with an Editor. In particular, a well-known and respected Editor. Spelling, grammar, logic...this is their world. If you had done the same amount of research on TNH as you expected her to do of you, you would have seen this. I misspelled Nielsen earlier in the thread and was called on it almost immediately. My response, and what I feel is the most appropriate response, was 'oops', not 'you better have something better than that if you want to go against me'. See the difference.

Now it's time for us, at least for me, to unclench. This discussion is bothering me more than usual. At least it's inspired me to start writing in my own blog again. Apparently, I still have some thoughts and ideas in this pretty little head of mine that want to come out. Who knew?

Abi @ 408 -

The effect is the same. If you see BB's moderation system as overeaching and suggest a community based solution would be a better fit, (a natural argument that makes sense together,) you're labeled one more avatar of some unknown troll. Your comments are deleted as well as the comments of anyone else who agrees with you... because they're obviously also part of some shadowy conspiracy that probably doesn't exist.

The final effect is that all those who disagree are silenced.

I don't care if she thinks I'm my own troll or someone elses. She thinks I'm a troll. She thinks I'm a troll because of my viewpoint, not my tone. Therefore I think that means she thinks the whole viewpoint is trollery.

::shrug::

Oops I commented again. I was supposed to be done. =). Aw well.

Twinkle, twinkle, asterisk,
How I wonder how I missed
Using you when posting here.
(Shows my carelessness, I fear!)
Twinkle, twinkle, asterisk,
Vanished once again, oh fsk.

                                                                                     *

tamara @416:

You're ignoring the time-based element. You posted during an active sockpuppet attack; the puppeteer admitted he* was doing it right here in this very thread. I could wander onto my metaphorical football field at any time when there was no game on and not be mistaken for a player.

It is perfectly possible to see BB's moderation system as overreaching, to prefer Slashdot's system, and to say it on the blog. You might consider doing it when there isn't an active flamewar, and maybe use a more calm, persuasive approach**.

-----
* assumption
** for the avoidance of doubt, that includes not calling any of the people you're trying to persuade a hypocrite. Even in situations when it's true, it's hardly effective.

Yes, "All My Darling Daughters" is one of the squickier stories I've ever read, particularly in Firewatch where it's collected beside a gee-whiz piece about young motherhood and the cosmic coincidence of the moon's diameter vs. the AU.

Also, even if Teresa didn't say it, I will. Tamara, you are now a troll. Get off of this site, step away from your keyboard, and give your budding tusks a chance to stop aching. Go eat some goat if you think it'll help. I know a good Ethiopian place in SoHo you should try. Just please grow out of the wounded "Who me?" phase of your newfound vice as soon as possible, for the benefit of everyone on tha intranets.

Srr, bt 'm th n wh dmttd t sng mr thn n PC - n t wrk (XP, Mzll, lkl chngng T-nln ddrss) nd th hm n (fxd P). M psts fllw nrml Grmn schdl - gt p rnd -m, g t wrk, thn pst gn frm hm. Ths mks m hydr?

Thgh wh bthr, prt frm wtchng hw mb frms, s bynd m. t s bt s bd s bng t hsng bbbl blg whr th cmmntrs r crtn tht llgls r th rt f ll vl.

nd ntc th clm tht n 'ld' trll ddrss ws bng rctvtd. cmmntd n th frst dlt fst t bng-bng, nd m P ddrss hs vr snc bn n lst, n tht Snt wll nvr rd.

Sm f s gt md t bng slncd, r wtchng thr ppl gt slncd, thgh crtnl grnt th rght f frm's wnrs t d prtt mch s th pls. Whch th d.

Wh bthr? wndr bt tht t, xcpt t s tld y s, xcpt tht lkl, th grcs hsts nd cmmntrs f ths wb st, wh sm t thnk 'm scpth nd sffrng ll srts f psychlgcl prblms bcs kp nsstng tht m m, nd nt sm vst fgmnt f thr mgntn, r lkl t trt t wth s mch grc s th d wth smn wh mrl cmmntd tht pstng dssntng pnns t st smngl dvtd t frdm sms prtt dststfl.

[Posted from 212.86.201.242]

abi 414: I did not invent the word! I may have been the first to use it here (I wouldn't vouch for even that), but I found it somewhere else (can't remember where).

It has a W!k!pedia page, unless someone decided it was not notable.

"Why bother? I wonder about that too, except to say told you so, except that likely, the gracious hosts and commenters of this web site, who seem to think I'm a sociopath and suffering all sorts of psychological problems because I keep insisting that I am me, and not some vast figment of their imagination, are likely to treat it with as much grace as they do with someone who merely commented that posting dissenting opinions at a site seemingly devoted to freedom seems pretty distasteful."

I can't make any sense out of this paragraph at all.

troll @ 420

It isn't the multiple IP addresses. It's the multiple usernames that are clearly the same person.
Not to mention the repeated claims of 'I'm innocent and I'm being banned because nobody likes me.' (Banning is, in my experience, the remedy used when nothing else gets through the solid-steel ego-encasement.)

Shorter Spelling reference:
Tlkn. Mnscl. Gndh. Mllnnm. Dlny. mbrrssmnt. Pblshrs Wkly. ccrrnc. smv. Wrd. Cnnssr. ccmmdt. Hrrchy. Dty. tqtt. Phrh. Trs. ts. Mcdnld. Nlsn Hydn. t's. Flrsphr.

More here:

bzr, bzrr, ccd, prcd, sprsd, brbc, cqnt, ccssry, ncssry, dscct, Cncnnt, ccrrnc, nclt, ccmmdt, rcmmnd, hrssmnt, sprss, mbrrss, crllry, grmmr, hmrrhg, rtllry, bttln, brccl, grrll, rdscnt, bttr, mscllns, mllnnm, vrmln, mllnrn, dlttnt, mnscl, prlllsm, cppll, cmmtmnt, cmmttd, cmmtt, stllt, pnstt, cnslr, clndr, cmtry, strtgm, srcrr, rstrtr, srgnt, prphsy, phrh, cmflg, prnnctn, flrscnt, sd, lgy, psdpd, brcrcy, prphcy, fchs, fd, slhtt, jdhprs, lsn, hrrchy, svrgnty, scrlgs, dty, sv, frz, rcv, sz, sg, wrd

why_bother @ #420 has clearly been the victim of Making Light's latest censorship technique. Instead of having all its vowels removed, this post has had its grammar and sentence structure mangled so that the poster's original point is indecipherable.

why_bother 420 (apt): You keep posting over and over and over. You're not wanted here. Why are you unable to stop? And yes, I mean you are not ABLE to, that you are following a compulsion that you are too weak-willed to resist.

You haven't said anything new, or even come up with new insults, in your last several posts, or even your last several guises. Do you really enjoy this that much? If you were certain that your rude and obnoxious posts being disemvoweled proved you were right, you'd've been satisfied a while ago. That you are not is just increasing evidence of a serious personality disorder.

And no, you're not a hydra because of the multiple IP addresses. You're a hydra because of the multiple names under which you post, many of which are from different IPs, making it harder to whack all those moles. The hydra of classical myth grew two heads for every one that was chopped off. It thus had multiple identities (heads) but only one personality (monstrous). The analogy to you is obvious.

No, I don't like you. No one here likes you, except other sockpuppets you've created yourself. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is tragic for the person who has it, but worse for the people who are unfortunate enough to interact with them.

Why DO you bother coming here, where everyone hates you? Can't you go among people who love, or at least like, or at any rate are willing to tolerate you? We don't, don't, and aren't.

If you still think you can convince any of us that we're wrong about you, give it up. You're as familiar as a mosquito in Michigan, and just as likely to persuade anyone to your point of view. You used up all the tentative credit given to newcomers here, persisted in being obnoxious after multiple warnings, and keep coming back even though you KNOW that anything that can be identified as coming from you will be disemvoweled, and that NO ONE will care what you have to say now. And that's even if you start being reasonable. It's way too late.

If, instead, you're still trying to prove something to yourself (that is, that we're wrong about you), I can suggest a better method. You've said you have children; go hug one of them and say "I love you." If you can do that, even if you're just going through the motion to make a point, you're a better person than I currently think you are. If you can do it with genuine love in your heart, I'm wrong about you. If your kid hugs you back and says "I love you too," then you must be a completely different person in meatspace than you are online.

But DON'T come back here and tell me about it. I won't believe you anyway, and neither will anyone else.

Troll is clearly thriving on the negative attention showed upon him.

Why are we continuing to provide it?

Alex 427: Touché, and good question. While they're two different horses, they're equally dead, and in my last post I was beating mine in the process of berating nevernothing for beating his. I'm no more likely to get through to an incorrigible troll than he is to convince us that he's sane and reasonable and Teresa is just being mean. Or that snow comes up out of the ground like grass.

OTOH, I have to admit that I really enjoyed writing that.

Bob #375
Looks like the US throws the kids out with the bathwater. I haven't been there so I don't know any details, but in Germany 12 year olds get alcohol too easily. The legal age is 16 for beer and wine, 18 for stronger stuff.

Teresa #399
Wow, you have more patience than I. I simply locked a forum over a weekend when I had no time to deal with a troll invasion. The regular members understood, and the trolls found some other place to play. They have a short attention span when life gets boring. :)

Gabriele @ #429, I think most of us are endowed with far less patience than Teresa. Or perhaps she's afflicted with far more patience than the rest of us.

Bill @ 364: What I learned from the best of my art teachers was that art is communication....

What I learned from James Branch Cabell is that art is a game of solitaire.

These are two parts of the same elephant, but the latter is what's under my fingers.

One of the best songwriters I know can only work when he feels he's learned something that people should hear about, and when he feels people are in fact listening. But when I try to write that way, it's a disaster--the way I get good results is to say "hey, I feel like playing in the studio today," or "I wonder what it would sound like if I did this..."

Brian Eno famously writes his lyrics by pacing around the studio singing nonsense syllables over the backing track until something congeals. I don't think he's any better or worse a lyricist than Leonard Cohen, who painstakingly distills hard-won life lessons.

In the end, you have to dance with the muse what brung ya.

Tim @ 431: Well, that's what I get for over-simplifying. The discussion with that teacher was actually about the use of symbology, and the main point of the lesson was that art (well, visual art in this case) is an expression of an idea you have had; if you don't take common interpretations of symbolic elements into consideration, but use them because they have very specific meanings to you, then you will have to suck it up when other people misunderstand your idea.
That's a bit of a tangent, but it was the moment at which I started thinking of art as not just expression, but communication of expression, and how remembering that you are communicating with other people can play a part in your choices; which isn't really the same thing as saying that you should make art for other people and not yourself.

Bill 432: ...remembering that you are communicating with other people can play a part in your choices; which isn't really the same thing as saying that you should make art for other people and not yourself.

It can, however, be a difficult distinction to make sometimes. Especially if you make your living by your art, the temptation to "play to the market" can be irresistable, and not necessarily conscious. And if you DO resist it, it can be crushing to watch other artists become successful as you starve in a garret or, worse, live in your parents' basement.

Wow. First time posting on Making Light, I followed the link in from the BoingBoing "metacommentary" about a troll-hydra bashing Cory.

I moderate a meatspace discussion group - see my url link above - and have been doing so for a few months shy of 6 years (the group turned 6 on the 1st). I am humbled by the patience shown by TNH and her fellow moderators, both here and at BoingBoing. I look forward to "The Book on Comment Moderation" (thanks BSD #319, quoted that from you), I think it'd be a great read. Even if I can't emulate even a quarter of the "troll whispering" techniques hinted at here, it'll likely be at least entertaining.

We have had a troll or two show up to our meatspace group. Usually, if they are of the "my beliefs are sacrosanct and any challenges to the ideas my beliefs are based on will be interpreted as an attack on myself" type, they don't come back after a while. I make it plain that "we have no sacred cows here, any topic is open for discussion" and if they can't handle it, they usually leave. Generally with minimal disruption to the group.

We don't have any hydra or similar (that I know of...) - very difficult to pull that off in meatspace - but there are trolls and there are trolls. We had to engage the host building's (combination public library and gov't center) security policy in one instance. Restraining order. Messy. Not fun. When it gets to the point that other people who have been regular attendees are telling me that they are leaving because the troll is there, and new people are being scared off, the welcome mat has suffered a blowout and is in danger of causing a major derailment. (how's that for mixing metaphors?) 'Tis a fine line, and I'm more patient than some of my fellow moderators... It can be painful to tell someone "no" when they obviously need help...

I don't think I have anything else to add to this discussion - looks like any point I'd make has already been made, and more eloquently to boot.

As for this here Making Light place, looks nice, maybe I'll get a chance to read more from time to time, and occasionally I may have something post-worthy. I like TNH's style - and that she recognized me felt rather interesting. (Found that out via private e-mail exchange where I asked about a thread that had many disemvowellings.) My own internet micro-celebrity moment, as I told my wife: "Honey, I've been noticed by the blogosphere!". Trez cool.

Later,
-cajun
P.S. I engineer are, grammar my strong point ain't. Verbose, I tend to be...

Tamara #405, if you continue to read this - posting from a mobile device, in the heat of the moment, not only makes it much more likely that there will be embarrassing typos in your post, but that the post itself is entirely ill-conceived. People don't respond well to angry ranting, on the internet or in person. Taking whatever time is necessary - even if it's a week - to get to an actual computer, and think things over, and breathe, is much more likely to lead to people taking you seriously.

(N.B. I post on the internet for a living. I take this sort of discourse quite seriously.)

cajunfj40: Welcome. I the squee effect of being noticed is high. My moment of real squee came from Neil Gaiman pointing to something I wrote here.

Greg: I got a piece of e-mail too. I stopped a short way into it. The chummy tone of condscension I got was most off-putting.

Bill(#432): That's one of the best explations of the Comminications Theory aphorism, "The meaning of the message is the message that's received." If the audience can't make out what you meant to say, you; effectively, didn't say it.

Tim Walters #431: Brian Eno famously writes his lyrics by pacing around the studio singing nonsense syllables over the backing track until something congeals.

What I remember Brian Eno for is that he's the one who composed the Windows 95 Startup sound. I did tier two tech support for one of the Windows 95 launch teams and I still shudder every time I hear that sound (lots and lots of reboots under my belt on that particular operating system). So, of course, I hammered myself just now by firing up WinAmp and listening to that sound over and over again until I couldn't stand it any more. "Congeal" is right; perhaps even "clot"....

#435

Or the die-rolling method, which was suggested some months back as a method of reducing unthinking-reaction posting. (Use a die of at least 10, and only post if you can roll a 1, or other one-number-of-your-choice.)

Didn't Eno also do the music for the movie version of A Brief History of Time?

Regarding the above troll and hydras (hydrae?)... What do you get if a hydra mates with a dragon?

Something which works for an Australian bookseller?

A smeghead?

#440: The D&D geek answer is Tiamat.

re 408: "You came up with a set of arguments and opinions that made you sound like a particular troll who was active in the thread at the time. It's like if I dressed up in the uniform of a football team and wandered onto a football field, then wondered why everyone assumed I was on the team."

Well, that's a big problem, because there aren't any teams. So what's really happening here is stereotyping.

Bill @ 364: "Musicals are like opera except that they make money", to paraphrase Pratchett. (There is, of course, a complete ordering on art as on everything else in our society: how much it costs.)

midori @ 371: As, apparently, one of the few people posting on this whose experience of Reputable Literature wasn't ruined by school (good teachers? math major? YMMV??), I will point out the inverse view: that genre literature is required to facilitate a known story and its expected pleasures; reputable literature is supposed to play better poker, and not tell you what pleasure to expect. Hence the great surprise that Austen and Melville are funny. In literature, you find your own adventure. (All complicated by the greats that started genres.)

Margaret Organ-Kean, #377: I really like your metaphor of blogs-with-monetization as restaurants. Further analogies: most of them lose money; the backrooms are untidy and exhausting. Also, it plays into the ambiguous-systems thing I was thinking of, that a successful pairing of restaurants and customers can often play 'gift economy' all night long (hosts' greetings, favorite table, chef's compliments amuse-bouche), but they aren't really. I imagine the game breaks down unpleasantly sometimes.

Anyone bored or obsessive enough to still be reading; one of the particularly odd things about the fannish outrage against the current troll is that the troll is, to fandom, a lot like fandom is to reputable literature. I don't mean that the troll is right, or fandom wrong, or even that reputable literature is more right than fandom; the goodness-function of this peculiar social variable is anfractuous.

But remember a while ago when a ?linguist? reported that SF fans have speech and body-language patterns wildly unlike, sometimes opposite, those of most other people? To the others, fans send conflicting and often insulting signals, and are convinced they're right, and insist on making their own versions of everything (often on grounds of If This Goes On millenarianism), and are just generally an exhausting confusion of a system that worked well enough. And the general feeling about this, at ML, was of happiness and self-recognition.

So we have a cosy dinner restaurant on a not-quite-gentrified block of L-space, run by surpassingly genial superbly professional hosts; and there's a leering face slobbering on the window. But out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was my reflection against the dark.

441-442-443... A fire hydra, of course.

Serge @440: What do you get if a hydra mates with a dragon?

A... hydragon? (I don't think I remember how to count up to hydra.) I suppose higher-order hybrids would be hydrahedra and hydratopes....

cajunfj40 #434:

Welcome to Making Light!

I find the idea of dealing with meatspace trolls pretty intimidating. Well done you for managing it.

You don't, by any chance, write poetry, do you?

Serge, I can say this with all sincerity, considering your Canadian heritage.

You, sir, are a hoser. I hope you don't feel the need to flame back at me.

Serge @440: What do you get if a hydra mates with a dragon?

Hydrogen?

C. Wingate @444:
Well, that's a big problem, because there aren't any teams. So what's really happening here is stereotyping.

Assuming arguendo that there is a genuine hamper of sock puppets in a thread, acting in a co-ordinated way because they're all the same set of fingers on the keyboard, then yes, there is a distinguishable "team".

Stereotyping* would be the belief that tamara was a separate person, but still a troll. Maybe her actions show that; I'm not convinced, myself. But Teresa's initial belief that she was an assumed identity of our rather verbose guest was not stereotyping.

The litmus test is whether someone could post the set of views that tamara espouses on a thread not packed with sock puppets and still be considered a troll. I suspect that someone who posted a well-thought out and not unpleasant argument in that direction would not be so labeled. (Someone who harrangued and ranted probably would be, but that would be based on tone and not content.)

-----
* It is really, really difficult for me to talk about stereotyping and sock puppets without making some kind of pun about typing comments for two different puppets in stereo.**

** Actually, clearly, it's impossible.

@abi#448:
Poetry? Umm, I wrote a short one on a valentine for my wife once... Otherwise, not really.

My vein is technological stuff, I guess one would call it prose. Try this one: Nuclear Parking Brake.

The bit near the end, about the green glow? Yeah, I know that isn't true. Though if you use an unshielded source, and paint the truck with a phosphor-based pigment (like the stuff they used to mix with radium to make watch hands and the like glow green) you can create the effect...

Yah, that has my name in it, but all the other contact info is woefully out of date. And I don't have the trucks anymore. {sniff} :-(

Later,
-cajun

Abi @ 451... really difficult for me to talk about stereotyping and sock puppets without making some kind of pun about typing comments for two different puppets in stereo

C'mon. You know wanna.

Abi @ 451... really difficult for me to talk about stereotyping and sock puppets without making some kind of pun about typing comments for two different puppets in stereo

C'mon. You know you wanna.

Abi... Aren't Pearson's Puppeteers able to sing with two different voices, since they have two heads?

Serge @455:
Aren't Pearson's Puppeteers able to sing with two different voices, since they have two heads?

I don't know. They keep running away every time I try to get near enough to hear them.

(And if 453 & 454 aren't intentional, they're the most fortuitous double-post EVAR!)

Tania @ 449... Wise gal, eh?

Abi... True. Like Sir Robin, they tend to bravely run away. (And the double post was accidental, but it became appropriate, for once.)

Ursula L @ 450... Hydrogen?

And fiery flatulence? Now, that's a kind of flame war I'd stay away from.

abi, the problem with your litmus test is that it is all too obviously susceptible to being based on stereotypes. Identifying trolling requires identification of motive, which is notoriously subjective and frequently self-serving. After twenty years of this, my inevitable conclusion is that true trolls are quite rare. Committed partisans are far more common and are typically labelled trolls when they post in an unfriendly venue-- and this blog is hostile to anyone who doesn't take the correct line on a long list of issues. These people either get banned as dissenters or stomp off on their own; their censoring isn't usually that great a loss because it's really impossible to have discourse with them anyway. People whose views don't fit into the standard pigeonholes or who otherwise aren't committed partisans get accused of being trolls too when their first appearance is on the wrong side of an argument.

Sockpuppetry as a tactic is overstated; the masses of real people with concurrent views are inevitably louder. It's more valuable as a tag to hang on someone in order to dismiss them, since right or wrong it is irrefutable.

Moderation is of course necessary. Those of us who remember back to the pre-internet know that, back when we all had kill files to filter out obnoxious subjects and posters. But just as clearly Lord Acton's statement about absolute power applies.