The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Twirlip of the Mists:

Michael Moore's version of Watchmen.

#751: and add the third problem - people that have " health insurance", but find when they need it that it doesn't cover anything.

"America's newest toy craze" : mechanical hamsters.

@123: Detective Comics 500, by Len Wein and Walt Simonson. (I don't know if it's been reprinted)

(But then when a user presses a sticky key more than once ... )

#328, #342: very good points.

It doesn't have to be malevolence. Everything works, and, despite the engineers whining, the levees aren't going to break, so why budget for that?

#328, #342: very good points.

It doesn't have to be malevolence. Everything works, and, despite the engineers whining, the levees aren't going to break, so why budget for that?

#318: Good summary.

Add to that an outsourced "customer service" department working off scripts, and we get a PR nightmare when the complaints start coming in.

And all of this - the reuse of old code, the outsourced customer service, the lack of testing, the neglect of possible implications in a classification system - must have been justified in some spreadsheet somewhere as unnecessary expense detracting from corporate profit.

#168: I would say that the developers cut corners and didn't object to vague definitions because they wanted to keep their jobs, but that gets into an entirely different discussion and I don't know if our hosts want that in this thread.

#142: And once the "adult" filter is implemented, and the appropriate checkbox to activate it placed on the appropriate data entry screens, it can be used to mean anything that you want - which may not be what the person next to you think it means.

#137: And we see the result.

#132: With good database design, the unique Kindle information could be placed in a different table without affecting common Kindle-book information. But it does look like they are doing a search-on-book-table then search-on-Kindle-table then search-on-whatever.

I suppose one could test the hypothesis by examining the non-platform-specific data for Kindle vs book (other than this "adult" thing).

#78: No one's said it's okay. Even if "gay/lesbian == obscene" was an unintended result, it's still not okay.

@43: "Can Homosexuality Be Healed?" wouldn't be on the list of "offensive" books, because to the list compiler such a topic isn't offensive.

So, was someone at Amazon the list compiler? Or, as suggested, did they get it somewhere else and did they know the list compiler's definition of "offensive"?

#35: "Testing? The programmers are supposed to get it right the first time; that's why we pay them!"

But this isn't a programming issue. The system did what it was told to do.

I don't think blaming everything on outside "trolls" will be a good move for Amazon (though it's certainly tempting for them). Patrick's explanation seems right: different divisions of the company had different definitions of what an "adult" tag would be. The problem is why gay/lesbian related items got tagged together with porn, and that's a management issue involving human decisions. Whatever triggered the filter at this specific time isn't relevant; the glitch was destined to happen once the tagging choices were made and entered.

#576: Readers of Gilbreth and Carey's "Cheaper By The Dozen" will notice that the "dozen children" are only eleven. The second daughter is mentioned twice, then disappears. In the sequels it is revealed that she died of diphtheria and that the parents didn't want to talk about her.

#804: Given that Bujold uses "what's the worst thing I can do to my characters" when plotting, I expect both Gregor and Aral to die in the upcoming book, leaving as Emperor ...

#114: Mercedes Lackey wrote zombie stories?

News to me. I guess they were zombie horse stories or something ... :-)

I'll go with unconvincing gorilla suits. Tor editors, you have your market!

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