Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe fame in the UK) did something a little similar with the ceremonry for the investiture of the new pope
Joel@138: What that specification doesn't say is "may be edited to change the meaning" though, although editing for clarity might do that as an unwanted side effect.
Apropos of this, if you want a sample of a newspaper contributor taking the editing of their articles very seriously indeed, read the following link, for entertainment value if nothing else:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/25/pressandpublishing.thetimes
Under copyright regimes that recognise authors moral rights, including the right to the integrity of the work, disemvowelling might well step over that line, given that it can alter the meaning of the text even if it doesn't always do so.
The Berne convention states:
"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation."
I don't believe the US copyright law explicitly recognises 'moral rights' in this sense though.
Is first responder the right term here by the way? Or is that what you call the first professionals who are sent to an incident? (Paramedics, etc)
I have a more general issue about incidents like this, if Jim doesn't mind me raising it here: How do you go about taking control in a situation like this as a first responder / first aider?
I was on the scene shortly after an incident involving a single vehicle on a major local road a year or two ago & one of the problems I had was stopping the rest of the people hanging around doing completely *stupid* things & endangering both the occupants of the vehicle and themselves in the process.
Afterwards, I realised that part of the problem was that I had failed to establish any kind of authority on arrival, but that's not easy when there's already a bunch of adults there "trying to help" and already arguing about what should be done: To a certain extent I was just 'another voice' in the ongoing argument & it was all a bit of a mess, although myself and another woman did manage to keep a lid on the situation in the end.
Some time afterwards I remember reading Jim's post here on ML on the importance of setting up a control hierarchy as part of incident response, which made me thing that a better approach would have been to ask "Who's in charge here?" when I arrived in the first place, the implicit message being that *somebody* needed to be in charge, and work in the hierarchy from there.
So I guess my question is: How do you go about taking the necessary control of the situation and getting people on your side? Any suggestions much appreciated: I'd like to do better next time, if there is a next time.
I've got the hug-o-matic right here you know. Hold on while I get it plugged in...
NB. The poster who spoofed the post from Xeni has apologised on the metafilter thread here, for those who care about such things.
heresiarch@160: Context matters enormously here I think.
Some actions will be clearly torture in one context but not necessarily in another. From his emails to me, I don't believe that Xopher indented what he wrote to be interpreted that way: ie with all the context that would make such actions unquestionably torture rather than the relatively minor revenge fantasies that they actually were.
Given that the action is defined by the context, some readers will project a "torture" context onto Xopher's words, so there's still the potential to give aid and comfort to those wanting to normalise torture even if one didn't intend to do so.
It's a thorny area: One can think oneself completely innocent, but be read as advocating the darkest deeds. I guess that's an argument for defining the context yourself, lest others project their own on your words.
<breaks out hug-o-matic>
Sadly I won't be going to WorldCon. But thanks for the offer! Chocolate always appreciated, etc.
NB. Xopher and I have had a short email exchange in which it became clear that I had conflated the dive & drowning reflexes, and read more into his post than he intended. Our subsequent exchanges were exacerbated on both sides by this initial misreading.
I therefore withdraw my comment@50 above & apologise to Xopher.
On preview: I see Xopher beat me too it!
Xopher: I've always been partial to buttercream as it happens.
I'm glad to hear you weren't talking about fantasies of simulated drowning of any sort.
Sigh. Perhaps in retrospect I should have emailed Xopher directly rather than called him out in public.
Nat: To be absolutely clear, I certainly don't believe that Xopher intends to torture people for making comments posts he dislikes.
I do believe that a) simulated drowning is torture {wasn't there a making light thread on this very issue not so long ago?} and b) publicly fantasising about doing it to people gives aid and comfort to those who want to make such behaviour acceptable.
For these reasons, I belive that Xopher's comment was out of line. Telling me to f off in response is just the icing on the cake.
Xopher: What you're fantasising about is torturing people. Do you really think that's healthy?
Teresa: I did not mean to imply that debate does not occur (or is not permitted to occur) here. Clearly it does. The tone differs markedly from metafilter of course, as a consequence of the moderation policy & the culture built up by those who choose to participate, which obviously interact and feed upon each other.
I was merely suggesting that the tone adopted by ML might be more conducive to certain types of people that that adopted by metafilter. I hope there's nothing controversial about that!
language hat@22: I'm not sure I agree with you on that front. Much as I love the cut & thrust of metafilter, I can quite see how such a culture would be anathema to certain types of people, who will simply choose not to post at all, and metafilter is in some senses poorer as a result.
Other forums (like ML) choose a more aggressive approach to moderation partially in order to demonstrate that they value the contributions of people who don't necessarily want to engage in the kind of in your face debate that often occurs in metafiter threads. Neither option is necessarily "better" than the other.
Teresa: I appreciate that entirely, but once you'd got to the point where the BoingBoing moderators were deleting comments asking about the issue you'd already lost control. Doing stuff like that is just guaranteed to stir people up and make things worse, not better.
Personally I'm really surprised that a new media savvy organisation like BoingBoing couldn't (or wouldn't) see that.
Sorry about the stuttering of first places there. Note to self: must proof read more conscientiously.
Had the BB people had just said that in the first place (even by private email) when asked instead of deleting all questions on the spot, this whole thing probably would never have blown up in the first place.
Anil Dash
Teresa's link should hop right to his post. If not, search for "anildash".
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