Entries Tagged 'forum' ↓

To our readers, and other bloggers and admins:

As we all know, some people in the world are angry and destructive, and many of those are on the Internet. These angry people exert a negative effect on anyone who has the misfortune to encounter them, even if it is only a feeling of fatigue and disgust. Some angry and destructive persons are genuinely dangerous.

The Internet is a tool that can be used for good or ill. The team at 1389 Blog is working hard to do some good: to use the Internet to confront and curb jihadism and expansionist Islam, and to provide knowledge and tools to others who are working to accomplish the same goals. We will never allow anyone to abuse the comments on this blog for the purpose of undermining this effort.

False accusations, mudslinging, and editorial discretion

We have grown especially weary and disgusted with haters who use blogs, comments, forums, Wikis, social news sites, or email to circulate false allegations against others - whether it be public figures, other bloggers, entire groups of people, or whomever else they hate. Despite claims of “fairness” and “impartiality,” disinformation has been planted throughout Wikipedia and other social media, where it becomes fuel for flame wars, mudslinging, and propaganda.

Typically, one or more responders will put in hours or days of unpaid effort to refute those accusations, but then, the malicious accuser simply goes elsewhere and starts the same process all over again.

We have other things to do besides responding to the same falsehoods again and again. If these miscreants can’t win the argument on facts and logic, they hope to win by shouting us down and wasting our time.

Yes - these haters have the right to post what they want - on their own blogs - and to face whatever consequences accrue. When haters commit libel, their victims may sue. When haters incite violence against the persons or groups that they hate, they have passed the boundaries of protected political speech, and we will do what we can to shut them down.

No one has the right to take advantage of other people’s blogs and websites to spew false accusations, obscenities, and bile in front of the readership that reputable bloggers and admins have worked so hard to earn. No one has the right to spam the comments or forum threads on someone else’s website for the purpose of interfering with that website or harassing its owners and participants.

Excluding malicious comments is not censorship - it is vital editorial discretion. No blog or forum administrator - or for that matter, no publisher or media producer - can, or should, publicize every response that comes in. Bigoted ranting, name-calling, bullying and threats, spam, obscenity, incoherent rambles, libel and slander, and ad hominem attacks, attract a lynch-mob mentality, drive away decent readers and participants, and expose the website or organization to repercussions, legal or otherwise. And the endlessly misused argumentum ad Nazium, a/k/a reductio ad Hitlerum, is a signal to readers that the argument has worn itself out, and that intelligent life has departed from that venue.

Oh, and by the way…

If you want to argue with us, you’d better be loaded for bear. We expect to see verifiable evidence and valid logic, presented in a clear and civil manner. Just for starters:

• Calling us liars, racists, Nazis, or whatever else is evidence only of your incivility. Accusing us of being “racists” or “Holocaust deniers” or “fascists” merely because we do not accept your accusations against Jews, Israelis, Serbs, European conservatives, white Americans, or whomever it is you happen to hate, doesn’t cut it either.
• Hearsay, rumors, innuendo, or unconfirmed urban legends, or something you thought you heard from a “friend of a friend,” does not make for sufficient evidence to back up an allegation.
• Articles in Wikipedia are acceptable only for noncontroversial matters, such as technical background, computer and Internet history, and definitions of words and phrases (as shown here in the previous item). But when it comes to controversial political, religious, or historical issues, Wikipedia is far too vulnerable to vandalism, flame wars, and spin, and we generally cannot accept it as evidence. (See our Reference Material resource page, and Byzantine Sacred Art: Wikipedia, the Source of Disinformation, for more on Wikipedia spin jobs.)
• For that matter, we roundly condemn Wikipedia’s self-righteous pretense of enforcing a neutral point of view. It is senseless to make a virtue out of amorality! When we write or blog, we do our best to gather and publish the whole truth and nothing but. There is no neutral ground between right and wrong, between good and evil, between truth and error. There is no room for diluting the truth by presenting falsehood alongside it, in an effort to appear “fair and balanced.” The devil has too many spokesmen already, and too many spokeswomen too!
• Making patronizing remarks, such as claiming that you “pity” us, is nothing more than mudslinging disguised behind a false sense of moral superiority, and it will get your remarks flushed into the spam bucket without a second thought.
• If you, or any of your sources have a vested interest in the issue that could affect credibility, we expect you to disclose it.
• Just because you saw something in the mainstream media does not automatically mean it is true. Many stories, photos, and videos have appeared in the mainstream media and have later been shown to be planted by untrustworthy sources, staged, mislabeled, Photoshopped, or otherwise falsified. Check it first!

In particular, we will not post comments that contain racist or bigoted ranting, especially the anti-Semitic ranting and the Serb-bashing that seems to be plaguing the blogosphere these days. We don’t care how many times you have seen or heard the same piece of Serb-bashing or Jew-bashing or Israel-bashing in the blogosphere or even in the mainstream media. As we have just pointed out, this does NOT make it true, nor does it give you any right to repeat it here.

What’s a blogger or admin to do?

1389 Blog posts a comments policy and we enforce it consistently. Anyone with a modicum of common sense should already be aware of what is acceptable on this and most other blogs. But if you have any doubts, read it before you send us email or comment on this, or any other, post on this blog.

We encourage people to post comments or use the Contact Us form in our blog to expose injustice or other wrongdoing. We have no objection to leveling verifiable accusations against public officials or other culpable individuals, organizations, or governments. We have no objection to polemics or to strong opinions. We encourage readers to engage in vigorous debate and to point out any factual errors that we or other commenters might make. We also encourage readers to investigate and report suspicious incidents and criminal or terrorist activity, and to keep us up to date with that information. But if the accusations cannot be substantiated, the communication in question will be either refuted or deleted.

It is up to us, as bloggers and admins, to maintain civility in our part of the blogosphere. If we fail to make this effort, the better part (in both senses of the word) of our audience will leave. I suggest that it is time for each of us to set up and enforce our comment policies to stop that from happening. And when it comes to dealing with haters, I suggest that we take care neither to let malicious commenters spew their bile until everyone else gives up and lets the haters have the last word, nor to allow false accusations to stand unanswered in any of our comment or forum threads.

Also see:

• There’s an angry fire in cyberspace
• Foehammer’s Anvil: Words of Warning to Commenters
• The definitive guide to Trolls - Ubuntu Forums
• Flame Warriors Home
• Attacking genuine evil in the blogosphere

Technorati : Israel, Nazism, Serbia, anti-Semitism, blogging, comment policy, forum, hate, incivility, injustice, spam, troll, wikis

Added 11/27/2007:
Click here for more articles about LGF

1389 was banned from Little Green Footballs as of November 24, 2007

No explanation was given, nor is any explanation needed

I could read the handwriting on the wall. Since the onset of the huge feud that Charles Johnson deliberately started with Gates of Vienna and the rest of the antijihadist blogosphere, which involved Charles hurling very thinly substantiated accusations of fascist links to European antijihadist organizations, I could see that LGF had changed, and not for the better.

Six or more degrees of politically incorrect = BANNED

Ever since then, no one has been free to speak his or her mind as a commenter on LGF without fear of being viciously ridiculed and then banned. Nor could anyone feel free to post links to other sites without having to worry about being banned for linking to something that is “six degrees of politically incorrect.”

Anybody who reads the comment threads can observe what the remaining members of LGF feel that they must do to prove their loyalty. They search constantly for any evidence of LGF members or ex-members expressing any support for, linking to, or communicating with anyone on Dear Leader’s ever-growing disapproved list.

The old sense of camaraderie at LGF has long since vanished, along with most of the people with whom I would have wanted to exchange messages. There is nothing left but paranoia and a competition for who can launch the most mean-spirited ridicule against Charles Johnson’s latest batch of officially-designated enemies.

Everyone who wants to remain an active member of LGF must fall in line, because if they don’t, sooner or later they’ll be banned too!

No Stalinist purges for 1389 Blog

I do a great deal of blogging and commenting that has nothing to do with LGF. Just for starters, I am primary admin for 1389 Blog - Antijihadist Tech and for 1389 Message Blog. I post regularly Fort Hard Knox*, and occasionally at Screw the UN and Thought Mechanics. I am fairly active on StumbleUpon and Twitter.

To remain a member of LGF, I would have had to drop all of the officially designated “nonpersons,” especially banned former LGF members, from the blogrolls and link lists on my own blogs. I would have had to be careful not to link to news stories from any proscribed persons or organizations in my own blog posts. I would not have been able to review those stories on StumbleUpon or mention them on Twitter or other sites I frequent.

In other words, I would have had to surrender my own freedom of expression and association. This I was unwilling to do. True, I miss what LGF once was, or perhaps could have been, but I am realistic enough to see it for what it is. And it’s none of Charles Johnson’s business who else I cite or associate with.

Why send LGF any more traffic?

The conflict still continues at LGF. The last few remaining dissenters on LGF are speaking up, though not for long. After this blog post has been up for a little while, no doubt someone will post snarky comments on LGF about the infamous banned user 1389, same as they do with everyone else. But I have no intention of lurking on LGF to ego-surf for remarks about me. I have also removed the LGF news feed reader widget from the sidebar. If you still want it, you can get it directly from them. But why send LGF that extra little bit of traffic?

LGF has joined the dark side

LGF is no longer an antijihadist site, if it ever was. Whether Charles Johnson is consciously aware of it or not, LGF has gone over to the other side, or perhaps it has always been there. It is covertly helping our enemies by sowing dissention and by muzzling genuine antijihadist voices everywhere.

LGF takes no part in activism against jihadism. Nor does it make any effort to help any other antijihadist sites or organizations. I have become convinced that LGF never had any intention of doing anything effective to begin with, and that this was the real reason for its boycott of Counterjihad Brussels 2007. LGF merely wishes to appear to be an antijihadist site, and to that end, it posts a sprinkling of terrorist news stories to draw readership. In other words, LGF is nothing more than a disguised version of Daily Kos or the ACLU. I don’t know who has bought out LGF, and I don’t even care at this point. Their declining traffic figures are already rendering them irrelevant.

Tragic irony: the censored has become the censor

The saddest thing of all is that, some months ago, I helped LGF by launching a campaign to get them, and other sites, unbanned from various “censorware” blacklists. Before that, I had worked hard to promote LGF stories on Digg, against the efforts of the infamous “Bury Brigade.” Now LGF has retaliated, if that’s the proper word, by banning me.

It is time to punt littlegreenfootballs, once and for all.

Addenda

Looking for former LGF members? Check out Gulf Coast Pundit Forums.

We get hate mail! See Little Green Footballs - Hitting New Lows, One After Another.

*Update 11/26/07, by Jenn Sierra who is an author here and admin of the Ft. Hard Knox project, with the permission of 1389:

The opinions of our authors, expressed in their posts on FHK or elsewhere on the web, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of FHK. We do, however, thank our authors for their contributions and their widely-varying perspectives on an impressive variety of topics.

Technorati : 1389, Bury Brigade, Digg, Gates of Vienna, Gulf Coast Pundit, blog censorship, censorware, enemy propaganda, forum, leftist-jihadist convergence, political correctness
Del.icio.us : 1389, Bury Brigade, Digg, Gates of Vienna, Gulf Coast Pundit, blog censorship, censorware, enemy propaganda, forum, leftist-jihadist convergence, political correctness
Ice Rocket : 1389, Bury Brigade, Digg, Gates of Vienna, Gulf Coast Pundit, blog censorship, censorware, enemy propaganda, forum, leftist-jihadist convergence, political correctness

Powered by Zoundry

The goal of the FHK project is to assist politically-conservative bloggers, social-networkers, and citizen journalists to navigate the wild, wild world of Web 2.0 more effectively.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Ft. Hard Knox Project, here are the links:

• Ft. Hard Knox Main Page and Blog
• Ft. Hard Knox Discussion Forum
• Ft. Hard Knox Discussion Forum Chat
• Ft. Hard Knox Wiki

“Wiki…What?” A Wiki is a user-supported and continuously-evolving hypertext encyclopedia. Thus, by definition, a Wiki is always “under construction.” The Ft. Hard Knox Wiki has recently been established within the Wikispaces environment, and it already has some useful articles. Its purpose is to offer an easy way to access tech tips and information, to help conservatives use the Web more effectively.

Using the FHK Forum and Chat Room:

The Ft. Hard Knox forum is hosted on Delphi, so you’ll need to register for a Delphi user ID if you don’t already have one. Registration for the basic functions is free, and that’s all you need to leave messages on the forum or to use the chat room. Prompts will appear when you click on the link. It takes just a minute to sign up!

Updated 7/17/07:

Meet with us on Twitter!

• The Monday night FHK forum chat has been discontinued for now. That’s because it’s too difficult to get everybody in different time zones all over the world to meet at the same time, especially in the summer when so many people are traveling.
• Instead, we’re encouraging fellow conservatives and antijihadist activists to meet with us on Twitter. You can use Twitter both in “real time” for chatting with people who are online at the same time, and as a forum for communicating with people who will be online at other times.
• Click here to view all of our articles about Twitter. We’ll have many more articles about Twitter in the future!
• So how do I get started on Twitter? The easiest way is to ask an established user to introduce you to other Twitterers. Whom to ask? Me, of course! Don’t be shy. Just go to the Twitter site, register an account, click on my profile at 1389, and add me as a friend. I’ll “friend” you back soon afterward. Then send me a message introducing yourself, and I’ll begin introducing you to others. I hope to see you there soon!

Updated 7/2/07:

• We’ll be discussing the Ft. Hard Knox Wiki during tonight’s Forum Chat, so please stop by if you’d like to know more, or if you think you might be interested in working with us!

Updated 6/26/07:

• The main page and blog for the Ft. Hard Knox project have moved to a new address, http://forthardknox.com/
• From the new URL, the Ft. Hard Knox blog can be accessed via a cellphone or PDA browser as well as from a conventional browser.

Technorati tags:
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TinyURL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yo8og9

Why do some people look askance at Wikis in general, and at Wikipedia, the 800-pound gorilla of the Wiki world, in particular? This project page, entitled Wikipedia: Lamest edit wars, reveals the human frailties that tend to weaken the credibility of what should be a valuable social media tool.

Free and open debate is a vital part of the search for truth, but is that what we’re seeing here? When it comes to certain hot-button issues, the search for truth among the Wikipedia community (such as it is) degenerates into a welter of animosity, politicking, ego-tripping, spin-doctoring, and ad hominem arguments. Evidently, the Wikipedians who wrote this project page saw no alternative but to give up on the possibility of making any further progress toward resolving these issues. Instead, they labeled these edit wars “lame,” characterized all of the participants as equally unreasonable and contemptible, and held the entire process up to ridicule.

The character flaws that give rise to such ugly disputes are, sadly, part of the human condition. All too often, they are encountered not only among independent researchers, but also among those in academia, government, and the corporate world. But it’s a matter of degree. In cyberspace, without traditions or established systems in place for resolving such things in a civil manner, incivility often runs rampant under cover of anonymity, and the interaction readily devolves into a flame war.

The problem is that incivility erodes credibility. Discussion and debate have a vital place in the process of building and supporting a wiki. But honest debate has nothing to do with bullying, manipulation, or spin-doctoring. Nor is there any room for the mistaken concept that truth can be arrived at simply by putting the matter up to a vote! For the wiki to earn the respect of the public, this debate must be conducted with respect for the other participants, for the readership, and, most of all, for the truth.

Technorati tags:
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forum
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Sooner or later, every forum moderator, blogger, blog admin, wiki organizer, or Web 2.0 aficionado will have to confront the issue of comment spammers. There are no easy answers. Posting a comment policy statement, such as that shown under the About page tab, may help to discourage human-generated spam, but ‘bot-generated spam will require other measures.

Here are some articles on the topic that may be helpful:

• Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?
• Comment Spammers: Internet Pigs
• Spamming Social Networks is a No-No

Sometimes, though, the bloggers and webmasters themselves are to blame for degrading the quality of the blogosphere:

• Content Hypertext Spam

Technorati tags:
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comment policy
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spam
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Fellow blogger Ron Goodwyne introduces this new blog:

The project is called Ft. Hard Knox and you can find it at www.FortHardKnox.com. Of course you’ll find excellent conservative commentary and opinion there but that is not its primary purpose. It is designed to combine blogging, wikkis and message boards in one platform to involve people who are not necessarily web savvy.

Some of the authors on 1389 Mobile Blog will be helping out at Ft. Hard Knox as well.

Technorati tags:
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I’ve been using the Omgili search engine to locate online discussions on my favorite topics for some time now, but today I discovered two new beta projects by the Omgili folks: Omgili Thumbs, and Omgili PowWow.

First, what is Omgili?  Omgili is to the discussion forum what Technorati is to the blog.  It is a search engine designed specifically to find online discussions using queries.  More info is at the FAQ page and the Recent Queries page.  The process is very simple; users simply enter the topic they are researching, and Omgili provides a list of online discussions on that topic.

Omgili PowWow added the feature of allowing users to register, and develop profiles, so that they can find and be found by users with similar interests.   Users are able to exchange messages online, either publicly or privately.  Users can post new discussions, and there is a polling feature in the works which looks interesting but is not yet functional.

Omgili Thumbs takes this search engine to the next level, by allowing users to submit existing online discussions (from any forum), comment on, and vote for and promote online discussions they like or give a “thumbs-down,” to those they don’t like.

I still have one question, and have not yet been able to find the answer.  I have posted the question as a discussion on Omgili PowWow, and will post and update on this blog when I receive an answer. The question is this: ” Where in the world did the name ‘Omgili’ come from?!”

Jenn Sierra

Technorati tags:
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