Discussion Group

Thanks, Jim!
This just made my whole day. Via Have Browser: The Daily Rotten: Taliban Thwarted by Irreproducible Result .

Go thou, and rediscover the humor even in times such as these.

There's the love!
Hey, what's that in the sidebar of Gonzo Engaged? Right next to people like Doc Searls and the fine folk at The 11th Hour? Us!

I corresponded briefly with the builder of Gonzo Engaged and thanked her. This now puts the book in question on the to buy list.

There's no love here!
Long-time members of this site are familiar with nitcentral, the bulletin board that is the only surviving aspect of Nitpicker Central Internet Extension Office. Voices of Unreason grew out of Nitcentral. I kept posting long rants on various threads there, and got frustrated with the fact that I had to keep them short. It's a bulletin board, after all, and a ten page post is ungood. Beyond that the first few Authors followed me here. It would be fun to play a "six degrees of Unreason" game and see how everyone's interconnected. Heck, I met my fiancee there.

I generally don't indulge in cross-website criticism. If I have a problem with the way someone is doing something I much prefer to just talk to them about it. Or even better just keep it to myself; I have my own site and can run it however I choose. It's a big old web. It's not my job to police everything.

Yet.

I do have a lot of affection for Nitcentral, so I'm going to break that rule for a moment here. The site's kinda gone downhill. Specifically, the "political musings" and "religious musings" threads are a complete disaster, particularly the latter. Part of it is one long-time poster who refuses to act even remotely like a civilized adult. The majority of it is a complete lack of control by the moderators. In religious musings, the moderator made a thread with a title specifically to attack this poster. WTF?

I've recently been spending some time reading the website for Design for Community by web notable Derek Powazek. The book is now on my shortlist--at the top, right before a good book on CSS and a good book on javascript, in that order. The excerpts from that book make for very interesting reading. It plays into some ideas that I've had half-formed in my head, and it expands on them in a clear and understandable way. Really, go read through the excerpts and decide for yourself.

I've called for a moderator's meeting--I'll end up e-mailing the Chief Nitpicker himself--so that we can discuss some of these issues. I really don't want to continue to be associated with a website where a moderator makes a thread just to attack a member. For that matter, I don't want to be associated with a website where one member is allowed to run rampant the way this one member is. I am well aware that there are sites where he would be more than welcome. Brian Carnell, for example, doesn't seem to be horribly bothered by namecalling--he was quoted in my local independent paper once calling a local activist a moron. (The guy is.) That works well for Brian's community, and I'm not criticizing Brian for that.

I do feel that the moderators at Nitcentral, lacking guidance from Phil, allow way too much nonsense. We're talking a man who won't let there be a board for discussing The Simpsons because Bart is a bad role model for children, in his opinion. I think he'd be heartbroken to see some of the things that happen at Nitcentral while he's away.

I don't know what the end result of the meeting will be, and really whatever they decide is fine. It's not my site. It's something that has been bothering me for a long time now and I just needed to get it off my chest.

I work hard to avoid that sort of thing happening here. That despite a commitment not to delete posts. I think the next phase of that is going to have to be some clear terms of service. There are obviously times when I am going to have to delete posts--copyrighted material and porn come immediately to mind. With a strong commitment to freedom of thought and responsible behavior, we should do okay.