The preview button, please show it to me.

Am I getting it right? Please let me know.

I didn’t… oh wait. Darn.

This is on the same grounds they now disemvowel for saying “I’m tired of Steampunk” or “Cory how dare you promote your own books on your own blog”—asked and answered ad nauseam, and any further instances are just boring and useless, and to the detriment of the conversation and the community.

But, in the mean time, I’ve been told to bring more to the table, told (without any elaboration) that I’m wrong about what is as far as I can tell a bog standard defintion of a moderator’s role in the community, and had something from this post itself, which I’ve very much read, quoted back to me. (I guess. Was it aimed at me? Was it intended as an oblique answer to my question? Is it so weird to expect a non-oblique answer?)

This is the one place on BB, as I understand it, where it’s okay and even encouraged to discuss moderation policy and practice on the site. I’m an interested, not an aggrieved, party; I have had no comments disemvoweled or deleted, have been party to no administrative smackdowns, have been on receiving end of no aggressive comments from any of the mod staff (save — I guess? Still? Because no one, still, seems to be willing to even yea or nay this — Takuan, who I understand is regardless well-liked amongst the regulars; and in that case I suppose I started it by actually stating criticism).

I have no beef, in short, to justify the notion that I’m coming in here to try and convert a black eye into a cap-feather, or some other such thing that’d explain the defensive response. So the mild hostility towards even broaching the subject politely, the being rebuffed with comments about my sense of entitlement and worthiness of respect for having asked civil questions about moderation in the thread where moderation questions are supposed to be asked: irking. It irks. I’m willing to put myself as a summer resident of Irksville for the moment, on that front.

DNG DNG DNG W hv wnnr! W hv wnnr!

Takuan @6: Actually, speaking rot-13 is the new l33t. As Xopher has already pointed out upthread while I was busy basketweaving.

EricT @46: 5 seconds: Coding time or runtime?

Nix @166: If Teresa were to throw Making Book at one, one would duck, retrieve the book and hope it’s autographed. There must be at least two of it, because my copy has never left the house… while I’m looking.

Gary61 @168: That happens all the time at Making Light. It’s rather funny.

And a bug report: for some reason which made sense at the time, I signed up here twice, once as Chatworthy, once as Patrick Connors. I signed in as Patrick Connors, but the preview shows Chatworthy. Strange, but not the end of the world.

It does not involve waterboarding in a steampunk bath haus, plush knitted voodoo dolls for gregarious offenders, or being subjected to ridicule by having your name used in Cory Doctorow’s new book as a government mule used to put cameras up people’s butts.

BoingBoing needs something with some teeth to it. I suggest someone opens a thread about what terrible penalties to impose upon the moderated and incorporates loyalty oaths into the signup process.

While we are at it, is there a BoingBoing flag I can display proudly from my doorstep?

M

But, I *hate* the disemvoweling! It just makes reading these (usually unworthy) comments 10 times as long and wastes so much more of my time than just deleting the comment would have taken. Maybe this is one of those “too precious” BB sacred cows, but I find it really obnoxious.

May I suggest doing what digg, slashdot and many other sites do and just hiding the comments that meet whatever medium-offensive threshold that currently results in disemvoweling?

Technically, it would be a totally trivial thing to do — add an additionally CSS class like badcomment to the comment-content div with { display: none; }, then add a JS onClick to show the comment. Or have JS insert the text so it doesn’t get included by search engines’ indexes.

The closest thread I can find to match your description is from October of last year, about an author who unapologetically plagiarized a recently dead writer’s book, then played the disability card to try to excuse her behavior. Her agent, meanwhile, made threats both financial and spiritual.

This didn’t go down well in a group of writers, many of them disabled.

Tell me, do you think bringing rape analogies into this discussion is any better an idea?

Your guests can have fun trying to identify their god’s, and their likes and dislikes, as well as suggest fun interpretations of their god’s opinions on the hot topics of the day!

Fun for all :)

Do be careful to fully defrost your gods before heating, as salmonella and botulism can be a real issue.