We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The state of the net… … may cause some system response latency in the Samizdata primary data meat buffer.
I am attending The State of the Net conference in Trieste so in between listening to fellow Samizdatista Adriana Lukas explain why all why “all yer hierarchies are belong to us” and doing my bit to drain Europe’s wine lakes, there may be some delays in clearing comments caught in SmiteBot’s merciless jaws.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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A very interesting talk by Adriana.
1. interesting stuff.
2. you lucky bastard
Yes it is and yes I am 😛
And Ernst, your cat keeps leaving white fluff on my sofa.
Trieste is a little gem. Much under appreciated place.
Quite thought provoking, Adriana’s talk… thanx for the link.
I’d like to suggest that Samizdata move to a third-party comment system such as Disqus or Intense Debate. That way, it would be easier for commenters to track and revisit conversations across the posts. Or, maybe whoever coded this comments section could create a dashboard, which would serve the same function. Just a suggestion…
Having wrestled for years with the likes of Disqus and others, I beg and plead that Samizdata avoid all the external commenting systems like the plague.
One problem is that one often has to log in to Google, or some tentacle of the octopus, that insists on tracking. All for your own benefit and strictly on the Q.T., of course.
Yahoo Groups all present postings and comments in outline format, which is good in some ways but counterproductive in others.
I would point out that the current Samizdata system hampers skimming–which of course is the basic complaint–but the hampering means that each comment is at least glanced over, so has a chance of being read, which is often a boon to the reader.
Also, many comments are pertinent to more than one earlier comment. An outline format forces the commenter to choose just one posting or comment as the one to which his response is made. And if people become used to reading only responses in their chosen tier (if you see what I mean), they will miss the best comments of all–the ones that are integrated responses to several points. :>)
I concur.
Threading comment systems are a Tool Of The Devil. ‘Likes” and ‘dislikes’ are worse.
I also concur. My only suggestion (since we’re on this topic) is that when smited comments are released from smitebot purgatory they be placed into the thread at that time, not at the time of original submission. I tend to go to the end of a thread to pick up comments that have been added since the last one I read, which means that unless I go up and scan through the whole thing (not realistic in a long, busy thread) I sometimes miss un-smited comments.
And I also dislike some of those external commenting systems because they require log-in through Facebook or some such. I don’t have a Facebook account and have no intention of getting one, and I don’t at all fancy giving Google or anyone else tracking ability over me. (That’s why I use an anonymizer for internet searches.) There are a lot of sites where I would like to post a comment but don’t for that very reason. Please don’t go that route.
Oh yes. Problem is that, if I remember correctly from my blogging days, doing this would be anywhere between tricky to impossible.
Oh, and I of course also concur on the threaded comments – not good at all.
Laird: “An anonymizer”??
–By the way, delighted to be not-seeing you on Facebook. I hope you’ll be happy to know you’ll be not-seeing me there either. 🙂
Oh, the Smite-bot is in great form today! It doesn’t even want to HEAR about anybody not-seeing anybody on Facebook!
–Will this too be geschmited? LOL
And the answer promptly cometh forth: YES.
Well done, O great Bot!
Alas this is true as Laird’s suggestion was a good one, but damned if I can see a way to do it 🙁
I doubt it can be done even in WP, let alone in MT – but I’ve been out of that for quite some time, so it may be worth looking into nonetheless…
It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one, Julie! I’ll be sure to not-friend you.
Don’t you use an anonymizer? I use Startingpage (a descendant of Ixquick, I think) but there are others, too.
I deactivated my facebook account quite some time ago as I realised it was the answer to the question I had never asked… and being marketed at by people I have no interest in whatsoever does not really appeal to me… so you can not-friend me as well 🙂
Wow, thank you, Laird! I had no idea there is such a thing. I haven’t used Google search in ages except when in the most dire of straits. (Besides, I’m boycotting Google on principle.) I used to use mostly Yahoo search (not crazy about them either), but then was told about DuckDuckGo, which claims to avoid all tracking AND carries no ads. In truth they miss some of the results I get from Yahoo, though.
It’s so nice having not-friends on Facebook. Laird, Perry, me…I’ll bet there are other self-exiles lurking out there in the wilderness, alone and if not unloved then at least not-friended!
Heh…furthermore, “She Faceth not, neither doth she Tweet.”
PS. I must admit I’m becoming fond of the Smite-bot. Gives me an excuse to enjoy those amazingly talented felines as they deal with various bumps in the road of life. :>)))!!!
The Smitebot and I have a love-hate relationship (although, in fairness, I suspect that it’s unrequited). But it’s the only thing in my life which drives me to poetry.
:))!