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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David Sucher seems to like to have the last word on his blog City Comforts, and as it is his blog, he gets to call the tune and delete comments as he sees fit. That said, his claim that he only deletes comments which do not have real e-mail addresses is simply untrue. Nevertheless, his blog, his rules. Fair enough, we set our comment editorial policy here on Samizdata.net as we see fit too.
I took Sucher to task for what seemed to me to be some vindictive comments aimed at Jackie D, one of the Samizdatistas, regarding comments over on Harry’s Place and on his own blog that were started off by Dick Cheney’s indelicate words on the US Senate floor. My final comment on David Sucher’s blog was deleted, so… this one’s for you, David:
I am, as you point out, a ‘libertarian’ (for what of a better word. I prefer ‘liberal’ myself, or even ‘social individualist’), so the reference to ‘statism’ cannot be put aside. However the fact there are indeed a great many libertarian jackasses is not germane at all.
The use of the term statist in my comment is to demonstrate that I (like Jackie) regard both parties as odious and largely interchangeable thieves, and therefore the issue of Cheney telling someone to “go fuck themselves” is, to me, not a very damaging uses of language in a legislature. I wish all they ever did was curse at each other, but alas they do eventually get down to the serious business of administering looting rights. So for me, it is all rather a non-issue for the same reasons Jackie indicated.
Both here and on Harry’s blog you commented “It’s obviously not the saying of “fuck yourself” which is the issue”… but you are quite incorrect as Jackie makes clear that is *indeed* the issue she is talking about, not Dick Cheney.
As she was defending the use of “Go fuck yourself” when appropriate, rather than Dick Cheney himself, it seems that her disinclination to get into what I have described as a partisan ‘two minute hate’, adding to the chorus of “Oh those wicked Republicans”, was what incurred your ire and intemperate language. We all have tetchy days on our blogs but you do yourself no credit given the length you seem to have gone to to pick a fight with her.
So I am not holding “feeling better” as a standard for public behaviour because for me the issue is *your* behaviour, not Dick Cheney’s.
With due regard.
A few weeks ago when we culled the so-called race realists (neo-fascist racists) that were camping in Samizdata.net’s comment section, it became clear to me that if you let ill mannered loud mouths use your venue to try and shout down discourse and endlessly turn unrelated topics to their pet thesis, all you do is attract more ill mannered loud mouths who will do the same.
Everyone has their techy days in the comment section but when a person makes a habit of being obnoxious and immune to rational argument, I see no reason to indulge them or tolerate them. This is not a forum and this is not a chat room, it is a blog, which is quite different. Many blogs do not even have comment sections.
When you open your house to visitors, you do not give up the right to kick people out if they start insulting other guests and spray painting their opinions on the wall. Of course some people would say, “Oh but that is censorship if you stop them”. Er, no, it is just maintaining control over what is and is not acceptable on your private property… but of course some people, the sort that I am now far quicker to ban, do not actually believe in private property (not when you pin them down), and often cannot see that censorship by the state of private media channels and editorial control over a private media channel (such as a blog, for example) are materially different things. But then to someone who thinks all interaction should be political (the usual term used is ‘democratic’ these days), such distinctions make little difference to them. I am not referring here to specific people but rather the general class from which our ‘problem commenters’ tend to spring.
Some cannot see that they are not being ‘censored’ because of whatever their views are, any more than a man who gets on a table in a restaurant, drops his draws and starts calling for the darkies to be thrown out of Britain or for the middle class to have their homes confiscated is being ‘censored’ when he gets thrown out by a bouncer for being an jackass.
If I have any regrets it is that I have been too indulgent of endlessly poorly argued and often off topic drivel posted by a small minority of serial commenters in the past. I have no objection to vocal dissent from the ‘Samizdata.net world view’ (whatever that is), I just object to a constant stream of unsupported contentions delivered by megaphone that makes no attempt to actually engage in discourse. We have lots of dissenters who comment here regularly that I would not dream of banning.
So yes, there is a new hard line. Trolls and blogroaches will not be indulged and will be ejected rather swifter in future.
Nick Denton of Gawker, Gizmodo (etc. etc.) fame is perhaps the best known face on the commercial blog scene and certainly the most quoted these days. I also think he is quite incorrect in his understanding of why people read blogs, which means I think his business model is not one I would care to follow myself. Do I think all of what the redoubtable Denton does is wrong? No, not at all, but I do not really think the foremost advocate of blogging-for-business really understand blogs that well and I do not think he understand the blogosphere at all.
Most people do not look at something because they want to have advertisements shoved in front of them. Old style ‘interruption marketing’ might work when people have few options, say just a few TV channels, and are willing therefore to accept advertising as the ‘price’ for something else they value, but what Nick Denton seems to be saying is that there are lots of people who actually like reading ad-copy and will read blogs that are just well packaged advertisements (or ‘advertainment’ if you prefer) when the Internet is awash with places giving content away and doing no such thing. I simply do not believe that is true. Yet I do believe that there is a role for commercial blogging.
People read blogs to get a different perspective, even if they do not always agree with it. If people want to read a blog which is largely advertisement dressed up in well written urban hip and blog-speak rather begs the question, why would such a person not just stick to established media channels which are filled with endless marketing? Are blog readers really so dim as to not pick out the fact they are just being handed the same old interruption marketing message dressed up in a slightly different way?
I think for a commercial blog to succeed, it must do the same thing as a successful non-commercial blog, and that means it must be interesting and credible to its audience. In fact I would say a blog is a ‘credibility machine’. To use the words of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a blog must speak with the author’s authentic voice if it is to be believed… and it is a rare company indeed who can be authentic if all people hear from them is what their marketing and PR department say.
For a companies and other institutions to blog successfully, and people like Macromedia, The Adam Smith Institute, Microsoft and others do indeed blog successfully, then they actually have to speak in ways that are a long way from a press release that has been carefully worded by the PR department, and a million miles away from copy produced by an advertising agency. No one actually believes that crap any more and sticking it on a blog just makes it stand out like poop on a pool table.
No, if a company wants to blog, it needs to decide that it wants to be forthright and talk to people like human beings… if you have desirable or difficult or complex products and have interesting things to say about them, people might actually be interested in hearing what you have to say if you can convince them you are not just parroting the same old sales pitches served up for the Google Generation.
When I am not lurking and posting here in Samizdata.net, I earn my daily crust selling blogging expertise to companies via The Big Blog Company. Business seems to be picking up as increasing numbers of people in boardrooms are getting more clueful about what a blog (or blogs) can do for them, and so… we are looking for a couple people who might be interested in helping out on an independent, project by project basis.
London location would be ideal – face-to-face just has so much higher bandwidth – but we would certainly consider working virtually with someone more or less anywhere provided they have broadband. Our tech guru Henry spells out here what he would like. → Continue reading: Looking for some web savants
… and the reason I was listening to Radio 4 (see below) was to hear one of my favourite programmes, which is called Quote Unquote.
Some recycled quotes, then.
Apparently, a newspaper whose name I did not catch had on the front at the top, everyday, the following slogan:
As independent as resources permit.
I requote this in my turn because (a) I like it, and because (b) I think it says a great deal about blogging.
This was supplied by Simon Jenkins, who then went on to say that he “used to be” a pompous reporter, which also made me laugh. He did later somewhat redeem himself in my ears by reporting this motorway sign:
Emergency toilets 25 miles.
I guess emergency toilets, like newspaper independence, occur as often as resources permit.
The furore over blog publishing software Movable Type‘s new licence arrangements continues to send shockwaves across the blogosphere. As it happens we were considering moving away from MT to a different php based content management system for Samizdata.net anyway (and we certainly will now)… but I think that what is really interesting about this incident is that trackback has truly come of age.
Like many very thoughtful bloggers, I think SixApart have just taken their best weapon, pointed it right at their foot and pulled the trigger.
But what really interests me is that the storm of hostile trackbacks have provided SixApart with magnificent and unequivocal information on what their market really thinks. The business implications for spontaneous feedback like that are almost inestimable. Of course that does not mean SixApart will correctly respond to the explosion at the core of their business model, but the fact is that the information they need to do exactly that has just landed on them in a very helpful and rather spectacular manner.
Trackback has come of age. It is now an indispensable feature for any commercially oriented blog.
If reading about the failing of Robert Fisk and being hunted in a pub by ‘peace’ activist harridans if your cup of tea (it certainly is mine), then you could do worse than read the compelling and pleasingly off-beat Blog Irish:
Having exhausted her ignorance on the subject of Eamo, she suggested that we discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We suggested that after five pints that was probably not a good idea.
With no further ado, she started screeching at the top of her lungs at us. We walked to the other end of the pub, and she followed, still screeching. The pub patrons and staff took no notice whatsoever. She left, and returned five minutes later with five angry women who were apparently going to show us the error of our ways. They searched through the pub, and though we were sitting near the entrance, affected not to see us, and left.
It is a funny old world.
The Adam Smith Institute‘s blog has moved, so update your links to:
www.adamsmith.org/blog
This story is already being well bounced around the blogosphere. Let me give it another bounce. Here is what Jacob Sullum of Reason online says:
Although prosecutors admitted Paey was not a drug trafficker, on April 16 he received a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for drug trafficking. That jaw-dropping outcome illustrates two sadly familiar side effects of the war on drugs: the injustice caused by mandatory minimum sentences and the suffering caused by the government’s interference with pain treatment.
Paey, a 45-year-old father of three, is disabled as a result of a 1985 car accident, failed back surgery, and multiple sclerosis. Today, as he sits in jail in his wheelchair, a subdermal pump delivers a steady, programmed dose of morphine to his spine. But for years he treated his pain with Percocet, Lortab (a painkiller containing the narcotic hydrocodone), and Valium prescribed by his doctor in New Jersey, Steven Nurkiewicz.
Insane.
I got to this by going to Instapundit and then to National Review.
War on drugs: insane; the blogosphere: sane.
I can report a successful semi-transition to my new position in Dallas, Texas, where I am on the legal staff of a large health care system. I am still very much in transition, but once our house sells in Wisconsin things should settle down and allow me to get back to regular blogging.
I had thought I might be able to shed the pseudonym when I landed in a new place. I do not like pseudonyms, but in my former position I was doing political work for clients, a business where where publicly held strong opinions of my own would be both a professional liability and a disservice to my clients. I expect to be doing political work for my new organization, so at this point it seems prudent to keep the pseudonym.
Still, I hope to hook up with the du Toits (and any other Dallas-area Samizdata readers) soon. Just let me get my concealed carry license first.
Anyone who frequents our comment sections can hardly have failed to notice that several of our serial commenters are profoundly collectivist racists who like to call themselves ‘race realists’, whilst at the same time affecting implausible pretensions to be supporters of liberty. Fortunately this does not seem to fool anyone if the reactions of other commenters are anything to go by. A person may hold whatever prejudices they wish but when they make it clear they value their notions of the good of some collective volk over the rights of individuals to pursue inter-racial relationships, and would use the state to give those notions the force of law, it should be clear that person has little conception of what ‘liberty’ means.
Now as this blog is private property, we can delete comments and/or outright ban people for no better reason than the editorial pantheon simply feels like it. Although we do not use pre-publish comment moderation, just as a newspaper editor can publish (or not) whatever letters are in keeping with the mores of the publication in question, we too have that right post-publish and we do indeed occasionally exercise it when we delete unwelcome comments from spammers or blogroaches.
However although we are within our rights to handle our comment section as we wish, we dislike excluding contrary views to those expressed in our articles unless we see a very good reason to do so. Whilst reader comments are an optional adjunct to blogging (many highly successful blogs do not have them at all), at Samizdata.net we do indeed appreciate the contribution commenters make and thus are loath to over-manage what they write, provided a reasonable degree of civility and topicality to the article are observed.
However when collectivist racists start using Samizdata.net to consistently promote an agenda, and are condescending and misogynistic to boot, it is time to show them the door without insincere regrets. Now I realise that given the personalities involved, this will be seen as proof of the irrefutability of their positions regardless of the fact they have repeatedly had the sand kicked out of them intellectually on many occasions by some very insightful people. To put it bluntly, I am not unduly concerned and a certain Monty Python episode comes to mind.
For me as editor the final straw was hearing that one of our contributors was loath to write on certain topics because of the near certainty that the discussion would be immediately hijacked with the same flawed but stridently put arguments that had been convincingly demolished time and time again in earlier comment threads. Although I always urge our contributing writers, the Samizdatistas, not to actually write with comments in mind but rather what is on their mind, this for me was intolerable and more or less mandated action on my part. Henceforth comments by the people in question will be summarily deleted from the blog.
As you might surmise, I am not writing this article for the people who are being banned from commenting but rather for other readers whose opinions (and disagreements) I value more highly, and also for the Samizdata.net contributors as both an ex cathedra editorial policy statement and a not uninteresting discussion point on the nature of blogs such as Samizdata.net and internet discussion generally in its varied forms.
Alice Bachini has decided to bring her blogging career to an end. At least for now.
I really have got to the end of the blogging phase that started a year and a half ago when I created this blog under the old title you can still see if you look up the stats. I’ve said everything I wanted to say here, met lots of interesting people and had a huge amount of fun. And now my creativity is going into new demanding projects and as a blogger I’ve run out of anything original to say.
I am sure she has not run out of original things to say because people like Alice seldom do. However, operating a solo-blog is a demanding and time-intensive business and, if there are other things that she wants to do with her life then I can sympathise with the need to boldly prioritise.
She intimates that she might return to blogging at some point in the future and I certainly hope she does. The blogosphere, particularly the British end of it, needs all the voices of reason it can get.
As a parting gift, her final (if indeed it proves to be ‘final’) entry consists of a fulsome and righteous rant:
It’s fine to blow people up if your cause is anti-Americanism. Only capitalists should be pacifists: because that way, they will lose the war. Evil fucking hypocritical bastards. Every single one of them should go and live in a country whose values they actually support. But I suppose they don’t want to strap pretend bombs to their kids, give them machine guns and parade them in the streets.
In the traditions of good performers everywhere, she has left us all wanting more.
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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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