What is "blatantly illegal content"? Are you saying, e.g. would they delete links to child porn? In fact, I do not know. Porn is occasionally posted, and sometimes questions are raised about the age of people depicted, but I don't know any instances of blatant child porn being posted on the board.
Do you think they would leave that up? Serious question, here. That's what "unmoderated" means.
Now how about posting internal law firm memos that are clearly confidential? Or court filings that were not supposed to be made public? This is the type of stuff that got ThinkSecret in trouble. In these cases, I'm pretty sure the admins would leave it up. If the law firm or the litigating parties wanted it removed, they could get a court order or some kind of injunction, and the admins would deal with that. The women described in the article are also free to do the same.
You don't think that may be a bit of a barrier? That perhaps an injunction taking down the images (but since it's unmoderated, someone can surely just post them again) and the information would bit a bit late in coming? Do you really think that's a reasonable expectation? "We're going to post libelous statements about you. If you don't like it, get a court order."
If the board is being used for evil, the onus is on the administrators there to put a stop to it.
I can't believe that a proposition like this is even being posted on Slashdot, much less that it would expect a response.
I can't believe you have such a distorted idea of what sorts of ideas percolate around Slashdot. Willful, even malicious inaction (as well as that sanctimonious "we deserve a gold star" bullshit) from the site admins is supposed to make me swoon with delight? Please.
If your wine is good enough and it's the only one of its kind that is available, then somebody who wants that wine enough will take it with the good and the bad. An interesting point about the legal community is that you really don't have anything that substitues well for Xoxo, and I (and apparently the admins) believe that the moderation policy is a main reason for that. Maybe somebody will be able to set up a moderated forum that will be equally useful, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.
I've made the point that an implicit moderation policy already exists. (Post the admins' social security number and home addresses and see what happens.) It is the admins' decision to not even attempt to apply it to the most egregious forms of abuse, some of which are blatantly illegal.
If the legal community has a need to issue rape threats, stalk women and ruin their careers, the legal community can go fuck itself. I may have a need to eat babies, but that doesn't mean that when I'm hauled before a judge, I can whine that I needed to eat them and get off scott-free.
The blogger I linked to provides examples and quotes from the AutoAdmit boards, as well as other verifiable pieces of information. If you want to believe she's making the whole thing up, that's your prerogative, but the weight of the evidence is against you. So yeah, there's a bit more credibility there. You'll also note that I didn't take issue with any of the facts you presented (e.g., there are good and useful threads on the board), but rather disagreed about the interpretation of those facts. So if I apply the same standard to the blogger than I apply to you, then yes, I take her seriously.
(IANAL; this is just some guessing.) Depends on the jurisdiction's laws on privacy. Depending on what's done with the information, stalking laws might come into play.
Look, I'm sure they'd ban people who posted blatantly illegal content, right? So we've established that they'll block and ban based on content. The remaining question is whether or not one can distinguish libel, stalking and copyright violation from commentary and fair use.
It would be trivial to ban the posting of contact information (such as phone numbers, addresses, email addresses) without affecting at all the legitimate criticism of firms, employers and so forth. It would be trivial to ban the posting of photos taken from anywhere other than official (firm or school) websites without affecting at all the legitimate criticism of firms, employers and so forth. The fact that I could think of these rules in about thirty seconds shows that the Xoxo admins, apart from putting in controls to prevent crapflooding, really don't care about these issues.
But more importantly, it's not my goddamn problem. If the board is being used for evil, the onus is on the administrators there to put a stop to it. Whining about how hard it is to fix the board so it's not a haven for hate-fucking troglodytes doesn't cut any mustard.
Ah, so the blogger is "crazy", which makes her points invalid. Much easier than actually disputing those points. Perhaps I should just call you crazy and dismiss you. But I won't.
Fancy words from the site admins don't mean a damn thing. There are measures that can be put in place--rules against posting personal information, against libel and slander, and so on, enforced by bans--but the admins refuse to do so. The "spirit of the board" which they (and you) are so wedded to appears to be a spirit of utter lawlessness, which is pretty odd, given that it's a forum for incipient lawyers. The "spirit of the board" is apparently the sort of spirit that enjoys libel and stalking. I'm not really going to shed a tear if I see that violated.
Keep in mind you're talking about a handful of people being pissed off about a board with around 6000 posts a day. The vast majority have nothing to do with these women, but the philosophy that tolerates those posts is the same one that encourages many others to post interesting and possibly controversial information.
So... is there an rape-threat/interesting-content ratio that I need to be aware of? What does this ratio need to rise to for me to be able to complain? Apparently you or the site admins are arbiters of this ratio; perhaps you can enlighten me.
Also, I'm going to feed you a bucket of fine wine that I've shit in. Just a little shit, though. The vast majority of the bucket has nothing to do with shit, but the philosophy that tolerates the shit is the same one that brought you that fine wine.
Wait, wait... you're suggesting that the solution to someone who's had their career prospects yanked out from under them is to ignore it? What planet do you come from? Is it the magical planet of "we don't need food or shelter"? Do you really think that the prospect of taking petty revenge, however satisfying, makes up for losing one's job? If so, can I have your full name and work address, so I can send all kinds of fun stuff to your boss, then tell you to just "ignore it"?
In scores of messages, the users disparage individuals by name or other personally identifying information. Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases.
So... the woman who had her career torpedoed because these guys posted messages with her full name which "included false claims about sexual activity and diseases"... just another whiny womynist? Or a self-obsessed narcissist? Is it narcissism to express worry when the AutoAdmit users start talking about stalking you and "hate-fucking" you, or is that womynism? I take it you'll be posting your mom's full name, photo and contact information on this board, as only a self-obsessed narcissist or whiny womynist could possibly take issue with the actions of the users there?
I propose that we ship them all immediately to Iraq for a quick lesson in what REALLY matters.
Oh, snap! You're bitching about an internet pissing contest, which makes your commentary even less meaningful than its subject. I propose we ship you immediately to Iraq for a quick lesson in what REALLY matters.
It happened to at least one student. This is the problem with them posting the full name (and sometimes contact information) of the women they attack. Note the sentence "Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases." in the Washington Post article.
Aside from that, I'm pretty sure it's considered some kind of threatening to post pictures of someone, post their full name and email address, and go on rapturously about how you'd really like to "hate-fuck" them. But I'll have to check with my legal staff to see if that's actually out of bounds.
Yes, of course, there are men who've been stalked and had their careers torpedoed because of the cheeto-stained warriors over at AutoAdmit. Would you be so kind as to mention them?
allows its users to discuss, criticize, and attack other law students and lawyers by name
Well, if that isn't whitewashed to all hell. First off, it's undeniable that the people running and populating the board are assholes. But they frequently go beyond that, into the posting of contact information, threats of violence, and encouraging stalking. It's about as legitimate a use of speech as a ransom note is.
I doubt posting pictures of people and making rude comments about them is illegal. Dick move, yes. Possible target of legal action, very unlikely. However, posting their contact information, talking about how you're going to "hate-fuck" them, yes that person in particular, and encouraging your fellow board members to go stalk them is utterly beyond the pale, and it's retarded to defend it on "free speech" grounds. Threatening and stalking aren't simple expressions of an opinion or idea, and it demeans the idea to pretend that they are.
I just hope that the people who run the board get Googlebombed all to hell, and have to explain why they encouraged that shit to prospective employers.
Canada has Public Domain Day, while America does not. This should, even by itself, be a source of embarrassment for Americans. Every year that goes by wherein our corporate masters clutch their cultural assets ever tighter to their collective chests is another year of shame.
It makes them someone who has made a mistake, who should acknowledge that mistake, and then make a renewed effort to establish trust in the community.
I think what happened was for the best. Essjay is dead; whoever was making contributions in that name will have to, if he (presumably 'he') wants to regain trust, he'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, with a brand-new identity, hopefully one he won't use fake credentials on. But there's no good way to bring back the Essjay name. That account is dead, and it should remain dead.
... but don't blame Dawkins for that. There's also a section in "The God Delusion" on how we tend to perceive inanimate objects as being imbued with purpose and will, which I think feeds into what you mean by "belief in the supernatural"--or would at least go a long way toward explaining it. I can't remember who it was at the moment (he had a huge beard, and gave a talk at a conference, which I read the transcript of), but there was also a theory (which Dawkins may have touched on) that schizotypal personalities found religions, and the visions and what not that people with that type of brain chemistry see are certainly the type that could found religions.
What do you mean by a pseudo-libertarian narrative? Dawkins' politics, so far as I've been able to ascertain, are pretty standard left-leaning ideas, but I don't see how they've influenced his ideas on the emergence of religion.
History is chock-full of people who didn't just believe things, they knew. Revelation, as it turns out, is a piss-poor way of knowing. It was, for instance, the same reason that Andrea Yates knew that she had to kill her children, and the same reason that Charles Manson knew... well, whatever it was he knew.
The simple fact that we have thoughts and feelings that can't really be explained by science to me makes us think that there is something definitely non-physical about our nature.
Why? There has been, over thousands of years of searching and a heck of a lot of wishing-it-to-be-true, no evidence whatsoever of a reality other than the physical, material world. Feel free to posit a magical world of unseen fairies and elves (which, to be honest, is all "something definitely non-physical" boils down to), but don't pretend it's a conclusion reached by a balanced pondering of the evidence.
Asking what advantage is conferred by religiosity is the wrong question. The advantage is in gullibility at a young age--if you can't indoctrinate children, they'll get themselves killed. Unfortunately, this means you can indoctrinate them with all kinds of nonsense, which they'll pass down to their kids, ad infinitum. Hence, I think, Dawkins' strong statements on the religious indoctrination of children.
However, the headline is an irresponsible mangling of this hypothesis. It's not that we're hardwired to believe in Yahweh; we're hardwired to believe authority figures. If the question were rephrased to ask what proportion believe the myths and legends they grew up on, my guess is that it would be pretty high across cultures.
"Wait, you mean religion might confer some survival advantage? And it's so widespread that..."
No, it doesn't have to confer an advantage; it just has to not kill all of its adherents. Think of it like a virus; the common cold is virulent enough to spread around, but not enough to kill us. Same for religion--the ones we have are the ones that spread but didn't, for instance, enforce chastity on all adherents.
Jimbo is listed on his Wikipedia article as "President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chairman Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation".
He's nominally no longer involved in day-to-day editing, because he's an eight hundred pound elephant. (Revert Jimbo and you might wake up with your account banned...) However, he still sticks his nose in every so often, which causes great confusion. Also, he's semi-officially the GodKing of Wikipedia, and acts like it, too. He may blather on about the virtues of openness and accountability (virtues which I happen to believe in), but seems to think that they only apply to lesser folk. (He had no problem keeping his knowledge of Essjay's fraud to himself, for instance. No need for the plebs to trouble their little minds.) Also, he writes hilarious edit summaries like "voting as regular editor".
The upshot of all this is that Jimbo exercises dictatorial authority (though I would argue he doesn't exercise enough to be truly disruptive), but pretends that he doesn't, and in deference to said authority, the community plays along. It's depressing, which is why I keep my edits far away from anything the cabal touches.
Are you having the same discussion the rest of us are? I suggested that this initiative would be more useful if it were integrated with Google Book Search. nephridium thought I meant that they should all be available in a full-view format, which I didn't say. (I didn't explicitly say they should be restricted, but copyrighted books already are on Google Book Search.) sirambrose pointed out that Google Book Search doesn't work like that. Where exactly were these claims made?
Deleting pages in one's userspace, as Essjay did, is normal for Wikipedia. It's certainly within policy to have control over one's own userspace, including the ability to delete pages there.
I was able to find some examples on one of those enormously long "Requests for comment" pages, especially this one, detailing a series of instances wherein Essjay did indeed use his fake credentials to win arguments with people who accepted that kind of thing. ("I'm right because I'm a ThD!" Or whatever it was.) However, I'm not seeing the part where he "use[d] his powers of deletion to remove unflattering edits from page history", as Jimbo did in your example.
The Jimbo example is... confusing. I can't think of a reason why someone would do that. Maybe someone should bring embarassing signs with the deleted quote on it to the next Wikimania.
Dunno, but here's some links.
on
Define - /etc?
·
· Score: 1
... if they released their content to Google Book Search. It's not really that useful for me if it's not integrated with a larger search engine--and I'll wager their interface ends up being not nearly as clean or useful as Google's. It might, but it's not likely.
Slashdot Mirror
If the legal community has a need to issue rape threats, stalk women and ruin their careers, the legal community can go fuck itself. I may have a need to eat babies, but that doesn't mean that when I'm hauled before a judge, I can whine that I needed to eat them and get off scott-free.
The blogger I linked to provides examples and quotes from the AutoAdmit boards, as well as other verifiable pieces of information. If you want to believe she's making the whole thing up, that's your prerogative, but the weight of the evidence is against you. So yeah, there's a bit more credibility there. You'll also note that I didn't take issue with any of the facts you presented (e.g., there are good and useful threads on the board), but rather disagreed about the interpretation of those facts. So if I apply the same standard to the blogger than I apply to you, then yes, I take her seriously.
(IANAL; this is just some guessing.) Depends on the jurisdiction's laws on privacy. Depending on what's done with the information, stalking laws might come into play.
Look, I'm sure they'd ban people who posted blatantly illegal content, right? So we've established that they'll block and ban based on content. The remaining question is whether or not one can distinguish libel, stalking and copyright violation from commentary and fair use.
It would be trivial to ban the posting of contact information (such as phone numbers, addresses, email addresses) without affecting at all the legitimate criticism of firms, employers and so forth. It would be trivial to ban the posting of photos taken from anywhere other than official (firm or school) websites without affecting at all the legitimate criticism of firms, employers and so forth. The fact that I could think of these rules in about thirty seconds shows that the Xoxo admins, apart from putting in controls to prevent crapflooding, really don't care about these issues.
But more importantly, it's not my goddamn problem. If the board is being used for evil, the onus is on the administrators there to put a stop to it. Whining about how hard it is to fix the board so it's not a haven for hate-fucking troglodytes doesn't cut any mustard.
Fancy words from the site admins don't mean a damn thing. There are measures that can be put in place--rules against posting personal information, against libel and slander, and so on, enforced by bans--but the admins refuse to do so. The "spirit of the board" which they (and you) are so wedded to appears to be a spirit of utter lawlessness, which is pretty odd, given that it's a forum for incipient lawyers. The "spirit of the board" is apparently the sort of spirit that enjoys libel and stalking. I'm not really going to shed a tear if I see that violated. So... is there an rape-threat/interesting-content ratio that I need to be aware of? What does this ratio need to rise to for me to be able to complain? Apparently you or the site admins are arbiters of this ratio; perhaps you can enlighten me.
Also, I'm going to feed you a bucket of fine wine that I've shit in. Just a little shit, though. The vast majority of the bucket has nothing to do with shit, but the philosophy that tolerates the shit is the same one that brought you that fine wine.
Wait, wait... you're suggesting that the solution to someone who's had their career prospects yanked out from under them is to ignore it? What planet do you come from? Is it the magical planet of "we don't need food or shelter"? Do you really think that the prospect of taking petty revenge, however satisfying, makes up for losing one's job? If so, can I have your full name and work address, so I can send all kinds of fun stuff to your boss, then tell you to just "ignore it"?
So... how many rape threats and instances of libel does that make up for? Is there some kind of exchange rate?
"You slashed that guy's tires!"
"Yeah, but I work at the soup kitchen on Fridays, so I think we're about even."
It happened to at least one student. This is the problem with them posting the full name (and sometimes contact information) of the women they attack. Note the sentence "Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases." in the Washington Post article.
Aside from that, I'm pretty sure it's considered some kind of threatening to post pictures of someone, post their full name and email address, and go on rapturously about how you'd really like to "hate-fuck" them. But I'll have to check with my legal staff to see if that's actually out of bounds.
Yes, of course, there are men who've been stalked and had their careers torpedoed because of the cheeto-stained warriors over at AutoAdmit. Would you be so kind as to mention them?
I doubt posting pictures of people and making rude comments about them is illegal. Dick move, yes. Possible target of legal action, very unlikely. However, posting their contact information, talking about how you're going to "hate-fuck" them, yes that person in particular, and encouraging your fellow board members to go stalk them is utterly beyond the pale, and it's retarded to defend it on "free speech" grounds. Threatening and stalking aren't simple expressions of an opinion or idea, and it demeans the idea to pretend that they are.
I just hope that the people who run the board get Googlebombed all to hell, and have to explain why they encouraged that shit to prospective employers.
Canada has Public Domain Day, while America does not. This should, even by itself, be a source of embarrassment for Americans. Every year that goes by wherein our corporate masters clutch their cultural assets ever tighter to their collective chests is another year of shame.
... but don't blame Dawkins for that. There's also a section in "The God Delusion" on how we tend to perceive inanimate objects as being imbued with purpose and will, which I think feeds into what you mean by "belief in the supernatural"--or would at least go a long way toward explaining it. I can't remember who it was at the moment (he had a huge beard, and gave a talk at a conference, which I read the transcript of), but there was also a theory (which Dawkins may have touched on) that schizotypal personalities found religions, and the visions and what not that people with that type of brain chemistry see are certainly the type that could found religions.
What do you mean by a pseudo-libertarian narrative? Dawkins' politics, so far as I've been able to ascertain, are pretty standard left-leaning ideas, but I don't see how they've influenced his ideas on the emergence of religion.
History is chock-full of people who didn't just believe things, they knew. Revelation, as it turns out, is a piss-poor way of knowing. It was, for instance, the same reason that Andrea Yates knew that she had to kill her children, and the same reason that Charles Manson knew... well, whatever it was he knew.
Tell it to Mitt "we need to have a person of faith lead the country" Romney.
Asking what advantage is conferred by religiosity is the wrong question. The advantage is in gullibility at a young age--if you can't indoctrinate children, they'll get themselves killed. Unfortunately, this means you can indoctrinate them with all kinds of nonsense, which they'll pass down to their kids, ad infinitum. Hence, I think, Dawkins' strong statements on the religious indoctrination of children.
However, the headline is an irresponsible mangling of this hypothesis. It's not that we're hardwired to believe in Yahweh; we're hardwired to believe authority figures. If the question were rephrased to ask what proportion believe the myths and legends they grew up on, my guess is that it would be pretty high across cultures.
Jimbo is listed on his Wikipedia article as "President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chairman Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation".
He's nominally no longer involved in day-to-day editing, because he's an eight hundred pound elephant. (Revert Jimbo and you might wake up with your account banned...) However, he still sticks his nose in every so often, which causes great confusion. Also, he's semi-officially the GodKing of Wikipedia, and acts like it, too. He may blather on about the virtues of openness and accountability (virtues which I happen to believe in), but seems to think that they only apply to lesser folk. (He had no problem keeping his knowledge of Essjay's fraud to himself, for instance. No need for the plebs to trouble their little minds.) Also, he writes hilarious edit summaries like "voting as regular editor".
The upshot of all this is that Jimbo exercises dictatorial authority (though I would argue he doesn't exercise enough to be truly disruptive), but pretends that he doesn't, and in deference to said authority, the community plays along. It's depressing, which is why I keep my edits far away from anything the cabal touches.
Are you having the same discussion the rest of us are? I suggested that this initiative would be more useful if it were integrated with Google Book Search. nephridium thought I meant that they should all be available in a full-view format, which I didn't say. (I didn't explicitly say they should be restricted, but copyrighted books already are on Google Book Search.) sirambrose pointed out that Google Book Search doesn't work like that. Where exactly were these claims made?
Deleting pages in one's userspace, as Essjay did, is normal for Wikipedia. It's certainly within policy to have control over one's own userspace, including the ability to delete pages there.
I was able to find some examples on one of those enormously long "Requests for comment" pages, especially this one, detailing a series of instances wherein Essjay did indeed use his fake credentials to win arguments with people who accepted that kind of thing. ("I'm right because I'm a ThD!" Or whatever it was.) However, I'm not seeing the part where he "use[d] his powers of deletion to remove unflattering edits from page history", as Jimbo did in your example.
The Jimbo example is... confusing. I can't think of a reason why someone would do that. Maybe someone should bring embarassing signs with the deleted quote on it to the next Wikimania.
A proposal to encode the Greek Lunate Sigma in UCS. (It's since been incorporated into Unicode 4.0.) Or this blog post.
... if they released their content to Google Book Search. It's not really that useful for me if it's not integrated with a larger search engine--and I'll wager their interface ends up being not nearly as clean or useful as Google's. It might, but it's not likely.