Outage and comments, comments, comments
Couple things. We were down late last night for 3133t h4x0r-related reasons. I wish they’d fricking get their attacks co-ordinated at least, and decide whether they want the site up so they can fight me and my anti-comment-spamming tricks, or if they want to try and use the hosting company to launch DoS attacks on their IRC buddies or whatever’s angered them that day.
In other comment news — I got some pretty nasty flack over deleting a lot of comments w/r/t steroids and another thread. “I don’t appreciate you deleting my comments” “You [foul adjective] [insulting noun]” and so forth. So, two responses, in general, and one specifically. First, the comment guidelines are pretty clear about what’s going to get deleted.
Second, if on a topic there is an even more specific note that says “please, do not do x here,” I have no sympathy for people who feel insulted or hurt because they did x and their comment got deleted. If you inadvertantly kick something off and I prune too enthusiastically, particularly if you did so before a note like that, sure, that sorta sucks, and generally I try to drop a note and say “sorry”. Sometimes I’m too busy deleting stuff.
Third, insulting people in general. People have taken offense at some of my judgements about what crosses the line for civil dialogue. This seems to be particularly frequent when someone’s going after site mgmt and they’re warned about tone. I’ll say this — I really do regard USSM as a never-ending get-together (like the Feed!) except without the face-to-face and the pizza. If someone’s at a party and starts to harangue the hosts (“I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a long time — you stink! And… this free booze is terrible! And there’s not enough of it!”)… yeah. If theyre comparing someone to something for the direct purpose of embarassing them or associating the target with something bad, even if no one’s swearing, it’s running up on the whole civil dialogue thing again, and the party hosts get to be judge of when someone gets asked to leave.
Okay, and four — we have been extremely slow to put down bans for being an assbag in general. Spamming comments to promote sleazy products, instant ban, yes. Jerkishness has gotten a long, long leash. People we knew were eventually going to be banned got a lot of rope.
Which actually brings me to five — I know that the disappearing nature of comments must make this seem strange from the user side sometimes. People sometimes write out reasoned, kind replies to morons and see the post is gone before they’re done with their reply. I’m sorry. Some people who got banned for being assbags spend their energy off-site, claiming they’ve been wronged for espousing particular views, when there was actually a comment seen by (say) me and Dave and ten, fifteen readers that finally forced us to get the stick out — and because we don’t have a hall of shame or something, if anyone wanted to figure it out they’d have to go back through that user’s post and extrapolate what they probably said in the deleted posts.
Allllllllll of that said, I think the discussion’s been going well. I wish it took a little less time to run, obviously.
Comments
59 Responses to “Outage and comments, comments, comments”
Here we go again. People have complained off and on for the past few months about what you delete and what you deem OK to discuss. If you haven’t gotten that vibe then you have not been reading carefully enoug.
If it isn’t a pain in the ass to delete this stuff then be my best and waste your time playing policeman. I just think it will be a never ending battle for you and a waste of everyone’s time.
Let’s just let this go, okay? It’s not that big a deal.
I have to say — I probably read the comments more closely than anyone. I don’t see it, and I could probably cite names and posts of possible complaints I’ve read.
Maybe I’m blind. I don’t know. I’ll look into this some more and consider your point.
Dan – you were accused of being uncivil for a personal attack on Derek. “You are as bad as Bud Selig…” Look it up. That was the first and only time you were ever accused of being uncivil.
The entire point many people have been trying to make to you that don’t seem to be getting is that your “claim” is worth less than used toilet paper unless you provide facts to support it. You say that Derek, Dave, Jason, the folks at BP, and the entire analitical community support Bonds because he is their poster child. Where are the articles? Where are the posts on USS Mariner that support your viewpoint? You made an interesting point and I was looking forward to reading why you thought so but you never provided any evidence. Your unsupported ‘claims’ combined with your arrogant tone and personal insults have led me to believe that you are more interested in stirring up trouble than intelligent discourse. Please note that I am attacking how you have behaved not you as a person. If your actions change then I am willing to believe differently.
Sorry Derek was typing when you put the request up to drop it. Feel free to remove my comment if you don’t want this to go on.
DoesntCompute —
The statement about him being as bad as Bud Selig was a statement about his conduct, not his personality. It was not an ad hominem attack. You just don’t seem to get that.
As for backing up my assertions, I plainly stated that I was too lazy to find them. But, in my later posts, I pointed out that if you do a search at BP for Bonds and steroids you would find articles explaining his body transformation as a function of his unusual workouts, etc. Plus, I pointed to DMZ’s post of that very day where he called out the leak of the grand jury information, but did not condemn the players themselves.
But thanks so much for giving me pointers on making effective arguments…
Let it go, guys.
I was the object of that post, and I’m over it. There’s no need to keep flaming each other.
Never! But thanks for checking. Does this mean I get the last word?
Great job with this site. It appears by the comments above, you do allow open discussion. Keep up the good work.