Jan 16 2007
Fight!
My Google Reader is on fire this morning thanks to the flaming Tim Ireland has unleashed on Paul Staines. Bloggers everywhere, from proppa blogga Tom Watson to Stuart Bruce and, er, Stuart Bruce, are barely able to contain their excitement.
It reminds me of the Hugh Grant / Colin Firth fight scene in Bridget Jones, the one where James Callis is so excited he rushes to the nearest pub, bursts through the door and blurts out “FIGHT! A real fight!”, to the bewilderment of the clientele.
Now. To my mind, some sort of anti-Guido movement is arguably long overdue. And I don’t mean that in an anti-Guido way. I enjoy reading his blog, although I do think Guido / Paul needs to guard against a tendency towards smugness and pomposity – much as Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads can appear hyperbolic at times. I guess like anything that gains mass popularity, Guido was bound to gain its fair share of detractors.
Tim raises some very serious issues, both in terms of how Paul Staines exercises editorial control of his blog, and in terms of a potentially serious flaw in Blogger’s handling of comments. I’d like to see responses from both Paul and Blogger.
In both cases, the response (if any) will directly affect how I view their product in future. As I’ve said before, it’s important to read anonymous, or quasi-anonymous, blogs with the appropriate caveats in mind. Ditto the importance of uncensored comments.
Ideally I’d like to see measured responses without the fisticuffs. But that’s about as likely as Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver sitting down to a civilised cup of tea.
“Hill & Knowlton’s clients are all ****s.
You *** sheep.”1
Still think comment deletion is a bad idea?
Guido gets hundreds of comments a day, many like that.
QED
“guard against smugness and pomposity”. That is part of the Guido’s USP. Suggest you choose which campaigns you give credence to more closely.
You censored my post. Shock Horror!
And that should be four stars before sheep.
So you are in favour of a little deletion and censorship?
Now when you get a high traffic blog you get a lot of that type stuff. What do you suggest should be done.
Tim has posted hundreds of comments along the lines of Guido is a ******* ****** ****.
At some point it has to stop. So he got what he wanted and got banned, now he is using it to re-launch his mothballed blog. He can say what he wants on his blog, but not on mine. Just as you censored me above.
Fair cop, Guido – as I’m sure you intended me to, I edited out the sweary word in the first line, for fairly obvious reasons. The three stars before sheep were yours, though, as was the 1 at the end of that line (typo I assume).
Perhaps I’m guilty of oversimplifying the question – I don’t think any of us should be expected to leave racist, homophobic or otherwise offensive comments 100% intact. You’ve set out your policy on comment moderation very clearly on a number of occasions so no-one’s in any doubt.
But the freedom of speech debate is a bit of a red herring. Tim’s allegations go much further than that, accusing you of manipulation of comments, sock-puppeting and so on.
You’re arguably quite right to object to being forced into dignifying his allegations with a response. But, as one of your admittedly tens (or is it hundreds) of thousands of readers, my assessment of your credibility (about which you don’t have to give two hoots, of course) will be influenced by how you respond.
I’m not sure it is worth responding, partly because whatever I say he doesn’t believe. How do I “prove” that I’m not the source of all the anonymous comments, that a mysterious unnamed cabal is not funding me etc? Whatever I say he disputes.
The only specific allegation that he makes that is true is that I chose not to write a story about a source because the person was a source. Fair cop. Drat.
1. Guido, you’re being less-than-honest in your framing here.
2. You know where I am, and you know that I’m not about to engage you fully on this matter on any other site but yours (where you are unlikely to set a ‘right of reply’ precedent) and mine.
PS – How rude of me…
Hi John. Thanks for your input; you’ve clearly identified the major credibility/stability issues here… and you haven’t said anything mean about my mother.
Who’s John?
Gah! Sorry, James.
Multiple Thread Syndrome.
I’ll get my coat, shall I?
Very interesting in the context of what discussion there has been about the need to police the content of ‘blogs such as Guido’s.
I don’t know if it’s the fascist in me speaking, but I find his (Tim’s) fears about ‘blog police’ an intriguing suggestion – one to perhaps look at in a more positive way.
I have a vison of an internet A-Team exposing wrongs around the world by a carrying out the kind of ‘deep audit’ that this Tim bloke has clearly done of Guido’s site. Perhaps such an audit could be marketed as a sensible prerequisite for those seeking to advertise on similar ‘blogs, thus encouraging probity and creating a web-based job for someone who might otherwise be designing microsites for multinationals.
Still going to read Guido, though, but then I do flip through the Star on a semi-regular basis to see what it is that’s pissed off the guy driving the bus today.
James you just lost your cool status for bringing up Bridget Jones.
Boo.
Guido’s belated dance number comes to us a few days after the ‘boycott’ brand was first applied, rinsed and repeated – and the first thing you’ll notice is the cool, unshakeable exterior. Too bad about the ultra-paranoid level of moderation…
C’mon, Owen you have to admit the fight scene is funny, even if the rest of the film is pants …
Pants, yes. But surely of the big and comfortable variety…
I prefer Love Actually and its opening assertion that; “When the planes hit the Twin Towers, none of the phone calls from people on board were messages of hate or revenge, they were all messages of love.”
PingBack from
http://www.martinstabe.com/blog/2007/01/17/the-great-political-blog-flame-war/