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When under Siege, Tell Jokes about their Moms

Published by NiteMayr on July 2, 2008
There has been a bit of tit-for-tat over Boing-Boing and Violet Blue, that I’m not really commenting on now, I’m actually interested in the bahvior of a couple of mods on the site and their interaction with visitors over this whole thing:
#904 posted by Antinous , July 2, 2008 10:41 AM

Well, someone there has certainly deleted at least one of mine. Do you have my history at your fingertips?

Yes. You had one comment about Violet Blue that was unpublished because it was in a different thread. We don’t delete comments.

Taken From: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/01/that-violet-blue-thi.html#comments

This is about the Boing-Boing “We don’t delete, we unpublish” deal that is going on, and Antinous has hit the nail on the head, the Boingers (and their Internet White Knights) seem to miss.  When something is removed from public access on the web, it has been deleted.  Just because the delete button wasn’t used, doesn’t make the person accusing you of deleting it wrong, just semantically different.

Then he comes back with zingers like:

#909 posted by Antinous , July 2, 2008 10:47 AM

Perhaps you should read the Moderation Policy.

Which just feeds the damn fire.

Antinous and TNH are both acting like they are personally under attack (right from the beginning, before they started calling people out I mean) and have failed to separate themselves from Boing Boing as an entity.  It’s easy for an individual to take an assault on their employer or community as a personal insult, it’s another thing to start calling your customers (and that’s what readers of boing boing are) idiots and malcontents in a public forum.  In the end Boing Boing is a money-making enterprise and having it’s employees activily insult customers is egregiously silly.

Now here is a Comment to Watch:

OK, seriously, I’m done with this site

In light of recent activites on your website ‘BoingBoing.net’, I no longer wish to be associated with the site in any way.
I hereby request that you cease and desist using my comments or screenname on the site. Please ‘unpublish’ ALL of my comments and delete my ‘happy mutants’ profile, screenname: ‘sexyrobot’

thank you.

according to your policy page: “When readers contribute content to our sites, you retain ownership of the copyright, and you also grant permission to us to display and distribute it.”

so yeah, i’m invoking the first part of that, but not the second. why? because your policy page has been invalidated by this clause:
Changes in This Privacy Statement
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, THE HOMEPAGE (my caps, your words), and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

specifically as it pertains to this recent addition NOT posted to THE HOMEPAGE:
We reserve the right to unpublish or refuse to unpublish anything for any or no reason
which, in light of recent events, I find morally reprehensible and displaying a lack of journalistic ethics so atrocious I no longer wish to have any association, however marginal, with your site ‘boingboing.net’ Please remove my profile, please remove my comments…all of them. I fully realize this may totally bork the continuity of your comments threads, but maybe you should of thought of that before shovelling posts down the memory hole.

thank you
‘sexyrobot’

#965 posted by sexyrobot , July 2, 2008 12:15 PM

If it is still there later, more blog drama to ensue.

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