This is very unfortunate, because our comment threads used to be havens of lucidity and rational discussion, even when the topic was contentious. Nastiness like this drives away serious thinkers who want to have a calm discussion.
Gates of Vienna is expansive in its treatment of comments, but we do have rules. To recapitulate: comments must be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum.
In more detail:
| 1. | Civil: No name calling, gratuitous insults, personal slurs, denigration of someone’s intelligence, etc. | |
| 2. | Temperate: No exhortations to commit violence or foment insurrection, or slaughter, or maim, etc. | |
| 3. | On-topic: We generally don’t delete off-topic comments, but reserve the right to if they are excessively long. A brief OT mention of something you think we should know is perfectly fine. | |
| 4. | Decorum: We are a PG-13 blog, because the parents of homeschoolers allow their older children to come over here to further their education. Please make your point without resort to foul language or explicit descriptions. |
Name-calling violates #1.
Advocating murder violates #2.
Racial epithets violate #1 and sometimes #4.
If the situation continues to deteriorate, I will close all posts to comments for a while.
This is not what I want to do. Please get yourselves under control.
[nothing further]
88 comments:
Baron: The problem is that since this is now a blog with a fairly high profile and quite a few enemies, there are many people who will be attracted to it for the wrong reasons, and some will perhaps plant nasty comments to discredit the blog. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Marcus creep on the other thread belongs to the second category. I will continue posting on controversial topics, and if every post is going to turn into something resembling a bar fight, we will be better off without comments.
It may be necessary to start banning those who are clearly poisonous (much as that sounds too familiar). There are indeed real fascists/racists who can do damage to the counter-jihad movement. There are some who are the real deal and not just fictitious figments of a paranoid mind. This "Marcus" is such a person.
Judging from how well 'Marcus' posts and diatribes against Jews 'proved' the point of the less than honest or less than intelligent on the LGF thread about your previous thread, I would not be at all surprised if 'Marcus' was one of the 'lizards' from LGF over here just to soil the thread. A 'Moby' as it were.
WW: Yes, but the problem is, we could then end up becoming like LGF, where anybody not following the party line gets banned. Well, actually, we probably wouldn't become as bad as LGF, since the Baron doesn't have the personal flaws that CJ has, and both I and the Baron are perfectly capable of correcting our mistakes if we do mistakes, which King Charles the Pure is not. But the dilemma does exist.
Leaving comments largely unmoderated has worked reasonably well at Jihad Watch, but GoV is not in exactly the same situation, because we also write about other topics not directly related to Islam, which makes us even more controversial.
Wimbledon --
I can't "ban" anyone. Banning is not a feature in Blogger.
Blogger allows 4 possibilities:
1. Leave comments open (what we normally do) and delete the rule-breakers when they appear.
2. Moderated comments (we don't have time to moderate).
3. Close a partcular thread to comments.
4. Close all threads to comments.
We have gone with #1 for a while. Today I had to apply #3. We might have to resort to #4.
It's not what I want to do, but...
I have to admit that banning comments would disappoint me. I like to argue. Can't you tell? Anything I post that would be considered a breach of the rules I'd rather have deleted than left up.
Having said that, I think I could understand if this site must go comment-free. Of course, discussion and civil argument is one of the reasons I believe blogs are superior to simply reading editorials at news sites.
But at any event, controversial topics will result in passionate discussion. Passionate discussion is good, but can easily cross the line.
Ultimately, I think it's up to the Baron to decide what's in the best interest of GoV.
- Sodra
I can't "ban" anyone. Banning is not a feature in Blogger.
You can't block IP's? Usernames?
BB: It's difficult. I must admit one of the reasons why I enjoy posting at other people's websites instead of running one of my own is that I don't have to deal with all this moderation stuff :-)
I have been talking to Conservative Swede about this before. The GoV has until quite recently enjoyed a remarkably high intellectual level of comments, while The Brussels Journal, for instance, has many good posts but not as good comments. I suppose the situation was too good to last. Maybe we've become not just too controversial, but also too big. I know neither you nor me have the capacity or the inclination to spend hours every day policing the website for trolls like Marcus, so maybe we would be better off just closing everything, and post without comments.
I would agree with Ed that Marcus sounds more like a plant, sent here to insert comments to discredit GoV
Baron,
I think you, and most of us, made your/our point.
While this topic may be interesting, there are many topics more interesting.
Besides, too much attention gives them something to brag about...
Without comments, the site would suffer. Humans are social animals and comments help make a site "sticky," which is why even mainstream media sites have comment sections. People come to post and read posts, which is why the blog format is so popular.
If banning individuals on blogspot.com blogs is not possible, and since it does lead down a slippery slope, I guess deleting the offensive comments or closing the threads. This does make it a de facto "moderated" blog, but there is too much negative potential associated with leaving odious comments up. Marcus' comments have already appeared on LGF, for instance, and possibly elsewhere.
PapaBear said...
"I would agree with Ed that Marcus sounds more like a plant, sent here to insert comments to discredit GoV."
I don't think so. He sounded like a real nutjob.
WW: He could have been real, yes. These people do exist, and they like to show up at various blogs. But I got the feeling he was a fake.
OT
If you ever wondered how Charles Johnson celebrates the holidays, check this out.
Remember, God gave you a sense of humor.
- Sodra
Baron, I wouldn't sweat too much. The trolls soon move on, and the salt remains. Shutting down comments is a very bad idea. As much as I love your posts, and those of the lovely Dymphna, it's the comments that make the place. You're the band, but it's the chicks and the drinks that keep people coming back.
Shutting down comments would change GoV from a discussion site to an opinion site. We all reserve the right to disagree, despite the policies of the "URL which shall not be named". Shutting down the comments would be banning everyone.
I appreciate what y'all do here. I think many of these conversations and blog entries are absolutely necessary. That is, if we are to survive and create the momentum and mass to do so. I realize that a free-for-all can be/is counter productive but at the same time we can not allow that to squelch the very necessary dialog that is being produced. If we do they win. These blogs that are spread out across the internet universe have given a voice to the once largely unheralded masses from years/decades past. Certainly none of this would be possible without the blog in the first place but the blog is only part, albeit the most important part, of the whole picture-movement-story. I don't know when talking of such subjects how to keep things in order but I surely hope it does not come down to eliminating the comments or not talking about race, ethnicity, nationalism etc.
Thanks for being here. Also don't buy into the notion that most Americans embrace this multicultural morass we currently find ourselves in. I assure you many do not.
Anybody care to comment on this disturbing story?
Britain ’s Lessons in Cultural Suicide
Advice: don't click on the link above, from Sodra. It played for half a minute, then shut down my browser. I was halfway through a good post, too.
Hi, Ed, hi Fjordman! I've tried to ignore the net fight, so I was ignorant when I asked why we hadn't had a weather report lately, what the heck was wrong with Ed Mahmoud. Someone came back with a curt reply, he posts at GoV now. I was thinking on that when someone else posts, I wonder if he has been drunk there? Thought you might get a kick out of that one.
I'm guessing, but I think the original problem on that end may be that the lizard overlord probably has never spent much time in Europe, and has no idea how culturally homogenous the norm is/was there. If all you know is LA, you probably assume that everyone lives in a society of folks completely alien to you, kind of like being a foreigner in our own country. That's his norm. Kein gemutlichkeit.
Here's to attempted neutrality. I'll try to post on both sites, in a nice way, until I get banned, then I'll find better things to do, like catch up on my reloading.
BTW, if I'm getting banned for posting here, my other account is Logic Probe. Get that one, too.
Actually, I hadn't seen Marcus's comments until I went and looked, and I didn't see them then because they had been deleted, but the responses gave me the flavor.
With all due respect, Baron, from the responding comments it appeared that Marcus had his head handed to him on a plate, and rightly so. While I was unable to read the vileness, it appears that Archonix and Fjordman et al cleaned up that particular spill nicely. Was it necessary to shut it down? I despise censorship (though I realize its occasional worth), and I did not read his actual words. Was it that bad?
I ask because 1) I didn't read it, but more importantly 2) it enters a different territory than I've come to expect here. (I HAVE come to expect it in other places, though).
Not criticism, per se, but merely food for thought. And I honestly don't know.
I returned to the thread that the marcus character appeared in, and found it closed.
What a jerk!
I agree that the comment section is a valuable aspect of blogs. Too often we read an opinion piece, have a reaction to it, based on our own unique experiences, but can't respond, and have to allow the piece to stand as fact. That is where blogs have an advantage.
There will always be jerks in our midst, it is impossible to avoid them, but to end all commenting due to one or two jerks seems to me to be over kill.
If blogger doesn't allow blocking IP's, perhaps another hosting site, say....Word Press?
Actually, I'm a little surprised that google hasn't received orders from their dark overlords to shut GoV down, since it posts so many good pieces on the perils of the Global Hirabah.
As for the little nazi that closed a thread, I'm sure he is quite proud of his accomplishment, and would be honored if all debate were stifled here, due to his malfunction, whatever it may be.
Personally, I think he/she/it was a plant, as it slowly and inexhorably moved the discussion down it's dark path.
Well, I've got a non-responsive monitor, I guess. It's bedtime here, so this is a drive-by posting. Ed, Fjordman, others, you're missed by everyone who lacks the koolaid mustache. Later.
dhwwedhe. Jeez, I think this word verification thingie gets tougher every time.
Now perhaps everyone sees why we moderate the comments on our blog. Can you imagine a hard-core activist blog about the Balkans without moderating the comments?
(((((YIKES!)))))
You wouldn't believe all of the dratted BOTS somebody has been siccing on us. Sheesh...Somebody needs to get a life...
Jeez, I think this word verification thingie gets tougher every time.
Do what I do: sound it out....
Sorry, UM. ;-)
Uncle Meat,
I apologize the link shut down your browser. That of course was not the intent. Perhaps it only runs on selected browser versions. At any rate, that's a site hosted by Office Max (major office supply chain) so I doubt it is anything malicious.
As for posting on both sites, I wish you godspeed and good luck.
And as for Marcus, I found him to be, well, nuts. So nuts, I could only think he was one of three things (pure speculation on my part):
1) A Moby from LGF. (10% chance)
2) An anti-Zionist Jew a la "Jon the Antizionist Jew" prevalent over at Dailykos on their Israeli-Palestinian conflict threads (60% chance)
3) A highly vocal full-fledged Islamist (30% chance)
At any rate, his comments did need to be deleted, as they clearly violated the Baron's rules on endorsing genocide. And leaving the comment thread open would have required the Baron to babysit it to prevent anything else he posted from reflecting negatively on GoV.
- Sodra
Morgenholz (and others) --
I won't close comments unless I absolutely have to. I hope cauterizing those two threads will help.
Our comments are the best part of our blog -- especially when Fjordman and DP111 show up. :)
Hey, I go out of town for a few days and the boys run the ox cart off the road. What are we going to do?
By the way, it wasn't too bad in the frozen north. Unseasonably warm. It should be deeply into the minus Fahrenheit figures. Instead it was in the teens. And no northern lights through the clouds. Bummer.
I agree with the Baron that we need to move on soon. However, since I'm already here, and since the possibility of being infiltrated by right-wing extremists has been mentioned, maybe we should talk about the equally big, if not greater, danger of being infiltrated by left-wing extremists. This has already happened at LGF, and more than once.
Norwegian blogger Øyvind Strømmen, who has bashed Bat Ye'or, Robert Spencer, Oriana Fallaci, Ibn Warraq and yes, Little Green Footballs repeatedly over the years and is probably one of the most hardcore Leftist apologists for Islam in my country, has been treated as a "credible source" by anti-Jihadist Charles Johnson. Still, Strømmen, bad though he is, pales in comparison to some of the people in Sweden.
In a post about the Sweden Democrats, LGF linked to the organization EXPO as their primary source, despite the fact that I warned CJ against using that source. The difference between me and CJ is that I am Scandinavian and thus can read Swedish sources in the original language, whereas Johnson knows next to nothing about the politics of that country. I have looked into EXPO recently, and they are even worse than I thought.
One of the founders of EXPO, Tobias Hübinette, wrote in 1996 (Creal no 1 1996 och "Svartvitt" (Black-and-White) [translation from Swedish]: "To feel and even think that the white race is inferior in every conceivable way is natural with regards to its history and present actions. Let the Western countries of the white race perish in blood and suffering. Long live the multi-cultural, racially mixed and class-free ecological society! Long live anarchy!"
I found several references to this quote online, but I also asked Swedish blogger Kurt Lundgren if he could ask his readers to check out the original, written source. One of them did, and could confirm that the quote was authentic. He posted an image of the original text from 1996. According to his own CV, Tobias Hübinette worked for EXPO until at least 1997. In other words, he continued working for this "anti-racist" organization after he advocated exterminating the entire white race. Nobody seemed to mind. During this time period, while doing research for EXPO about "Nazis," he allegedly also had contacts with AFA, the violent organization which has for years been involved in physically assaulting members of the Sweden Democrats. He has openly defended the use of violence for political reasons, even against children and the elderly.
contin.:
The group Antifascistisk Aktion has made numerous attacks against immigration-skeptics over many years, with near impunity from the authorities and the media. Members of AFA marched alongside senior members of the Swedish police, the government and the media during this year's Gay Pride Parade in Stockholm, and beat up a couple of people they deemed to be insufficiently tolerant.
Hübinette has been controversial in Sweden for some of his views, for instance comparing Western adoptions of Korean children (he is of Korean origins) to the transatlantic slave trade, but this is not enough to prevent him from pursuing his work. In traditionally and still majority white Sweden, it is not considered a problem calling for the physical extermination of the majority, indigenous population. He is also convicted of violence. Despite this, he has continued working for "Multiculturalism," even received awards, and is currently working for the The Multicultural Centre of Botkyrka, Sweden, which is presumably sponsored by public money. This is what LGF links to as their primary source about the SD.
Meanwhile, Daniel Poohl, the editor of EXPO magazine after Hübinette's colleague and co-founder, the Communist Stieg Larsson, died in 2004, is worried about Islamophobia. In the most recent publication entitled "Kriget mot islam" - "The war against Islam," EXPO lists a number of dangerous Islamophobic bloggers and even suggests that some of them should be banned. One of the blogs mentioned is Little Green Footballs. So LGF links approvingly to an organization which thinks that LGF is a dangerous, Islamophobic website. If Charles Johnson published in Sweden, these people would want to shut down his blog, and he would be subject to intimidation and perhaps violence from the goons of AFA. These people do not respect CJ for one second, but they consider him to be a useful idiot and easy target for disinformation to be used against people they don't like.
I notice several people have accused me of acting as a Nazi apologist. However, the only person in this brawl who has linked approvingly to an organization whose co-founder openly supports genocide against hundreds of millions of people is Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, not me. This is far, far worse than anything CJ and his followers have even accused the VB or the SD of. If Mr. Johnson still had a shred of decency left, he would apologize for ever linking to that organization and distance himself from both their viewpoints and their methods.
Speaking for myself, Fjordman, this white Christan American is with you in the fox hole.
I have no doubts as to whom you will fire upon.
Adeste Fideles.
Charles Johnson is acting in the vein of puritanism. He identified a real issue among certain segments of the European Right. Then he turned into a black-or-white issue, where suddenly anyone with any historical or tangential association with the more unsavory side of European history was as guilty as the Nazis themselves. He got caught up in a multi-front blog war, and for reasons related to his psychology, he had to be right. He surely looked into things online, rather superficially to be sure, but once he made up his mind, it was made up and nobody could possibly convince him otherwise. You are either with me or against me. That is an example of American puritanism.
Call it exceptionalism, if you desire, but it is both a strength and a weakness in how Americans tend to view the world and it owes its origin to puritanism. It is a rejection of the perceived inability of Europeans to just agree on what is right and what is wrong and act accordingly. Americans hate ambiguity.
Ironically, the US has become much more "grey" than most would have it, yet so much discourse in the US is still in the black-or-white mode. So Charles is not so much evil as naive. He wants complete purity. He wants purity just as much as a white supremacist wants it, only Charles wants a different kind of unambiguity. His ego came into play, but in a way even his stubbornness is a form of puritanism.
On the other hand, just because puritanism seeks to see the world in a clear and unambiguous black-or-white manner doesn't mean that there isn't some truth to what the puritans say. There is indeed a certain flavor of the European "far right" that seems too nostalgic for certainties. In a way, some part of the European far right seems itself puritanical and wants something that smacks of racial purity or ideological purity and just resembles aspects of Naziism in its symbols or occasional pronouncements.
I think Charles Johnson has blown an opportunity to be constructive and convincing by taking an extreme black-or-white position, yet I do think also that there was a kernel of truth in his criticism, although it applies to a much smaller portion of the far right than he seems to believe.
Baron, in the words of better men than I:
"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Admiral Farragut
"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" Chaplain Howell Forgy
Tom
Baron, if you were so inclined, what would be the cost of dumping blogger and setting up a site where there would be some of the advantages mentioned above? I;m in for a C-note or two.
Tom
I agree with what someone said, Baron, you and Dymphna are the lead attraction, but we need the beer and chicks too. Ya gotta have comments.
Baron, I switched from blogger comments to Haloscan on my blog. It gives me the ability to edit comments, ban commenters and a whole lot more.
May be worth a look, if you have time.
Call me paranoid but I have a feeling that this "marcus" character was sent from "The Other Blog" so he could smear GoV.
Witch-king, Render at LGF provides some history on this Marcus, to indicate that Marcus is probably the real deal. I tried to provide a link but it didn't work, so if anyone wants to look, it's at the Dan Rather thread, comment #480.
Yeah, I was reading that last night too. Not a "moby" if that's the right term. A genuine crank.
This is why I don't like speculating about the motives of people before acquiring all the knowledge. Oddly enough it's a good demonstration of the mistake LGF made in this entire case - they questioned the motives of people before they had all the facts. Now they're stuck trying to prove they were right in the face of increasingly powerful evidence to the contrary.
If Mr. Johnson still had a shred of decency left
To quote the reply from Spartans to Phillip of Macedonia:"If..."
@latte conservative: Thanks, but who could blame me from concotting that theory after seeing what the owner of the other blog has stooped to lately. :-)
God in heaven, I shouldn't have gone over there to read the new thread... so much self-congratulatory w*nking going on. Those people are ignoring the political reality over here, the FACT that the state defines the meaning of "racism" as whatever it doesn't like, the FACT that free speech NO LONGER EXISTS, the FACT that people over here are arrested and imprisoned for the heinous crime of criticising islamic supremacism. In that sort of environment it is STUPID to start listening to any accusations of "white supremacism" or nazism or whatever because they are most likely lies and smears put about by the hard left, by the all-powerful state.
I CANNOT BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE! They listen to the very thing that they claim to DESPISE! They listen to groups who are sided with the EU, with the multicultis, the people that are trying to destroy the west, trying to destroy everything that was built by the west. They listen to the freaking enemies of their liberty and pat themselves on the back for being good pure little fighters of the nazi threat. OH NOES! Nazis! Get a grip!
I'm not in the best of moods right now. Lack of knowledge I can understand, because it is simply a lack, like a lack of sustenance. Willful ignorance is something I cannot forgive. It's a refusal to see, it's deliberately refusing knowledge that will be a benefit, and that's what is on display over there. Willful ignorance. Ignorance in the face of knowledge. They ignore reality.
Right now, thanks to the new Lisbon treaty, I risk arrest and imprisonment for posting comments here. The risk is tiny, a tiny, tiny thing but it's there today, and it wasn't there yesterday. I am not free. I do not live in a free nation. My nation no longer exists! You LGF commentors think you understand what's going on here but you don't, and you never will because you refuse to learn. You refuse to read anything that doesn't fit your view of nationalism as "nazi". You refuse to acknowledge that we are an oppressed people, we are not free, we do not have liberty. We have all the trappings, the nice cars, the homes, television but they are simply the gold-plate on our cage. We have no representation. We have no fre speech except at the behest of the state. Snark all you want, call us names, accuse us of the crime of racism if you like, you're just playing in to the hands of the very people you CLAIM to be fighting.
Leave, you might say. Where would I go? America? I'm a nazi, according to you, so I wouldn't be welcome. Canada? Australia? They have good immigration laws so I probably wouldn't get in.
LGF, you are blind. You are ignorant. You chose to fight the wrong enemy and in doing so you threaten not only us but yourselves also. Do you really think that the muzzies will stop once they reach the coast of France and Spain? Do you think they'll not eye your land as well? Do you seriously think that they will say "We're satisfied that we have Europe, but LGF scares us so we'll stay here". They are already there. You already have your multicultis chipping away at your freedoms too. How long before they start imprisoning people for being "nazis" in your country. How long before your Minutemen are banned as "nazis"? How long before it becomes anathaema to be a republican, to be a conservative, or a "blue dog"? Think it can't happen over there? You're kidding yourselves if you do.
Let us fight as we are able. Let us do what we must, because the alternative is not simply our doom but yours as well.
In other words: BUTT. OUT.
Witch-king, Render at LGF provides some history on this Marcus, to indicate that Marcus is probably the real deal. I tried to provide a link but it didn't work, so if anyone wants to look, it's at the Dan Rather thread, comment #480.
Render is either very dishonest or very, very stupid. He has made additional comments to the effect that I was agreeing with Marcus and his hatred of the Jews.
#322 Render 12/14/07 2:59:33 am reply quote report 0
Why? Since the Massacre, initially an occasional idle morbid curiosity. Until I noticed a whole bunch of them disrespecting all of the active and retired military that post here.
So I said something about it, here.
[Link: littlegreenfootballs.com...]
Wahabicorrider botched a reply to me that included him mentioning Ed’s wife’s ethnic back round.
[Link: littlegreenfootballs.com...]
I already knew that Ed had mentioned that on GoV, and bless his backstabbing lying heart, Ed had been asking some hard questions over there. But based on his response to the “Marcus” posts, it looks like he’s bought their whole ball of s**t. (Bad word edited by Ed)
I’ve had a Rendering sitting on the launch pad for the last couple of hours. Trying to decide if I want to post it here, or cross-post here and on GCP at the same time, (I think I still have an account there), or not bother to dignify it with a response at all.
HOW THE
WEST
WAS WON,
R
BTW, I have no clue what he is talking about, as far as disresepct to retired and active duty military. Charles banned almost all the posters, such as myself, that had any military background. The only one I have ever mentioned in a less than flattering light is the one who uses the nic "realwest", who claims his father died on 9-11 running into the World Trade Center looking for victims. Several people have looked into it, and found not a suggestion that anyone that could have been 'realwest's father died on 9-11. Realwest claims to be a Viet Nam veteran. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.
Since GoV doesn't ban people for disagreeing with the ownership (although it would be nice if people here for no reason but to ruin threads could be blocked), Render is free to come over and explain his dishonesty. But I doubt he has the character to do it.
I lean towards both stupid and dishonest, in my assessment of him, actually.
But I won't make the mistake of reading any more LGF threads, as there are no comments worth reading anymore, and I take the chance of letting one of the idiots over there annoying me.
Tom --
It's not the money, it's the time. It takes a lot of work to set up a template and get the blog format ready, not to mention the conversion of the old posts. Plus we have our "brand", the way our page looks, and it might take a long time to figure out how to do that in Wordpress or something similar.
If I could just press a button, and Zap! be in a new blog host, I'd have done it a long time ago, even if I had to pay money for it (within reason).
But maybe now that He Whose Name We Do Not Mention is done with us, I might have a little spare time. It's worth considering.
Ed, I know what Render is, no literate person would believe most of what he posts, but I found his comment about Marcus useful, anyway. Sometimes dumbasses have useful info. They're trashing you over there because they're so disappointed that you're here. I remember right after you were banned, someone posted that they assumed you'd be a good sport and not say anything about it. Very naive, just like their political views.
Keep in mind that there are a great deal of Leftists in the mix over at LGF. I saw one poster ask the question:
"Okay Charles, let's set aside the Vlaams Belang and Swedish Democrats, what about the other parties on the Baron's list?"
An individual known as Sharmuta, who I find particularly detestable, then went through Wikipedia, openly denouncing any one of them described in the opening paragraph as "Rightist." I would imagine the Republican party would be considered "Rightist" as well, no?
The mask has come off, Fjordman, as you so eloquently posited above.
And "Nazi" witch hunts by the resident Jewish contingent at LGF really sounds as absurd as "racist" witch hunts by Jesse Jackson.
Baron: I'm still in favor of closing comments on all posts for at least one month. We can reopen in mid-January, and see what happens. If the problem still remains, perhaps closing comments permanently should be considered.
You know, there's a kernel of truth to be found here somewhere.
Something along the lines of "The trolls you will have with you always". If I recall correctly, even with Charles advanced registration mechanism he employs, trolls still pop up. If you allow comments, you will have trolls.
I think it's a function of increasing popularity of Gates of Vienna. And if you wish to be a more popularly read blog, you'll have to put up with what comes along with that.
Perhaps locking certain threads that you're bound are sure to attract them?
- Sodra
Baron -
Wordpress does support one click importing of Blogger blogs. If the Blogger templates are css it shouldn't be that big a deal to move them over. It would be a simple thing to set up the templates first to test before importing all the data.
Just a thought.
Fjordman,
I definitely disagree with you here. An you are exaggerating the extent of the problem. Comments should not be closed at GoV, not temporarily and definitely not permanently.
I should have looked at the source first, sorry. Yes, should be a simple matter to move the templates over actually. If you need help let me know!
CS: The problem exists, but you may be right. Maybe I have exaggerated it. The best solution is probably to keep comments open, but perhaps close specific posts every now and then if they prove to get out of hand.
F.
You might want to look at haloscan.com.
It can be used to add functionality to blogspot blogs ... including ban by name or ban by IP ( or IP range ).
You add their code to your blogger page ... and haloscan takes over comment handling from google.
One more crack at LGF... if nobody minds. :)
Just had another look at the latest thread. Right now they're in a big argument over the confederate battleflag and all the same arguments used against VB, SD, the solar cross, Gov, posters here and all are behind wheeled out again - against each other! And they don't like it, oh no...
Schaddenfreude is a terrible thing to feel. I hope they can forgive me for thinking this is very funny. :)
Right. No more. I promise. After my last huge long rant I think I probably should be quiet on this topic for a good, long time.
behind s/b "being"
Baron,
I think it would be a few grand to get a new site designed by the people who did Michelle Malkin's site on a wordpress template. I'm in for $100 if you want to do it. You could set up a paypal donation or something.
I am shocked , I must have missed the abusive comments , but GoV has always appeared to be an enlightened ,polite
blog , of superior intellectual standard .
It is one of a very few 5 star blogs and it would be a sin for a few
malcontent's to spoil it .
Archonix,
I read through that Confederate thread over there with great interest. And mirth. :)
Later in the thread it looks like they began to accuse Gates of Vienna of sending over people to infiltrate their site.
Full disclosure: I did re-infiltrate LGF a week or so back, but only to engage in a juvenile prank, not to actually engage in debate. "EFF Puppet" (seriously, Puppet in my handle) and I was able to convince them I was a barely literate Eastern European football (soccer) fan.
So no, LGF, please don't look this way while arguing amongst yourselves over states rights vs. slavery regarding the Civil War. I'm nowhere to be seen over there. :)
- Sodra
The LGF commenter Sharmuta is some kind of Jihadi plant. He/she/it focuses exclusively on anti-fascism, spams comments incessantly -- 18 hours a day? Who pays he/she/it to do that? -- and directs other posters vback to the topic of anti-fascism. Sharmuta is just the most egregious example of people there (whoever they all are) who have been silently working to shipwreck LGF. Well, the captain went native, and now it's happened. Congratulations, team!
Note to the Baron: open comments are great, but when the Sharmutas start appearing, it will be your turn to be forced to police. Unfortunately there are a lot of nasty people out there, and they won't stay out of the house because we are saying "pretty please". I suppose that is why Fjordman has been thinking comments might need to be shut down temporarily -- he sees that this is a time when such people might choose to come here. So even though it doesn't sound good for Fjordman to say that, there is a valid reason. Apologies if I misinterpreted your stance, Fjordman.
GOV has for me been my awakening that not everyone in Europe is a spineless, pee-when-sitting-down sissy, marching quietly into a Eurabian future. I can say it has enlightened me, so that now, other than the French, I no longer despise Europeans in general. I have also learned about how ANYONE standing up to the left gets called a Nazi. I was always suspect when European groups were called "far-right", I knew that was a code word for "Politically between Joe Leiberman and John McCain". But I had no idea how dictatorial Europe was becoming, and how close in bed the leftist political establishment was with the media.
The dialogue here has always been more edgy, with fewer restrictions, and with a better acceptance of "devil's advocate" arguments than most places on the web.
So for that, I will personally try not to say anything directly seditious, and I I do advocate shooting someone, I will try to do it indirectly by perhaps quoting a founding father. And if some dingbat asks me to clarify, I will jusst refer him to the original text, because that is how I got suckered into posting sometehing that Baron had to pull.
I do want GOV to both get advertising revinue and not get blocked by the gazzilionaire leftist who runs Google.
It does suck that a bunch of the LGF spam section came over, along with some guys who really must be talented, because they can type with their noses so far up CJ's butt that they can smell the dinner on his plate before he can. I can't type and chew gum.
I have to say that closing comments is a bad idea. Comments is the reason GoV is so good. It would be punishing the many for sake of a few dolts. I have to admit that if comments were eliminated here I probably would not visit this site as often as I do.
Just out of curiosity, do the Gates of Vienna bloggers (the Baron and Dymphna) desire that I no longer post here? How about Fjordman?
I have put forward several posts disagreeing with Fjordman, and disagreeing strongly, but I have tried not to include ad hominem insults and attacks in my posts. Are these kinds of responses welcome. Or, are they welcome, but do my responses fit this description?
I also noticed that I have been personally attacked by 1389 on a couple of the Kosovo threads, for expressing a view contrary to his/hers. Any thoughts on that?
By the way, I have also posted agreeing with Fjordman on his proposed Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
I can't speak for the baron or dymphna (or anyone else but myself) but, personally, I wouldn't want to see you leave. Contrary viewpoints keep the mind focused. :)
And personal attacks are counter-productive... I should know, I've issued a few myself in the past.
I also noticed that I have been personally attacked by 1389 on a couple of the Kosovo threads, for expressing a view contrary to his/hers. Any thoughts on that?
I think you're way wrong on Kosovo, per Robert Spencer, but I don't think anyone thinks you should leave.
It isn't right that a malicious or stupid commenter, perhaps a plant posting malicious comments just to soil the thread, should be able to shut down comments.
And I still thing it was a little too convenient that 'proof' of GoV's Jew-hating sympathies appeared on a thread just as Chuckles the Dancing Clown had a thread over on his technically superior but intellectually empty little blog about GoV.
I would have let Nodrog stay at GCP, but I was in the minority.
I really can't blame the majority, Nodrog often seemed to enjoy disrupting threads at LGF back when there were interesting commenters with enlightening things to discuss.
It seems to me Charles is not an anti-Jihadist at all but in fact an American nationalist.
Just as many of the Crusaders in the end did not see Constantinople as an ally there is a strain of nationalism on the American right which wants defeat the efforts of the jihad against America and Israel but not against the Serbs or the Swedes.
Puritanism this is not.
I have seen it argued (by a commenter on a blog I won't name) that the massacres of the Indian population of America was commited by European settlers and Mark Steyn has argued that it was British colonists who went on witch hunts.
This beyond ridiculous. There are holes in this logic wider than the Grand Canyon. Yet this kind of discourse is highly prevlant at LGF.
So for that, I will personally try not to say anything directly seditious, and I I do advocate shooting someone, I will try to do it indirectly by perhaps quoting a founding father.
This cracked me up for some reason.
The Sodra Oath:
I will personally not advocate shooting someone, what with all the other forms of medieval technology available, and were I to foment insurrection, I would do so indirectly by citing Founding Fathers or Civil War-era leadership in theory or practice. Or with a bazooka.
Formally recited while patting one's head and rubbing one's tummy at the same time.
- Sodra
Thanks, Ed. By the way, your yo-yo friends at GCP have not only booted me out of the club, they've tried to block me from even viewing the site with a re-direct. I'll reserve the insults for them!
So far on Gates of Vienna several people have disagreed with me, as I would expect, but only one (1389) has personally attacked me.
In return, I'll try to keep things civil. Perhaps I've learned something from my experience at LGF.
On another point, I've noticed that a couple of LizardoidGF'ers have stated that I am "defending Charles" on this site. I want to clarify for them - there's a BIG difference between agreeing with Charles Johnson on certain issues and defending his ridiculous, megalomaniacal, paranoid, dissembling, mendacious, devious, cowardly behavior over the past few months.
Well, it appears that Charles AND the GCP'ers will remain the butts of my butterknife-sharp wit!
Mr. Smarterthanyou,
Well said!
Archonix,
That LGF thread about the confederate flag is hilarious. They are in meltdown mode. This is what is bound to happen to you when you've let the leftist specter into your foxhole. It eats you as cancer.
I am not suggesting my any means that you should change commenting systems, but just pointing out that if you wanted to stay with the familiarity of Blogger, and not migrate to a completly different Blogging Software as N2L suggested, your only other commenting system option, that I am aware of, is Haloscan. And Haloscan does allow you to ban individual IPs or entire IP ranges.
But if you convert to Haloscan now you will lose all your archived Blogger comments.
Just sayin.
@Redneck Texan,
Which is why it makes more sense to move to another blogging system, that lets you incoorporate all posts and comments easily... I have done it with wordpress with minimal hassle (only a few things needed to be altered after importing), and the layout, shouldn't be hard to recreate, the hardest stuff will be moving all the widgets embedded on the page (blogads etc.) But all in all, I'd say it could be moved pretty quick...
By the way, everybody, I recommend the Baron's "Poetry of War" series on the left sidebar. It's a thoughtful study of cultural change wreaked by World War I, primarily. Very relevant to today. Sublime stuff.
Deleted comments still do not get deleted in the subscribed email versions. Ooops!
Just thought I'd mention Baron, you hardly got all of the inciteful comments off of this site, but that's OK, it's why we all love GoV all the more.
The GoV Vs. LGF thing will never be over...rofl...someone will always bring it up. That's what makes it such a cute little blogging soap opera!
Well he would also experience, as N2L can also attest to, a dramatic and perhaps permanent drop off in traffic, if he switched to an entirely different URL, even with a re-direct.
Everybody that links here would have to change their bookmarks and links, and you'd be surprised how many wont bother.
That serious problem would be avoided by keeping the blogspot url and going with Haloscan.... and the thing I like best about Haloscan is that you can monitor comments across multiple threads and blogs from one comment management page, and Haloscan does not get any comment spam, so you could eliminate the "type in code to comment" thing.
Having said all that, I do not expect Baron to change commenting systems or URLs just because of this isolated occurrence. I figure he keep dancin' with the one that brung him. I just wanted to make sure he was aware of that option in case the situation really does get "Out Of Hand".
Sarah D. --
I'm seriously considering Wordpress. If you want to dicuss it, please write to me at unspiek@chomatism.net.
Gordon --
I don't object to your presence here as long as you abide by the rules.
At some point vigorous disagreement and derision grade into name-calling and insult. It's a judgment call on my part as to when that is.
It's like pornography -- I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. ;)
That email addy bounced on me Baron.
Sarah D. --
Whoops. Typo.
unspiek@chromatism.net
Left out the "r". My bad.
Deleted comments still do not get deleted in the subscribed email versions. Ooops!
I'm sure the baron can arrange to come around and delete them from your inbox if you like. Beyond that I'm not sure what your point is. :)
Archon, just an observation. Even if someone comments and then deletes it and apologizes, still in the mail. Or in this case, even if deleted later on this site, still in the mail for anyone subscribed.
That point should be more than enough. Surely you do not think that things posted here will remain only here? I personally prefer screen shots, that way I can get that little bit of that hadith in the background, but others cut and paste.
Close the comments and they win. Discussion and communication are our only weapons now. The comments here are at least 95% legit, which is good for any blog/forum. Don't let them win, don't let them change our momentum. Keep this going.
Lex,
What are you drinking?
Well, unless you're the sort that assumes any comment on a blog is automatically endorsed by the owner, I don't see what your point is. Yes, these comments are out in the wild - I have them from the subscription, too - but they are no longer [i]here[/i], which is kind of the important point. This is a reactively (and very lightly) moderated blog. That is, comments appear and, if they breach the rules, they go again. In between that point people will read them. Later they may come back and find them gone.
The question remains: What's your point?
One problem with the way that LGF does it is you must use an email address that a tyrannical gov't can track to an individual.
Using the blogger type system is nice because it links to a web mail address that isn't tied to me, unless someone actually hacked into it and figured it out from my emails. I also like not having to register with a bunch of sites. I also like how it is anon, yet you still end up with some sort of persona. Websites with pure anonymity get annoying because of the troll identification problem.
The LGF moving mainstream Leftist thing has been done to death, but on this Pat Buchanan thread, in particular, it really becomes clear.
Posters are actually posting editorials from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL to support their hatred of Buchanan.
Some of what the man says I disagree with, but the SPLC and the ADL as definitive, unbiased sources? Really?
- Sodra
I saw that too. I don't like Buchanan much either, but his point about massive Third World immigration destabilizing our country is correct. SPLC and ADL are both very extreme open-borders-promoting organizations.
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