weblogs.com and 'outing' the crazies

As a server owner, who has deleted abandoned blogs, who sometimes sits up all night fixing bugs, who knows the 24/7/365 worries of maintaining a server, I sympathise with Dave Winer's need to not have the stress. As a user of his tools, and sometimes early adopter of his inventions I admire him. I'm not a minion, however, I have picked fights over some blind alleys he's lead me up, while I really wanted to stop and fix bugs.

As a community owner (I know I don't own people, but I own the servers) I understand the pressures that can be put on one from jerks, who have no right to stick their oar in, moreover, to threaten or abuse. And it is true, I did once receive a death threat by email — a casual, overstated angry comment probably, but it had a major effect on me.

But, what I saw in those comments on Dave's site requesting the URLs of sites that wanted to be 'saved' (these have now disappeared) was shocking, mindless, vicious abuse of Dave. It reminded me of the children in IRC rooms who send screaming messages that block out everybody else. It was appalling. Frightening, that someone, who I've watched for so long could attract such vitriol.

I wrote about it. I was worried that I too could be put under such stress. When you do things for free, people get real angry with you. Raise your head up too high, and the tall poppy choppers come for you (but also on the internet they come for your children, with axes and knives). The internet it seemed could attract madness like a lightening pole, and that's what I want to stop, I believe all good people would want to stop.

I've seen it before in newsgoups in Usenet. A person I knew, though he put up a brave fight, and though, yes, he was a trolling nerd, called in the police and moved his real address, such was the threats and anger.

So, I volunteered to chip in, something has to be done about this I thought. This sort of abuse cannot be ignored. Good people have to stand up and say they are disgusted, appalled. Dave Winer named three names, only one of which I could find easily at the time.

After reading her posts, I figured that Sessum was a she, and that was waaaay important to her arguments. After reading her self description I saw that she was indeed in therapy. "Well like most of the US," I thought. Her blog was thought out, considered, and though it's biased from a female perspective, even though weblogs.com's outage or shut down was nothing to do with sexism, there seems nothing violent. Lots of rage, or more correctly, anger directed at Dave. Was she a vitriolic poster in those comments?

But Sessum pointed to others, I guess for back up: fem2fem, as Dave: mano2mano. Still, I look for those crazies from the comments on Dave's site. Yet, all I find is well written feminist arguments about power relationships, which are easy to write, once you know the rules. Hell, I use the same, but from a working class down trodden male like me shaking his fist at the class system of England, same thing, different characters. Rehearse it often enough, it comes across as a seemingly powerful division. When you're a toff in private scoool you can be troubled by it; as when you're a man, hassled by oppressed 'hysterical women.' Obviously, you see it as their problem.

All this sexism role playing , in my opinion is off topic. It's the anonymous abusers in those comments on Dave's site I want to name, shame and ridicule. If anyone of these angry yet considered public bloggers would stand up and say, yes it was I, or it was this person, or those commentors were very, very wrong, then perhaps, I, and the rest of the blogosphere could move on, noting who condemns this behaviour and those that condone it.

Esme's tooth is out

You pays your money, you takes your choice

EditHere.Com offers Manila hosting, with a 180-day free trial, $35 per year after that.

After seeing this last night, I thought long and hard, about my pricing levels, as they are over double Thomas's. Nah, my price is reasonable and fair. My service and suport levels are extremely high. My additional features are exceptionally wicked. My up coming features are drop dead gorgeous. My experience is long and deep in Radio as well as Manila. It is, then, top line. And for that you get what you pay for. I will however, do a special offer of 10% discount, and offer 30 days free trial to ex weblogs.com sites. I'll write more about this later.

Police Called in as Bb Descends into Violence

Watching the highlights of Big Brother last night, what, crappy, but engaging TeeVee!

Awwwww, Man! That Marco would get up anybody's nose. And to have done a nur-nur-nu-nur-nur, while dancing like that, I too, would have gone nuts. That was provocative, just like Jason said. But he could have been better humoured. Or, kept out of the way. Big Brother, because of poor and dull viewer figures last year, have really put in an odd and incendiary crew of people this year.

Thankfully, it all seems to have calmed down now. I hope they bring Emma back. I like her grittiness.