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Many apologies for my intemperate post at 13:11 today, by all means remove it if you so wish. I must say though as an example of an intemperate post it’s pretty anodyne compared to some of the personal abuse I have read in the past on this blog. Fo example I remember a poster who went by the name “Fred” who regularly used to tell other posters to “fuck off and die” without any sanction, so my little transgression doesn’t look too bad beside that, nevertheless I am not proud of myself and it won’t happen again!
Yours sincereley,Frank.
Hello Frank Hovis; I happened to browse to the home page nine seconds after you posted this new topic! I think I was still moderating around the time of Fred’s FOADs as they came to be known. Many of them did get deleted, but probably many more got missed. I was the only moderator for quite some time; I couldn’t monitor comments 24/7, and upon returning to the moderation interface I didn’t always manage to clear the backlog, especially if heated discussion was occurring when I logged in. Sorry about the FOADs that escaped the net.
Clark,
Thank you for replying to my post. I always read your eloquent posts on here but don’t always agree with all of the content. Nevertheless they are always informative and in future I’ll strive to achieve the same standards in my posts. It is rather difficult sometimes, though, not to slip into the vernacular when you read some of the mindless garbage posted on here by certain contributors.P.S. Classy avatar! Mandelbrot set, isn’t it?
No apology necessary, Frank. As rule infringements go, your comment was at the most benign end of the scale: you only accused particular people of being “credulous”, albeit with a slightly mocking tone. It would have been acceptable if it contained a specific criticism of the points those people made rather than focusing on their personal character. The aphorism ‘Play the ball, not the man’ was clearly pertinent.
Your remark wasn’t considered coarse or abusive. We suspend worse instances of personal abuse nearly every day, and further action is rarely warranted. It affords us the opportunity to direct people toward the ‘Moderation Rules for Commenters’ which form the basis for civil debate here. You can be assured you aren’t on the naughty list yet.
You may have noticed that a regular commenter was banned recently for directing personal abuse at Craig; the vile comment would have been deleted as a matter of routine, if the boss hadn’t already replied to it. As it happens, the person concerned had already prompted a review of our guidelines for handling comments that contain personal threats, calls to harm or inflict punishment on people, incitements to break the law, or expressions of a desire to see someone injured. We’ve tightened up our approach to such nefarious content. As Clark notes, we do miss things occasionally, so you’re welcome to call it out if and when you see it.
Thnks for the explanatory reply, Much appreciated.
Frank, yes, it’s an excerpt of a Mandelbrot set plotted by a program I originally wrote in the late 1980s, in BBC BASIC on an Acorn Electron, transcribed into Microsoft BASIC on a 486 in the late ’90s. The bright colours help me to find my own comments when scrolling fast.
– “It is rather difficult sometimes, though, not to slip into the vernacular when you read some of the mindless garbage posted on here by certain contributors.”
It’s very tempting, isn’t it?
Clark, many thanks for providing that link – lots of fascinating stuff to read.
Fourmilab is John Walker’s site, one of the oldest sites on the ‘net. He’s one of the original hackers, when hacking still meant playful and often cooperative problem-solving, before the copyright industry subverted it to mean cracking computer security. Another old site and another original hacker – Eric S Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar (CATB):
Post didn’t work. Not sure my email reached Craig. I could do with talking to someone.
Happy to meet in “the” pub in Dundee and discuss it. Edinburgh is better for me but I realise Craig is busy, it is quite important.
Also I realise there are plenty pubs in Dundee but you know the one I mean.
I just realised, even though that would be a treat. I am being careful on covid so it might be better to go somewhere more cultural. It will take an hour for me and my wife will hit the roof. It is quite important to me.
