To our readers, and other bloggers and admins:

As we all know, some people in the world are angry and destructive, and many of those are on the Internet. These angry people exert a negative effect on anyone who has the misfortune to encounter them, even if it is only a feeling of fatigue and disgust. Some angry and destructive persons are genuinely dangerous.

The Internet is a tool that can be used for good or ill. The team at 1389 Blog is working hard to do some good: to use the Internet to confront and curb jihadism and expansionist Islam, and to provide knowledge and tools to others who are working to accomplish the same goals. We will never allow anyone to abuse the comments on this blog for the purpose of undermining this effort.

False accusations, mudslinging, and editorial discretion

We have grown especially weary and disgusted with haters who use blogs, comments, forums, Wikis, social news sites, or email to circulate false allegations against others – whether it be public figures, other bloggers, entire groups of people, or whomever else they hate. Despite claims of “fairness” and “impartiality,” disinformation has been planted throughout Wikipedia and other social media, where it becomes fuel for flame wars, mudslinging, and propaganda.

Typically, one or more responders will put in hours or days of unpaid effort to refute those accusations, but then, the malicious accuser simply goes elsewhere and starts the same process all over again.

We have other things to do besides responding to the same falsehoods again and again. If these miscreants can’t win the argument on facts and logic, they hope to win by shouting us down and wasting our time.

Yes – these haters have the right to post what they want – on their own blogs – and to face whatever consequences accrue. When haters commit libel, their victims may sue. When haters incite violence against the persons or groups that they hate, they have passed the boundaries of protected political speech, and we will do what we can to shut them down.

No one has the right to take advantage of other people’s blogs and websites to spew false accusations, obscenities, and bile in front of the readership that reputable bloggers and admins have worked so hard to earn. No one has the right to spam the comments or forum threads on someone else’s website for the purpose of interfering with that website or harassing its owners and participants.

Excluding malicious comments is not censorship – it is vital editorial discretion. No blog or forum administrator – or for that matter, no publisher or media producer – can, or should, publicize every response that comes in. Bigoted ranting, name-calling, bullying and threats, spam, obscenity, incoherent rambles, libel and slander, and ad hominem attacks, attract a lynch-mob mentality, drive away decent readers and participants, and expose the website or organization to repercussions, legal or otherwise. And the endlessly misused argumentum ad Nazium, a/k/a reductio ad Hitlerum, is a signal to readers that the argument has worn itself out, and that intelligent life has departed from that venue.

Oh, and by the way…

If you want to argue with us, you’d better be loaded for bear. We expect to see verifiable evidence and valid logic, presented in a clear and civil manner. Just for starters:

• Calling us liars, racists, Nazis, or whatever else is evidence only of your incivility. Accusing us of being “racists” or “Holocaust deniers” or “fascists” merely because we do not accept your accusations against Jews, Israelis, Serbs, European conservatives, white Americans, or whomever it is you happen to hate, doesn’t cut it either.
• Hearsay, rumors, innuendo, or unconfirmed urban legends, or something you thought you heard from a “friend of a friend,” does not make for sufficient evidence to back up an allegation.
• Articles in Wikipedia are acceptable only for noncontroversial matters, such as technical background, computer and Internet history, and definitions of words and phrases (as shown here in the previous item). But when it comes to controversial political, religious, or historical issues, Wikipedia is far too vulnerable to vandalism, flame wars, and spin, and we generally cannot accept it as evidence. (See our Reference Material resource page, and Byzantine Sacred Art: Wikipedia, the Source of Disinformation, for more on Wikipedia spin jobs.)
• For that matter, we roundly condemn Wikipedia’s self-righteous pretense of enforcing a neutral point of view. It is senseless to make a virtue out of amorality! When we write or blog, we do our best to gather and publish the whole truth and nothing but. There is no neutral ground between right and wrong, between good and evil, between truth and error. There is no room for diluting the truth by presenting falsehood alongside it, in an effort to appear “fair and balanced.” The devil has too many spokesmen already, and too many spokeswomen too!
• Making patronizing remarks, such as claiming that you “pity” us, is nothing more than mudslinging disguised behind a false sense of moral superiority, and it will get your remarks flushed into the spam bucket without a second thought.
• If you, or any of your sources have a vested interest in the issue that could affect credibility, we expect you to disclose it.
• Just because you saw something in the mainstream media does not automatically mean it is true. Many stories, photos, and videos have appeared in the mainstream media and have later been shown to be planted by untrustworthy sources, staged, mislabeled, Photoshopped, or otherwise falsified. Check it first!

In particular, we will not post comments that contain racist or bigoted ranting, especially the anti-Semitic ranting and the Serb-bashing that seems to be plaguing the blogosphere these days. We don’t care how many times you have seen or heard the same piece of Serb-bashing or Jew-bashing or Israel-bashing in the blogosphere or even in the mainstream media. As we have just pointed out, this does NOT make it true, nor does it give you any right to repeat it here.

What’s a blogger or admin to do?

1389 Blog posts a comments policy and we enforce it consistently. Anyone with a modicum of common sense should already be aware of what is acceptable on this and most other blogs. But if you have any doubts, read it before you send us email or comment on this, or any other, post on this blog.

We encourage people to post comments or use the Contact Us form in our blog to expose injustice or other wrongdoing. We have no objection to leveling verifiable accusations against public officials or other culpable individuals, organizations, or governments. We have no objection to polemics or to strong opinions. We encourage readers to engage in vigorous debate and to point out any factual errors that we or other commenters might make. We also encourage readers to investigate and report suspicious incidents and criminal or terrorist activity, and to keep us up to date with that information. But if the accusations cannot be substantiated, the communication in question will be either refuted or deleted.

It is up to us, as bloggers and admins, to maintain civility in our part of the blogosphere. If we fail to make this effort, the better part (in both senses of the word) of our audience will leave. I suggest that it is time for each of us to set up and enforce our comment policies to stop that from happening. And when it comes to dealing with haters, I suggest that we take care neither to let malicious commenters spew their bile until everyone else gives up and lets the haters have the last word, nor to allow false accusations to stand unanswered in any of our comment or forum threads.

Also see:

• There’s an angry fire in cyberspace
• Foehammer’s Anvil: Words of Warning to Commenters
• The definitive guide to Trolls – Ubuntu Forums
• Flame Warriors Home
• Attacking genuine evil in the blogosphere

Technorati : Israel, Nazism, Serbia, anti-Semitism, blogging, comment policy, forum, hate, incivility, injustice, spam, troll, wikis

	(For rolling updates, please scroll down)
	Visit These Web 2.0 Links!

These articles show you how to make Web 2.0 work for you!

• By Tamar Weinberg:
• • Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007
    A treasure trove of useful information!
  • How Do You Network on Different Social Sites?
• By Lorelle on WordPress:
• • Buttons, Bows, and Badges for Your Blog
  • How to Know When to Stop Blogging
  • Do You Care Enough To Keep Your Blog Comment Spam Free?
  • A Day in the Life of a Paranoid Website Administrator
    More details about blocking comment spam
  • Comments on Comments
    Valuable tips on handling comments on your blog
  • How NOT to Comment on Comments
    Do’s and don’ts for commenting on other blogs
  • Mean Spirited Comments and Blogging
    Be prepared to deal with haters!
• About StumbleUpon:
  • Newest on the Net: 65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles
• About Twitter:
  • Caroline Middlebrook: The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
  • Vaspers the Grate: 7 Reasons NOT to Twitter
• Other Goodies:
  • WWdN: In Exile: on the rise of trollblogs
    How trolls drive traffic to their own blogs for profit
  • BuzzWhack: The Buzzword Compliant Dictionary
    Dedicated to de-mystifying buzzwords
  • Significant Figures: Are You Running Late?
    Your PC’s clock, that is!
  • Hide It Now – Proxy site bypasses “censorware”
  • Copyblogger: Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb
  • Geek to Live: Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments
  • Added 1/1/2008:
    Smashing Magazine: Web 2.0 Tutorials Round-Up
  • Added 1/1/2008:
    Karthik: 12 WordPress Editors you can use

(Posted on 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox)

Technorati : Blogger.com, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pownce, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, blog censorship, blogging, censorware, comment policy, comment spam, hate, links to articles, search, search engine, social bookmarking, social media, social network, social news, spam, troll, video, writing
Del.icio.us : Blogger.com, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pownce, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, blog censorship, blogging, censorware, comment policy, comment spam, hate, links to articles, search, search engine, social bookmarking, social media, social network, social news, spam, troll, video, writing
Ice Rocket : Blogger.com, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pownce, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, blog censorship, blogging, censorware, comment policy, comment spam, hate, links to articles, search, search engine, social bookmarking, social media, social network, social news, spam, troll, video, writing

Powered by Zoundry

Things keep changing at Digg…

…and generally not for the better. Digg always seems to be adding new features, tweaking existing features, and removing old features that people liked. For instance, Digg took away both the user rankings and the data field that, for a time, allowed people to figure out who had buried some of the stories… (We know…that was NOT a feature – that was a BUG!) As far as we are concerned, those examples show how Digg merely tries to cover up problems instead of addressing its users’ biggest complaints – sluggish performance, unresponsive tech support, accusations of bias and lack of transparency, and, of course, the infamous Bury Brigade.

This past fall, Digg put in some major changes to its user interface that were obviously intended to help it compete with StumbleUpon and other social news sites. Prominent Digg user Tamar Weinberg liked Digg’s new features, but as we pointed out, the changes failed to provide the hoped-for boom in viewership. There were some irritating glitches; for instance, the new “Shout All” feature bedeviled current and former users with email spam, until Digg belatedly decided to set some limits.

What is the first thing to do when one is stuck at the bottom of a hole?

Hmmm, if your company name is Digg, that’s a tough one! Digg’s owners recently hired an investment banking firm to find a buyer for Digg. We thought that, after Digg had already alienated much of its user base, it was a bit late to be putting it up for sale. But it gets worse. According to Tamar Weinberg, as soon as Digg went up for sale, its customer support all but disappeared. They keep shooting themselves in the foot, saying “Ouch!” – and pulling the trigger again…

Rumors are flying!

On Christmas Day 2007, Mashable reported a rumor that Digg may be buying Spanish-language site Meneame, and “build-your-own-Digg” service CoRank. But later the same day, Mashable denied that Digg is the buyer for CoRank and Meneame – and they are wondering who is. This should be interesting!

More about Digg:

• Performancing.com: The New Economy of Digg Blackmail
• More articles about Digg on 1389 Blog
• Here’s what Foehammer has to say about Digg.
• The Fort Hard Knox team weighs in on censorship.
• Tex and Jenn’s research shows why Digg’s management is not on our side.

Posted to 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox.

Technorati : Bury Brigade, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech industry, tech support
Del.icio.us : Bury Brigade, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech industry, tech support
Ice Rocket : Bury Brigade, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech industry, tech support

Powered by Zoundry

Readers are free to comment on this blog, subject to comment moderation.

We invite readers to participate and interact. Comments are moderated to exclude incoherent rambles, obscenity, inappropriate ad hominem attacks, commercial spam, and other material that would compromise the quality of this blog. We make an effort to attend to the comment moderation queue frequently, but the process does take some time. We ask that you be patient.

Blog moderation is not censorship.

This is our blog. Were we to allow inappropriate material to be posted, we would face the negative consequences.

We support your right to post what you want on your own blog, and to decide for yourself which comments you want to display on it. If you do not already have a blog, Blogger.com and WordPress.com offer blogs for free!

That said, please be advised of the following:

• 1389 Blog is not a bathroom wall! Comments containing incoherent or unreadable text or data, unjustified personal attacks, unfounded allegations, egregiously vulgar or abusive language, bigoted or racist remarks (especially anti-Semitic remarks), anything xxx-rated, or external links to such objectionable material, will be deleted. If you want your comment to be published, then please refrain from swearing, and express yourself in a civil and cogent manner. If we cannot figure out what you are talking about, we will not post your comment.
• We do not waste our readers’ time with trolls. If you come here merely to stir up enmity, or to heap contempt upon us, our readers, and our work, your comments will be deleted with no further explanation.
• Please make an effort to keep your comments on topic. This is not a general-interest discussion forum. If you wish to communicate with us about something not having to do with a specific blog post, please feel free to use this form. Comments that link to a site having nothing to do with the topic will be deleted and reported as spam.
• If your comment is not displayed immediately, please do not post it repeatedly. Duplicate or repetitive comments are treated as spam and will be deleted.
• Comments that raise complex questions or issues may be kept on hold to be answered later. Some issues deserve to be addressed in a separate blog post, rather than in a comment submerged deep within some other thread. It takes time to prepare such a reply. To display the comment without an answer during that time would make it look as though we were unable or unwilling to address difficult issues. The fact that a comment is held for future reply should not be taken to imply that the comment is being “rejected.” Check your email – we may contact you to let you know that a reply is on its way.
• Commenters are required to identify themselves in some manner. Your usual nickname, screen name, logon ID, or other identifier is just fine; you need not reveal your real name. You must enter an email address, which will not be displayed on the screen. We may use this address to contact you. However, if you enter an email address that is obviously invalid, we may delete your comment. If you wish, you may also enter a website URL.
• Never post anything that you wouldn’t want the entire world to see, perhaps many years from now! Comments are visible to the public without restriction, and, once posted, they remain online indefinitely. Copies of comment text may exist in places that none of us could possibly know about. This blog cannot be responsible for any unwelcome consequences.
• Comments that waste bandwidth or server resources, or that contain anything that interferes with the hosting provider, the blogging software, or other system users, will be deleted.
  • Comments are for text, not pictures. If you want to post ASCII art or the like, please get your own blog. If a picture, video, audio file, program, or other non-text element is relevant to the subject matter of the blog post, you may upload the file elsewhere if need be, and post a link to it in your comment.
  • Do not paste text directly into the comment box from a WYSIWYG editor, such as a word processor. This can introduce special formatting characters that the comment editor cannot accept. Instead, paste the text into a text-mode editor, such as Notepad, and then recopy and paste it again from there into the comment editor.
• Comments containing anything that violates, or appears to violate, U.S. law will be deleted and the authorities will be notified. This includes, but is not limited to, the following examples:
  • Threats against the 1389 Blog team or anyone else.
  • Material associated with fraud, malware, plagiarism, software piracy, child porn, or identity theft
  • Material that violates anyone’s privacy or that reveals material not authorized for public viewing (with the exception of investigative reporting that is intended to expose wrongdoing)
  • Material that promotes jihadism
  • Links to external sites containing anything of the above nature.

• Finally, if you think you might be too drunk to comment, you are too drunk to comment!

Blog Administrator 1389

More discussion about blogging and commenting

• Foehammer’s Anvil: Words of Warning to Commenters
• Ubuntu Forums: The Definitive guide to Trolls
• Flame Warriors Home

Technorati : 1389, U.S. law, about 1389 Blog, alcohol, blogging, comment policy, comment spam, jihadism, privacy, software piracy, spam
Del.icio.us : 1389, U.S. law, about 1389 Blog, alcohol, blogging, comment policy, comment spam, jihadism, privacy, software piracy, spam
Ice Rocket : 1389, U.S. law, about 1389 Blog, alcohol, blogging, comment policy, comment spam, jihadism, privacy, software piracy, spam

Powered by Zoundry

(For rolling updates,
please scroll down)

Has this been happening to you?

Blog admin 1389 has been getting lots of Shout notices from Digg lately…

What happens every time 1389 clicks on the link in the email?

Click the link and try it yourself!

http://digg.com/users/1389#send-shout

Why?

This can happen to anyone whose user ID was banned from Digg.

User ID 1389 was banned from Digg a long time ago…

The reason why 1389 was banned is not especially relevant here, but if you’re curious…read 1389′s comments accompanying this article: Has Digg really unbanned those banned sites? In retrospect, we also found some evidence that an unscrupulous cyberstalker/troll may have been involved in getting 1389 banned, along with some other Digg users. Suffice it to say that 1389 considers it no dishonor to be banned from Digg.

Incidentally, there has been no action to ban this blog (thus far)!

Note that, even though Digg user ID 1389 was banned, neither 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech, nor the blog’s domain or IP address, has been banned from Digg (yet). Articles from 1389 Blog can still be submitted to, and found on, Digg. Whether the stories have any chance to to reach the front page is another matter entirely.

What actually happens when a Digg user ID is banned?

In a nutshell, the user’s profile is blocked from access, but not deleted. Other users can no longer view the blocked user’s profile page. The banned user cannot log on to submit stories, make comments, or update the profile to change the email address or anything else. On the other hand, all existing stories and comments submitted by the blocked user remain available, unless the story or comment was specifically deleted by a Digg administrator. If another Digg user had befriended this user before he or she was blocked, the blocked Digg user will continue to appear in the other user’s list of friends, like this:

So here’s why 1389 keeps getting useless messages:

• Digg requires a valid email address from all new users, so, when signing up, 1389 provided an active email address that was, and still is, being used for correspondence.
• 1389 was very active on Digg for a time, submitted many stories, entered comments, got several stories to the front page, and was befriended by a considerable number of Digg users. Thus, 1389′s avatar still appears in many places – on each story that 1389 submitted or commented on, and on the profile pages of each user who befriended 1389 during that time.
• Digg made extensive changes at the beginning of October, 2007 to add new features, including the ability to send “Shouts” to other Digg users.
• Even though 1389′s account has been blocked, other users can still send a “Shout” to 1389. For instance, whenever a Digg user sends a group “Shout” to all of his or her friends, and 1389 happens to be on that user’s list of friends, a message will be generated for 1389 along with all of the others.
• Whenever anyone does this – and it happens every day – 1389′s email inbox receives another message containing a link to retrieve the “Shout” contents from Digg.
• Unfortunately, the shout retrieval link is associated with 1389′s blocked profile, so it will not work! What’s more, 1389 cannot even update the blocked profile to shut off this useless email!

More about Digg:

• These articles discuss censorship and other problems on Digg, as well as alternatives to Digg.
• Here’s what Foehammer has to say about Digg.
• The Fort Hard Knox team weighs in on Digg.
• Tex and Jenn’s research shows why Digg’s management is not on our side.

Posted to 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox.

Updated 12/25/2007

Brent Csutoras: Diggers Not Shouting So Loud?

Digg has finally taken action to curtail the “shout spam” that was being spewed indiscriminately via Digg’s “Shout All” feature. Digg now limits the number of “Shout” messages to twenty at a time; more than that, and the user is told to slow down. This gives senders an incentive to pay attention to whom they are sending their messages, so as not to waste their “Shouts” on inactive Digg users.

Brent Csutoras: To Shout or Not To Shout: The Digg Dilemma

How the Shout feature can backfire – and how to use it properly.

Technorati : 1389, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech tips
Del.icio.us : 1389, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech tips
Ice Rocket : 1389, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech tips

Powered by Zoundry

Click here to see it now!

Technorati : Islam, badge, blacklisting of antijihadists, blogroll, censorship, censorware, cyberjihadism, cyberwars, e-jihadis, enemy propaganda, resource page, tech tips
Del.icio.us : Islam, badge, blacklisting of antijihadists, blogroll, censorship, censorware, cyberjihadism, cyberwars, e-jihadis, enemy propaganda, resource page, tech tips
Ice Rocket : Islam, badge, blacklisting of antijihadists, blogroll, censorship, censorware, cyberjihadism, cyberwars, e-jihadis, enemy propaganda, resource page, tech tips

Powered by Zoundry

Sooner or later, every forum moderator, blogger, blog admin, wiki organizer, or Web 2.0 aficionado will have to confront the issue of comment spammers. There are no easy answers. Posting a comment policy statement, such as that shown under the About page tab, may help to discourage human-generated spam, but ‘bot-generated spam will require other measures.

Here are some articles on the topic that may be helpful:

• Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?
• Comment Spammers: Internet Pigs
• Spamming Social Networks is a No-No

Sometimes, though, the bloggers and webmasters themselves are to blame for degrading the quality of the blogosphere:

• Content Hypertext Spam

Technorati tags:
blogging
comment policy
forum
spam
tech tips
Web 2.0
wikis

If you have a blog on Blogger.com, you may find that Blogger has begun requiring you enter an odd-looking string of characters each time you publish a post. This extra step is called “word verification” or “Captcha.” You must enter a string of characters to identify yourself as a human being, as opposed to an automated procedure.

Blogger Help gives two reasons for this requirement in Why do I have word verification on my posting form?

1. Blogger suspects that your blog is spam. An automated process within Blogger applies certain filters to identify potential spam blogs or “splogs” – bogus blogs full of gibberish, designed to fool search engines. The endless proliferation of “splogs” causes problems for the Web as a whole, not just for the owners of legitimate blogs, as Wired.com explains in Spam + Blogs = Trouble.If your blog is flagged as potential spam, then Blogger will require word verification every time you publish a post.

   Not only is this a nuisance for you, but it also hurts your efforts to gain readership for your blog. Your blog will be penalized in Google’s search algorithms. Moreover, your blog will be excluded from the “Next Blog” taskbar button and the blurbs on Blogger Dashboard.

   So what do you do if you know your blog is legitimate? The next time you post to your blog, click on the encircled question mark next to the Word Verification caption. A form will pop up that lets you submit a request for a human review of your blog. Enter your e-mail address, and in a few days, you should get an answer from Blogger Support about clearing your blog for regular use.

2. You, or your blog team members, have been posting too rapidly. Blogger will require word verification for the next 24 hours to control the load on its servers, as well as to discourage spam. During that period of time, if you post to your blog by e-mail, the blog posts will be held as drafts.Blogger makes no exceptions for specific blogs, so it’s no use contacting them to complain. So if your blog must support an unusually high posting rate, you’ll have to host it elsewhere and support it with more specialized software.

Update: Google mistakes one of its own blogs for spam!

Technorati : Blogger.com, blogging, spam, tech tips
Del.icio.us : Blogger.com, blogging, spam, tech tips
Ice Rocket : Blogger.com, blogging, spam, tech tips

Powered by Zoundry

Where’s that fake-Viagra spam coming from? You might be surprised! According to this article, security researchers at Support Intelligence have traced spam-sending botnet clients back to networks run by the US military.

Technorati tags:
current events
fraud
malware
military
spam

Television and radio commercials – and not only those low-budget late-night ads – are looking more and more like those offers for fake Viagra, boiler-room get-rich-quick schemes, and worthless diet products that seem to clutter everyone’s email.

Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban warns that showing these ads, which are nothing but ripoffs of the consumer, will hurt the reputation and the brand value of the radio or TV station.

In the article Ripoff Commercials = Stupid TV Stations and Networks, Cuban argues that, if a station hasn’t sold an ad slot to a quality advertiser, it would be better off not running any ad at all instead of running this garbage. Can’t argue with that!

Commenter Trey Tomeny says:

A great observation, Mark. It is especially appalling that so many of the commercials that air on talk radio are for highly questionable get rich quick schemes. Those shows are the product of individual hosts who seem to value their integrity, and then apparently sell it to the highest bidder during the breaks.

By the way, Mark Cuban’s blog offers a mobile website – try it and see!

Technorati tags:
advertising
fraud
mobile web
MSM corruption
spam