dispatches from TJICistan

Our favorite Transparent Moderator In Chief (TNH) posts at Boing Boing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/01/tha…

Speaking for all the Boingers–

Boing Boing has been caught in the middle of a real internet shitstorm and pile-on over the last few days. A blogger named Violet Blue noticed that we unpublished some posts related to her. Some people wanted to know why.

Bottom line is that those posts (not “more than 100 posts,” as erroneously claimed elsewhere) were removed from public view a year ago. Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There’s a big difference between that and censorship.

We hope you’ll respect our choice to keep the reasons behind this private. We do understand the confusion this caused for some, especially since we fight hard for openness and transparency. We were trying to do the right thing quietly and respectfully, without embarrassing the parties involved…

I have written things praising someone, and then later found out that I no longer agreed with them. For example: Kathy Shaidle, who was a fierce Catholic attacking all opponents … right up until the Church came through with utterly unreasonable demands like her fiance needs to get an anullment before marrying her…at which point she prefers apostasy and bigamy over filling out a form.

I probably praised Andrew Sullivan once or twice before he turned into a lunatic.

What does an honest person do when they realize that their ideological alliances have changed? They let the record stand, and explain the change in heart.

What does Orwell’s Ministry of Truth have in common with Stalinist Russia and BoingBoing ?

They redact the historical record to present an airbrushed lie.

…and TNH is their leftist spokesperson.

Love the newspeak word “unpublished”, by the way. And the passive voice “caught in the middle of the !#%^-storm” is nice too – they created the entire controversy, and yet they’re the victims here!

Was this censorship?

Certainly not – BoingBoing pays the bills for their servers, and they have every right to change any bit of the historical record they want and falsely polish their reputations.

Was it hypocritical, going against everything they say time and time again (“information wants to be free”, “transparency is important”, “right wingers who change their websites to remove phrases or historical bits they don’t like are fascists”) ?

Absolutely.

I love the way that many Leftists regurgitate quotes about free speech, transparency, and democracy … and then any time any of their political endeavors – or even private hangups – is threatened by one of these “core principles”, they find a way to finesse around the core principal. X isn’t free speech – it’s hate speech. Y isn’t censorship – it’s moderation to preserve community. Z isn’t anti-democratic – it’s wise leadership.

Bah.

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Leave your record unretouched. Change course when better facts become available. Apologize as necessary.

Is that so hard?

Well, yes … in the sense that it requires character which is a pretty old-fashioned, utterly un-hip virtue.

In another thread, entirely unrelated to the Boingers, Megan McArdle writes:

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/arch…

I think deleting old posts, or blocking access to them, or radically editing them, is, ahem, chicken guano. I’ve taken down things I shouldn’t have written because they accidentally brought someone into the public sphere who hadn’t asked to be there.

Preach it, sister!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.