Interesting Links for 21-09-2012

[andrewducker]

• MSPs hear UK welfare reforms are forcing a blind man to beg. (And the assessments are full of lies)
  (tags: uk welfare disabilities )
• The people tattooed with ads for websites that no longer exist.
  (tags: tattoos adverts web )
• Mobile phones and wireless networks: No evidence of health risk found
  (tags: phones health wireless

Comments

[lil_shepherd]

Have you read the comments to that Boy Scout molester article - they are vile.

[erindubitably]

My favourite is the one that cunningly re-imagines LGBT as "BLTG (Bacon, Lettice [sic], Tomato with Garlic)". Uh... bazinga?

[andrewducker]

I don't read the comments on the vast majority of websites, if I can possibly help it.

About the only place I do is on Hacker News, because there the comments are the point, and they're mostly on technical things.

Oh, and LJ, where I can mostly rely on people not being the _utter_ arses that I see elsewhere.

[cartesiandaemon]

Kickstarter Is Not a Store (and they're making changes to make that clearer)

Yeah. Apparently that is necessary. It seems like there's a few different sorts of kick-starter projects.

Some are "we have this book, and if we raise $x we'll print it". That reasonably is like a purchase, because if you trust the creator a bit, it is fairly hard to screw up

[andrewducker]

I suspect it'll take them some time to get the kinks worked out of it. And yes, differentiating between "The print run is based on how many you order" and "We have an awesome idea we want you to pay for two years in advance!" is clearly a big step along the way.

[cartesiandaemon]

Yeah, that. I guess their "risks" section is a bit like it, but it's still hard to get people to be upfront about "so, if the warehouse burns down now, what happens", whether that's fairly unlikely, or very likely.

[reverancepavane]

This is a tightening of their proscription a few months back, which classified multiple quantities on offer to a maximum of ten items for any project. [This was fairly important for a number of projects, as they also wanted to offer their customary retail outlets the opportunity to get in on the Kickstarter as well.] Admittedly this is in the Hardware and Design categories, which is where people do seem to be getting burned the most

Viewpoints: Anti-Islam film and self-censorship

[cartesiandaemon]

People seem to jump immediately to extremes about censorship. It seems possible to say that the government should ban private people from doing offensive things, whilst also saying that people should refrain from being deliberately offensive just for the sake of it.

Someone suggested that people can have as many images of mohammad as they like, but they should be behind a spoiler cut. Which seemed weird, but possibly about right..

Re: Viewpoints: Anti-Islam film and self-censorship

[andrewducker]

I do think that, mostly, people should at least consider the effects of their words/actions/drawings/videos on other people when they put them out there.

But sometimes the reaction to people saying "YOU MUST NOT DO THAT OR WE WILL KILL YOU ALL!" is to get out there and do it repeatedly until you've made your point. Because I find censorship offensive, and therefore I believe that all requests for censorship should be placed behind lj-cuts, where I can't see them.

Re: Viewpoints: Anti-Islam film and self-censorship

[cartesiandaemon]

sometimes the reaction to people saying "YOU MUST NOT DO THAT OR WE WILL KILL YOU ALL!" is to get out there and do it repeatedly until you've made your point.

I definitely agree with the standard "don't give in to threats" advice.

The troubling thing is, what happens when some people are threatening you with violence, but a large number of innocent people are also asking for you not to hurt them.

Re: Viewpoints: Anti-Islam film and self-censorship

[andrewducker]

Then you have to weigh up the hurts, and decide which one is being affected more. I didn't, personally, take part in "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day", but if I'd felt more personally affected by the censorship then I might have done. I weighed up both sides, and made my decision, and it's up to individuals to do that.

[makyo]

High-level Wikipedia Editors charging for exposure

I've been watching this whole tedious business unfold on the Wikimedia UK mailing list over the last few days, and that article (as well as this one by regular Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski) seems to be, at best, somewhat one-sided.

What seems to have happened is that the chap in question (who resigned from the board yesterday afternoon) has been instrumental in a number of outreach programmes (such as MonmouthpediA), and has been pretty open about any potential conflicts of interest, being careful to keep the rest of the board informed, and offering to resign or temporarily withdraw from relevant discussions if the other trustees felt it was necessary.

Meanwhile, as far as I can tell there appears to be a small, horribly petty, but vocal and well-organised group of people, associated with Wikipediocracy, who've apparently set themselves the task of forcing the resignation of as many duly-elected Wikimedia UK trustees as possible. This seems to be their third scalp in as many

[andrewducker]

Thanks, that's fascinating.

I am intrigued by why, if the person was doing everything above board, he still resigned from the board.

[makyo]

It's hard to say, and I don't pretend to fully understand what's actually going on. Maybe he actually was up to no good, but the rest of the board seemed to be content with the way he was proceeding with things, he'd apparently made numerous statements to clarify the situation before and after he was elected to the board earlier this year, and the people at the Gibraltar end of things issued a statement yesterday afternoon to say "no, we're not paying him to write articles on Wikipedia for us".

I tend only to skim-read the messages on the list (which I only joined to find out about cool stuff like this and this) and it's more than possible that I've misread the situation, but I've noticed that the same four or five names seem to be responsible for most of the sniping. I did ask the other day what was going on, and whether it was really a productive use of everybody's time and energy, and one of the critics said he was genuinely just trying to get some clarification of the situation (which seemed fair enough to me), while a few of

[snarlish]

i'm just commenting here to say this is all interesting and the two things you linked to are pretty cool.

[nancylebov]

Hitler Gangnam Style.

[andrewducker]

http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2788351.html

:->

(Thanks for thinking of me though!)