>my perception of the BBers' view is "We really, really thought that doing X was fine.

Well that's a very charitable view.

I don't think it looks that way to the majority of people. All that "we have the right to do it" business, the history-revision, post-editing and policy-sleight-of-hand is just damage control after the fact as far as I'm concerned.

Wow. I had a post deleted too! I'm part of the phenomenon now.

Here's (roughly) what it said.

"1) A lot of people are simply REALLY SHOCKED that you would behave this way.

2) A lot of people think it's INCREDIBLY HYPOCRITICAL for you to behave this way.

3) A lot of people think it's a DISASTER for your credibility

4) A lot of people think your actions after this came out have made things MUCH WORSE

BoingBoing people, please respond."

I mean, I think there's been some bizarre disconnect between what posters here have said and what the BoingBoing people have responded to.

Posters have expressed their feelings, along the lines of "I feel shocked by your actions because they go against what I thought were your principles. I feel a strong sense of disappointment and betrayal".

BoingBoing people have not responded to those statements about how people feel, they've just made statements of supposed fact, as in, "all blogs do this" and "it happened over a year ago".

That's the disconnect.

Person A: "You have done X. You are not what I thought you were and I can't trust you any more."

Person B: "Lots of people do X. I've got a right to do X. Anyway X happened a year ago and you didn't feel upset then because you didn't know about it".

That's not going to help Person A with their feelings of betrayal, is it?

If Xeni, or David or any of the BoingBoing crew are actually going to come here and read and reply to posts, I think that's great.

Please reply to this one.

1) A lot of people are simply REALLY SHOCKED you did this.

2) A lot of people think it's REALLY HYPOCRITICAL for you to do this.

3) A lot of people think you're suffering a COMPLETE DISASTER in terms of your public image and credibility.

4) A lot of people think that your actions since this got noticed have made the original PR disaster MUCH WORSE.

Please comment.

> I know the mods are doing their best to keep this unprecedented thread civil

Really? You're serious? They've been openly rude and inflammatory. They've made things worse. They've insulted posters.

I guess you may well consider this "doing their best" but, wouldn't that mean you have a low opinion of them?

Here are my conclusions, which I think I share with a number of people:

* what you did feels out-of-character and hypocritical; it's literally "not what expect" from BoingBoing, not in the guilt-trip sense of "I'm disappointed in you" but in the literal sense that I'm very surprised;

* the same goes for the lack of explanation/transparency;

* the partial explanations, the hints and unsupported statements like "demonstrably lied", are incredibly frustrating; I hate mysteries with no explanations!

But I want to add one more:

* Theresa has lost her cool, and has posted in a rude, intemperate, ill-considered way. Obviously if you can't be more calm or impartial than that you're in a great deal of trouble when it comes to simply doing your job with any credibility. I expect more from moderators than that. It's a tough job, I know. And you're failing at it, very publicly.

It's a bit weird that he's called 'Piotr "Peter"' whatever in the piece, as if it was some kind of dastardly pseudonym. Piotr is the polish version of Peter, that's all.

I was just reading about this idea in "Spook Country". William Gibson on the cutting edge as usual. I thought he'd made it up.

I agree with ROMWELL. All you need do is look at the pedestrians to see it's been sped up.

I experienced traffic like this in Vietnam a couple of years ago and at first I found it daunting, yes, but after a while, you realise that it's happening at much lower speeds than city traffic in a more developed country (the basic unit of Saigon traffic is a Honda 50cc bike doing about 15 Kmh) and that everyone else is used to it, so they know what's going to happen next, even if you don't.

All you have to do is behave predictably and you'll be fine. What's "predictably"? Well, that's for you to work out.

This is agonising. Another huge, illogical, intrusive form ... and the White Paper isn't available to users outside the US or Canada.

Having lied and filled out the form about seven times (you can't get it if you don't have a fax number) I finally downloaded it and yes, it does contain that error: "1.5% of the planet's energy".

I'd write to the people who produced it but the website is so horrible, and it's so hard to figure out who to write to, that I just give up.

What's the definition of a "white paper"?

Jer's link takes me to a page on Forbes which invites me to watch a webcast. There's no text, as far as I can see, and in order to watch the webcast I have to go through two pages with huge complex intrusive forms -- I have to provide them with my phone number? -- before I can access it.

But I did that for the sake of being sure.

Yes, the webcast, (low-res, badly recorded audio and ugly pixelated slides) after a few minutes, does indeed say that "data centers consume 1.5 per cent of the total electricity on the planet". Which by now, I hope we all realise is not true.

I'm pleased it got corrected. Now, of course, it looks like Alex and Jez didn't ever make that claim. I'd have been happier if their claim was left there with a polite comment pointing out that it was incorrect.

Nobody even blinked at the insane assertion that data centres alone account for 1.5% of the entire world's energy?

Nonsense. The EPA report estimates that 'servers and data centers' may account for 1.5% of US energy. US. Not World. And what does 'servers' mean in that context?

To reduce that to 'data centers take up 1.5% of world energy' is ridiculous.