Photos of two of the Amsterdam Invaders from my recent trip:

http://flickr.com/photos/kpratt/2348709268/

http://flickr.com/photos/kpratt/2346337607/

Glad to hear the actual back story on the Invaders though.

#203
"What would the two lines have added..."

Context? A framing to the post such that some of us don't see "AND YEAH VERILY THOU SHALT READEST MY TOME." and wonder what the hell just happened?

"...it's a declaration of policy"

What then is the problem with prefacing it with "This is a policy declaration. We're writing it down so we can point people to it later. You may go about your day now."?

And it's not a question of who was in the loop and who was not in the loop, but, by way of example, following the traditional bb posting style.

Option 1:
"Here's why this thing is interesting and why it caught my eye.

Heres a picture.

"Here is a blockquote of the important bits"

And here is the link."

contrasted with

Option 2:
"Here is a giant blockquote with no introduction that you have to read all the way through to the end to find the part about the civlib steampunk unicorns who work for Lessig on CC."

#196 "I read almost every single thing that hits this board and my memory can be treacherously accurate when inconvenient (to others)."

Yes, and bravo for having such copious free time and the mental bandwidth to cache the entirety of bb. For those of us not so blessed, or rather cursed with full time employment and other demands on our mental prowess, the two lines of context would be a great help in remembering what has gone memorized by others.

Late to the party, but I was part of the Great Hamster Snack Debacle of '08, so I'll join in briefly.

To the extent I agree with #28, the point is there was a better way to post this. When I first saw this, my first thought was "Where's the Hamster Snacks II: Electric Boogaloo post? I must have missed a real comment party." If instead, as some suggested, this was just a post to be referred to later by a link to the mod policy, mark it as such. Starting off with "We the Boingers have made a mod policy. We're posting it here so we can refer to it later. Carry On." would have gone a long way towards allaying the "Somebody pissed in my cheerios and now I'm angry" feeling I got when first read it.

And then, to address the 'being more polite than you think should be necessary' policy. Hooray! I'm all for it. But 'It' is a two way street. Not everyone gets the same fuzzy happy feeling looking at this policy (see the sections on advertiser corruption and microsoft in reference to the 'respond to the idea, not the idea holder' doctrine). I would love for everyone who comes over to your house to be more polite, but thats much easier when you're the most polite host I've ever met. As the saying goes, "Don't get in an argument with an idiot/troll. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

--Kevin

Teresa--

Three things:

First, we all do appreciate having a moderator to reign in the more vitriolic and outlandish comments that the trolls leave us. Thank you for your behind the scenes work.

Secondly, for me at least (and I suspect some others) this has moved past the issue of "ZOMG I hate Micro$soft!!!!111" to how the backlash was handled. There is a better way to address the problem than deleting the comments, waiting an hour, and then posting Frauenfulder's rebuttal.

And finally, your comments. Many of the BB crew are astoundingly punctilious in replying to reader email, and that is always to be commended. I don't believe this needs to extend to the comments: particularly comments that, as you note, have already been addressed by earlier statements. The reason many of us are readers of this fine establishment is that we are a reasonably intelligent cast of characters. Most of us are observant enough and shrewd enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. It's not necessary to deal snark for snark on each of the comments: let the low-brow be seen for what it is and let it roll off your back.

--Kevin

"First you cut a hole in the box...."

You know how the rest of that goes.

If not, google should help you locate the instructional video.

I call data shenanigans. This is nowhere near a statistically random sample.

The only group that is represented here is a) those that are on facebook, b) who also install every third-party app / report every miniscule piece of data on their existence in their profile (depending what data source they used), and c) didn't set their profile as private.

Not sure about the rest of you but the people that incessantly send me invitations for trivia quizes, poker, and the new Super-Duper-Bestest-Evar-Wall!!!1 aren't often the people whose reading lists I'm particularly interested in following.

Just sayin'.

Yes, and bravo for subduing a man in coma.

I hear they can be quite wily; what with all that sitting there and not moving.