unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Of course its not true. I will wipe his account and everything that he has ever posted as soon as I get real internet access. Unfortunately I am on the road right now and I'm posting this from my cellphone. It will probably be 24 hours before I am able to do this. Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately this is not the last we'll be hearing from this person.

Decius wrote:

unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Of course its not true. I will wipe his account and everything that he has ever posted as soon as I get real internet access. Unfortunately I am on the road right now and I'm posting this from my cellphone. It will probably be 24 hours before I am able to do this. Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately this is not the last we'll be hearing from this person.

at least if any of us see a post is marked as written by vile we know what to expect and to pretty much disregard it
he's unpleasant and offensive but i'm not convinced censorship is the answer

Decius wrote:

unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Of course its not true. I will wipe his account and everything that he has ever posted as soon as I get real internet access. Unfortunately I am on the road right now and I'm posting this from my cellphone. It will probably be 24 hours before I am able to do this. Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately this is not the last we'll be hearing from this person.

I gotta hand it to Vile. Out of all the miscreant bullshit he spews on here, this is probably the funniest. In an odd twist of irony, maybe you should create a 'demerit' system for those who abuse the trust system. You can call it a Vile Point.

In terms of just having a system troll... Vile makes a good one. I think he should be kept around in a sort of mascot-like capacity.

Decius wrote:

unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Of course its not true. I will wipe his account and everything that he has ever posted as soon as I get real internet access. Unfortunately I am on the road right now and I'm posting this from my cellphone. It will probably be 24 hours before I am able to do this. Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately this is not the last we'll be hearing from this person.

The jury appears to have spoken, and clearly the consensus is that Vile should stay. If you don't agree with this consensus this is clearly a time when you should speak up, at least privately.

I did not understand, when I read Gavin's post on my cellphone, that Vile's message to him was a response to Gavin's earlier public question about Vile. I had sent Gavin a message in response to that earlier public question advising him that he shouldn't have made it public (IE don't feed the troll). Vile had a right to respond, having been called out publicly. The fact that Vile's sentiment (that this should have been a private message) echoed my own was probably the reason that Gavin thought that he might not be joking about having been "deputized" by me.

Having said that, I strongly object to those who have accused me of censorship. Vile's action in this instance was not merely expressive. I cannot have people fraudulently claiming to be an authority on this site and asking people to stop posting. That is itself an act of censorship, and its something that we cannot tolerate.

Furthermore, Vile's actions, in general, are not merely expressive. Gavin's message is not the first time that someone has told me that they feel like they have to leave MemeStreams, or that they cannot tell other people to join MemeStreams, because they feel like they are being targeted and harassed by Vile, or they feel like other people would be targeted and harassed by Vile. There is a difference between merely expressing your perspective, and harassing people with the intent of driving them away. What Vile is doing is the later, and it has hurt this community.

The reason that I haven't responded in the past is largely because I haven't had the technological capability to do so. In the past it was easier to generate accounts with full posting rights than it was to delete them. Due to the need to control SPAM, that is no longer the case. We have the capacity to prevent unwanted people from participating, but we do have to delete accounts in order to make that happen.

Could we develop an alternative technology? If we generated a "demerit" system what would the consequence be of accumulating demerits? Who would have the right to issue them? By what process?

Should I create some sort of icon that gets displayed everywhere Vile goes on the site? Something which denotes that "the administrators have determined that this person is a jackass and should be ignored?" There is some value in that idea, as new users who have no reputation can still send messages to threads and memeboxes. Ultimately we need some way to control that or it will turn into MySpace. Our system could differentiate between messages from trusted users versus new untrusted users visually more readily than we could determine with certainty that a new user was a spammer. What sort of visual representation would clearly communicate that? Maybe the color of a user's name should indicate their global reputation?

All of this is an interesting academic exercise, and I'd like feedback on it, but writing code takes time. If Vile becomes a problem that I have to respond to, I'll have to do it with the tools that I have at the time that I have to respond, rather than simply imagining a time in the future when I might have other tools at my disposal that would allow a more just response. Right now the tool that I have involves deleting accounts. I'm willing to use that tool if I have to. I will only do so against established users with the consent of the community.

unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Gavin,

Tom and I are making many enhancements. One I'm working on is a killfill. You can explicitly blacklist people and see no posts or thread replies from them.

Acidus wrote:

unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Gavin,

Tom and I are making many enhancements. One I'm working on is a killfill. You can explicitly blacklist people and see no posts or thread replies from them.

I not sure what got me pissed off about all of this but if there was some kinda of "ignore" option on a user basis that is what I see is the best bet... I have been also out of town and on limited net access for the last two weeks and I have to deal with enough people like him in the real world. To quote Jello in another post on the same topic, "Out of all the miscreant bullshit," I have limited time in my real life and this so myspace type bull... We are above it... damit!

unmanaged wrote:

Acidus wrote:

unmanaged wrote:

For the record. I am the head of the deportment enforcement department of Industrial Memetics, www.memestreams.com chapter. I am similar to a pinkerton for the information superhighway, by trade. I am here to uphold the memestreams community. Your post lacked content. That's the sort of thing you send an email over. You posted a derogatory comment about me in this post. That is one demerit. Keep it up and you will be asked to take a break from your posting with us. Ask Tom and Nick if you have any worthwhile questions.

Tom,

I have to say what the hell is this guy talking about...? (Vile?)
And if this is true please delete my account and and the posts that go along with it. I like the memestreams design and concept but this is total bull if true and I really dont want to feel as if I wasting my time...

Gavin

Gavin,

Tom and I are making many enhancements. One I'm working on is a killfill. You can explicitly blacklist people and see no posts or thread replies from them.

I not sure what got me pissed off about all of this but if there was some kinda of "ignore" option on a user basis that is what I see is the best bet... I have been also out of town and on limited net access for the last two weeks and I have to deal with enough people like him in the real world. To quote Jello in another post on the same topic, "Out of all the miscreant bullshit," I have limited time in my real life and this so myspace type bull... We are above it... damit!

I never realized that you had no funnybone. How sad I feel for you. Humor is an amazing concept. It's free! All you do is look at the absurdity of a situation and reel in its delights, ironies, hyperboles and gross out gags. In the event that anyone on this website has ever allowed me to ruin their day, or make them rise to anger, I take the cloaks of satire and humor as a veil to threats of censorship or positive self-reinforcement on the part of those too stuffy to take, or disregard, a joke.

You failed to realize that "pinkerton of the internet" was a thoroughly fatuous and anachronistic joke? I appreciate the fact that you admired my writing abilities enough to become duped by the pseudo-official corporate/academic jargon utilized in screwing with you, but really, did you honestly buy the "pinkerton" bit? Demerit? When the hell have you been threatened with a demerit in you adult life? I'm only sorry that I provided the materials for you to make yourself look gullible, reactionary, litigious and foolish in the internet's equivalent of a "public place."

In short, I defend myself by saying that the writings that I post on memestreams are quite popular with my readers and some peers. I always direct readers of my zine or followers of my performances to check out the loose, sat... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]