[Rich Toscano]

Interesting thoughts from Hempton on the tax thing:

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2016/10/some-comments-on-new-york-times-story.html

[Rich Toscano]

[quote=flu-redux]I am trying to understand BGs logic[/quote]

Let me stop you right there…

[Rich Toscano]

That picture is from my webcam as I try to figure out how to encrypt the site 😉

[Rich Toscano]

Thanks for the heads up. Spd is right, in the case of pigg, there isn’t much sensitive information going back and forth — but still, this is something I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. So this will kick my butt into finally doing it!

[Rich Toscano]

[quote=spdrun] one doesn’t need to be connected to the Intarwebz 24/7/365[/quote]

That, sir, is where we disagree!

[Rich Toscano]

spdisms

OP: Can anyone recommend a smartphone?
spdrun: You don’t need a smart phone; carry flags for semaphore and build your own mainframe from chicken bones and discarded Atari 2600 parts. NEXT!

OP: How much do you typically pay a gardener?
spdrun: You don’t need a gardener; grow your own topiary maze and painstakingly, over the course of many years, train an army of voles to maintain it. NEXT!

OP: What’s everyone’s favorite pasta recipe?
spdrun: Only chumps eat solid food; you should become a being of pure energy and feed on sound waves. NEXT!

OP: Is this a good time to buy a house?
spdrun: If you live in a house you are an idiot. You should live in your car, which, if it’s not a 1984 Datsun 200SX, you are also an idiot. BOOM! MIC DROP, SMOKE BOMB, EXIT STAGE RIGHT!

[Rich Toscano]

PS My argument to this poster was that there would be a few downvotes from the poster’s antagonists, but many many more upvotes from the “silenty majority” of reasonable pigg readers. Just to clarify a bit further.

[Rich Toscano]

Well, I just got a DM from a person whose posts I really enjoy — one of my favorite posters actually. Long story short, this person thought that I was maybe targeting their types of posts (because this poster often gets in debates with other posters, and those posters would downvote them). This wasn’t my thinking at all… the idea was that it’s not just the people in the debate, but ALL the readers who are voting, and that the most incisive, logical, and interesting posts would float to the top (even if some people didn’t like them). I admit I am giving a lot of credit to the reader community here… maybe it’s valid, maybe not. But that was the dream.

I just wanted to mention this because I clearly gave at least one high-quality poster the wrong impression about my intent! This idea is off the table, as noted above. So this here is just a clarification and an attempt to minimize the number of people I offend. 😉

[Rich Toscano]

“Let’s be honest, who but the most ardent or tone deaf will continue to post when the board chronically tell them people don’t like their posts.”

Do you actually think that in that situation, the person’s posts are likely to be good or worthwhile?

I guess that’s the disconnect here… if the board is constantly telling someone their posts suck, I don’t think it’s because this is a lone brave dissenter bringing us the truth… it’s probably because their posts actually suck.

And anyway it’s not about getting people to post or not post, it’s about a filtering mechanism so a reader can have the choice to sort based on the community’s appraisal of quality. It’s just not that sinister, and I’ve been on sites that use it to great success.

But whatever, obviously people aren’t into it. The signal to noise ratio is terrible these days… just thought it might help but that’s not a battle I’m going to fight.

[Rich Toscano]

The irony is: I’m not even sure this capability exists in the forum software I use. (“This capability” meaning stackoverflow-style up/down voting and sorting). I just mentioned it semi-seriously as a way to compliment a post I thought was particularly pithy.

With that said, I just don’t get what all the controversy is about. Posts can get up or down voted, and if you want, you can sort them by votes. Or you can sort by date as it is now, and completely ignore the votes. That’s it. It’s just another piece of information to use or ignore as you wish. Not sure what all the fuss is about. (If it even exists for this software, which again, I’m not even sure it does).

[Rich Toscano]

Typing +1 isn’t the same because I’m talking about something you could sort on the basis of.

[Rich Toscano]

[quote=njtosd]

FWIW – not that it is likely to be an issue for this website, but . . . . Rich – you might want to think about the Digital Millennium Copyright Right Act at least a little. Basically – the less a web host directly interacts in a *non-automated* way (i.e. personally deciding what or who ends up on the blog) the more likely the host is to maintain the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA if there were ever to be any copyright protected components ending up here.

Not intended to be legal advice – just something to think about.[/quote]

Thank you… as you can probably tell, though, there is virtually no manual curating or moderating on this site. I will take this as an upside to my slothfulness!

[Rich Toscano]

[quote=ucodegen][quote=Rich Toscano]
Again I don’t understand what for-profit or mainstream media has to do with this subject. Piggington is a free discussion forum, it’s just a whole different kettle of fish.[/quote]

Newsprint’s success (financial) these days is oriented around popularity, not critical content. Good critical content can be very unpopular. If your publication is not ‘popular’, you don’t get advertising revenue…

When someone’s content is rated on popularity, we risk going down the same route the results in quick sound-bites without much thought put into it. As someone else has stated, one can just filter a particular person out if they tend to produce more noise than signal.

However – these are just my opinions – can’t tell you what you must do with your website. I hope you read the full referenced posting though. I have many more on the risk that rating to popularity has on informed discussion.

I’ve seen blog sites degrade into the comment quality that yahoo has when ‘popularity’ upvote/downvote is added. Commenters spend less time on thinking about it and vote on ‘like’. Postings tend to get shorter and more inflammatory and less ‘thinking’ time is used before posting.

Right now, one needs to think things through or one will just get their arguments ‘ripped apart’. With upvote/downvote, one can write something really stupid but won’t get their position ripped apart. Just a lot of downvotes, which some people seem to like to get (any number of votes shows attention over posting something and getting zero votes either way)

[quote=Rich Toscano]My personal view is that there is a wide range in quality of postings here, and I would love to have a way to sort based on how high quality the community as a whole thinks postings are.[/quote]
You are assuming that the votes will be based uniformly on quality vs popularity. I think that is part of the mistake.[/quote]

Thanks for clarifying. Definitely some good points in there worth thinking about.

[Rich Toscano]

[quote=ucodegen][quote=Hobie]
I would like a way to vote for a temp ban on members when posts turn personal or foul language. 3 strikes idea.[/quote]
Censorship… just put them on ignore. Then they just ‘talk to the hand’ or ‘spit into the wind’ or ‘yell into the canyon that has no echo’…. kind of lonely for them.

Censorship creates its own set of problems.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” – Evelyn Beatrice Hall.

link for the nit-pickers on the above quote:
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/%5B/quote%5D

There is an ignore option, but unfortunately the trolls still seem to be well-fed…

As far as fighting to the death for people’s rights, etc… let’s not fall into the fallacy that getting kicked off an internet forum somehow abrogate’s one’s rights. I am with XKCD on this one:

[Rich Toscano]

My personal view is that there is a wide range in quality of postings here, and I would love to have a way to sort based on how high quality the community as a whole thinks postings are. This doesn’t mean you can’t read the low-rated ones, or that you can’t respond. It’s just another piece of information to use as you wish. I’ve been on discussion sites with upvote/downvote capability and found it to be a very useful feature.

Again I don’t understand what for-profit or mainstream media has to do with this subject. Piggington is a free discussion forum, it’s just a whole different kettle of fish.

[Author]

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