Because the average age of a loyal BB reader and commenter is 11, it's a good thing that the new Moderation Policy is fully and explicitly explained to us...

My favorite parts:

Because four years ago, Boing Boing's first, unmoderated comment system went so septic that it had to be shut down. The Boingers want to never go through that again.

and

Q. One of my comments has disappeared!

A. There are several possibilities. One is that we may be having technical problems. It never hurts to write and ask. Another possibility is that someone thought your comment would be better gone.

Teresa then launches into a ten-item list of all the things that will land you in their "bad graces." I think it can all be summed up as "please don't hurt Xeni's feelings again! She's a serious journalist!"

An all-new BoingBoing, with New and Improved Comments, you say? Ah, with a moderator, now I see. Oh, wait, a moderator whose life's minutia is dutifully recorded into her voluminous wikipedia entry by none other than autodidactic "wildcat cartographer"/science fiction something-or-other, and person with very odd definitions of commonly defined English terms, Kathryn Cramer? I can't see how this could turn out bad.

Heh. I already like seeing Corky's name next to "DISCUSS (0)". Fitting, somehow. And frequent.

On a strange note, reading a SHOUT OUTZ list numbering 2 greater than Frauenfelder has fingers to count (come to think of it, I've never seen his hands), one can't help but wonder, "How the holy mother of fuck did it take twelve people, not including you four stooges, to update your blog software?" Wow. Just, wow.

Good luck with that, dudes.

Read More...

From the days before their hosting provider was 50% of the non-self-promotional advertising space sold at boingboing:

Let's get this over with, shall we?

Pearl Jam? Lollapalooza? What year is this? And I give a shit, why, exactly?

Oh boy, Mark's using his "clever" dig at Andrew Keen again. So, do they trade off days as to who is supposed to diss him on any given day, or is it just spontaneous obsessing? Maybe it has something to do with the sales stats of Keen's book versus Mark's epic "How To Google Shit For Dummies 2.0" work of literature. Hrmm.

Could someone please explain to Cory and the "Electronic Frontier Foundation" how, if one looks at AT&T historically, one can easily see that AT&T is only nominally the same company, the name being an asset that was transferred from the original AT&T to the current owners? Ah, fuck it. It's actually kind of funny that some dumbass went to the effort of documenting part of the history, but somehow missed the part that negated his entire fucking point.

Grown man blathers on about his new bestest most favoritest comic book. Who's the real Comic Book Guy now, huh?

And, in a rare instance, I found the personal accounts of Iraq actually interesting. You know, if there was more shit like that, there might be less shit like this. Just sayin'.

Oh yeah; a little lagniappe for you: allows comments. The "recommended" ratio for certain comments is particularly amusing to me. Anyway, enjoy. Fernet and Coke time here.

It's like a holiday in the Bay Area, since all the assholes are out of town at "Camp I'm OK, You're OK"(*). I mention this because it is my only tangential, and remotely at that, interest in this fascinating piece of top-notch journalism.

The "reader comment", though, reminded me that the "piece" about the Whole Foods CEO commenting on Wild Oats on a "message board" is a perfect example of the typical reactionary bias exhibit by the assclowns at boingboing. When somebody in some non-US country with non-US freedoms gets in trouble for looking at porn, assclowns are up in arms about Flickr's refusal to Join the Revolution and do what the users want them to do, rather than what the, say, shareholders want them to do. Yet, somehow, when an individual in a corporation says something public, regardless of how stupid it is, the verbage used to describe this is:

The CEO of Whole Foods spent a ton of time on Yahoo messageboards bashing the value of Wild Oats stock

Oh yeah? You're sure it was a "ton of time"? The case is closed already? The investigation is at a point where you can start stating shit like that as if it were fact? Where is the outrage about his right to "free speech" being trampled on by the FTC? Fuck that, where's basic fucking fact-checking? "Messageboards" is one word? Who "sez"?

Alright, peoples, it's dinner time. See how ending on a conversational note makes me seem pretty unprofessional?

(*) - Advanced apologies to LA reader friends who attend burning man. I'm sure not everyone there is an asshole. In fact, I would even be willing to believe that the majority of the attendees are not generally self-absorbed asshats, but I remain certain that of the percentage that are, most of them live in San Francisco, and are suffering from some sort of psychological distress as the result of childhood sexual abuse of some sort or another, or having not received sufficient attention from parents and friends in the small Southern or Midwestern towns they grew up in.

• Amateur journalist resorts to ad hominem when accused of being an amateur.
• Also, wiki.

Oh, wait; you mean there's no fucking point in posting things I just posted a couple fucking days ago? You mean that's fucking annoying? My bad. Here's two other things instead:

1) "OMFG, CAN U GUYZ BELIEVE THIS THING LOOKS LIKE TEH PENIS!11111!!!" Featuring the largest number of boring reader updates about other things that look like penises to them. Fascinating shit, if you're 4 years old. You know what else looks like a penis, Xeni? Penises. You remember penises, right?

2) What's the word for when someone you think is a douchebag fucks up and catches grief for it, publicly? Band manager, or pimp? Really, what's the fucking difference?

1) Looks like Cory's on the verge of catching the same bug someone else on that staff has, or maybe he's just been drinking Potomac water.

2) Shameless Xeni brown-nosing reveals that Battellah thinks 1) blogs should do more merchandising to be more like that other blog, "amazon.com". And 2) he also thinks what we all need are some extra pop-up windows. Both of these ideas are just plain retarded. Nevermind the conflict between this post and, say, the one posted right after it. It's funny, really; Xeni speculating about Google use is like homeless people speculating about mortgage rates.

So that's not two things, it's four. You are all grown-ups, you'll learn to deal with the disappointment over time. Well, you regular readers, at least.

A: Not having a livejournal in the first place, thus being disqualified from Special Olympic participation.

Now, let's get down to business, shall we?

Somebody call CNN, an old tv show filmed in the 60s has cultural debris in the background that's also from the 60s! Can you believe it? Mark can't.

Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow fills in for Xenifer, recycling Ye Olde Ancient Goatse Meme. Always fascinating and in vogue, just like the word "blogosphere". Oh wait...

Still, he finds the time to post another ad disguised as a blog post for his "new" book, just in case you missed the three other times El Mierdaperro shilled himself in the past 7 days. Four times, seven days. I guess maybe he took the weekend off...

OK, people, chat amongst yourselves. And WILKOMMEN to our new German visitors.

Here's a quickie roundup before I go get drunk and ask Cindy Sheehan completely inappropriate questions:

I see that Special Mark finally wrote a book about his friends. Thank god he's got somewhere to pimp it as something "wonderful".

Hell hath no fury like a pudgy former street-urchin-turned-"sex-educator" scorned. By statistics. That everybody, like, totally gives a shit about. 'Tis the season to be sitting at home, checking your fucking page rank to see if Google is CENZ0RINGZ J00, I suppose.

My, Xeni, what a lovely color of shit you chose for your lipstick there... Fascinating "insight" from professional blowhard and pimp, John Batelle (Yes, I know I spelled his name wrong, I enjoy the idea of making the use of page rank more difficult): "blah blah blah TIME'S PERSON OF THE YEAR, YOU, IS TOTALLY WEB 2.0!111!!!! HEY MOM, I'M ON THE COVER OF TIME!1112 blah blah blah". Seriously, ad salespeople and journalists, speculating on technology, IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, SHUT THE FUCK UP. Thanks.

I see that Jacob Appelbaum is still pretending to be a hacker. I wonder if anyone at CCC asked him about how he got shitcanned from a fucking VOLUNTEER job at the ACCRC for being completely technically incompetent? I guess the world will never know.

Aww, poor Saddam Hussein. Truly an Iraqi icon, he will be missed.

And finally, whole lotta fascinating navelgazing going on. I'd critique a little more, but I got bored, and I have the ability to walk away from it.

On the plus side, at least that tard Doctorow is still out in the sandbox, crapping himself, and not writing.

and meanders on, forcing her banal third world slideshow on everyone.

Another Dipshit Leaves Town, and speaks in the third person, informing everyone he's not going to read their email, so don't bother sending it, but if you want to get in touch with him, contact his agent or his "band manager".

Could someone please put him on the No-Fly list while he's back in Soviet Canuckistan? You'd be doing everyone a favor, seeing as how 1) Cory hates America anyway, and 2) America hates Cory.

Naturally, I'm joking about the No-Fly list thing. If I was serious, I would have forwarded this to friends at Homeland Security. Hrmm...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: the drinking game is codified. Time to make poops now.