Just a note ….

by

… That ObWi’s posters run the gamut along the political scale, and just because you’re seeing a demeaning and evil post from the Latter-Day Fascist Enemy does not mean that you won’t soon see a friendlier post from Those Who Defend The Pure (In Birkenstocks).  Or vice versa.  And, on that note, best not to extrapolate a poster’s broader political views from his or hers latest happy-puppy-post-that-you-totally-agree-with.  Each of us is all over the map, in our own way.

Or, simply put:  ObWi is a hive mind, but it is a very confused hive mind with what may be an undiagnosed case of full-blown psychosis and occasionally anti-social designs.  You’ve been warned.

(What prompted this post.  Dunno.  It’s been a while, and this seemed like the Moe Lane thing to do.  Hey, Moe!  Come back anytime.)

FYI — If you have complaints or comments regarding how ObWi’s being run, leave ’em in this thread.

54 thoughts on “Just a note ….”

  1. I find myself usually agreeing with Edward, followed by hilzoy, then sometimes agreeing with von, and rarely ever agreeing with Sebastian or Charles. I’m guessing that more or lest defines the spectrum, actually.

  2. i don’t like the way ObWi can only remember by name/info when i’m at my work PC. when i’m at home, it comes up blank.
    other than that, good site. don’t let it turn into Tacitus with blue borders.

  3. Cleek — two thoughts. (And apologies in advance if you’ve already tried each.)
    Make sure “remember personal info” is clicked on your home computer.
    Make sure that your home internet browser is set to remember forms, passwords, and the like.

  4. I find myself agreeing with Katherine to the point that it makes me feel all empty inside, wondering if I need go on. But ObWi is the only major (i.e. sometimes 100+ comments) board I can read on any political blog without frequently gagging, so something must still be going right.

  7. Moi, aussi. Vive Katherine.
    Thirded. (Though I frequently disagree with her.) And, as the “About Us” suggests, she’s welcome back as a poster anytime — full-time, part-time, she names it.

  8. I think there could be more open threads – that might encourage slightly more focussed discussion in the, uhh, closed threads, and it would give me a place to drop the evanescent questions/thoughts/wise-cracks/partisan links that flit through my mind on the way to oblivion.

  9. I believe that all posts should reflect my political opinions. If they continue to vary, I shall request- nay, demand- a partial refund of my subscription fee.
    (I should also note that, while I have no proof, I believe that some people are reading without PayPaling Sebastian the $150 membership fee. I’m just saying.)

  10. Regarding what ObWi is attempting to do, as wrong as we sometimes get it, Sullivan today suggests it’s more important than some may think:

    Are we now the establishment? Fineman says we are. His admission that the mainstream media have acted as a de facto political party for three decades strikes me as a big deal – the first crack of self-awareness in the MSM. But I truly hope the blogosphere doesn’t become its replacement. Blogs are strongest when they are politically diverse, when they are committed to insurgency rather than power, when they belong to no party. I’m particularly worried that the blogosphere has become far more knee-jerk, shrill and partisan since the days when I first started blogging. Some of that’s healthy and inevitable; but too much is damaging. In challenging the MSM, we should resist the temptation to become like them.

  11. I think, if anything, that ObWi is /too/ tolerant. A site needs housecleaning in order to keep discussions productive and civil. There are some people who aggravate the piss out of me but about whom I can’t really complain because they aggravate me by advancing good arguments. And then there are a few–really, amazingly few–who on the balance seem to always be a net negative to the discussion, contributing almost nothing except conflict for the sake of conflict.
    The end result of this is that once these undesirables wade into the fray, there are large patches of conversation that just get skimmed over because the discussion devolves into the endless irrelevant diversions they throw up, and people’s responses to them.

  12. ObWi is the best blog if you actually want discussion, and to hear sensible arguments supporting what I thought an indefensible political position. Kudos to you all for a job well done, and kudos to Moe, wherever he is, for giving birth to such a fine thing.

  13. I agree with many of the other commentors. ObWi has leapt from an occasional read to daily faster than any blog I’ve ever read. I appreciate the diversity of opinions– and the fact that not everyone falls where you’d expect.
    Thanks.

  15. Oh yeah, it would be nice if the comments were linkable – so I could e.g. link to “John Thullen’s Garage” if/when it shows up in the search engine.

  16. I think ObiWi is set up entirely wrong. You should be segmenting the entire market, as network TV does, with one poster responsible for each segment. For example, on TV, you have CBS as responsible for the olds, WB responsible for the teens, UPN has the Af-Am market, Fox and NBC for anything that is remotely interesting, and ABC as some sort of full-employment gaurantee for TV execs. I leave it to you to do the actual divying up, though (obviously) only Sebastian, Von, and (if returning Moe) should have a shot at Fox, and you might have to add someone to pick up ABC (as no one here seems pointless).
    Other than that – well done.

  17. SCOTUS listens to von:
    “Justice Stevens delivered the controlling opinion today and was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer.”

  21. Occasionally I get an annoying error message, when reading ObWi that says
    A Runtime Error has occured.
    Do you wish to debug?
    Line: 1
    Error: Syntax Error.
    This is using IE on Windows NT

  22. ObWi has become my favorite blog hangout precisely because of the quality of the discussions, and the posters/contributors. There’s a really good left-right mix, and the diarists – without exception, near as I can tell – truly want substantive, intelligent debates.
    Gives me a good workout, and shames my tendency at times to snark.

  23. I was blogging away obsessively one evening and my boyfriend hollared at me, “Tell your imaginary friends goodby and get off the computer!”

  24. I was blogging away obsessively one evening and my boyfriend hollared at me, “Tell your imaginary friends goodby and get off the computer!”
    I just wonder how someone who didn’t know what “blogging” was would interpret that comment…

  25. If Tacitus is the blogfather, can we make Moe the blogmother 😉 ?
    ObWi is the place that teaches me respect for those on the other end of the political spectrum. Well, at least for some of them ;-).
    That makes it one of the very few places were people might convince me that my opinion might need some more thinking through.

  28. I dunno Dutch, why can’t ObWings have two daddies?
    LOL. It was the ‘giving birth too’ that made me think about women 😉
    It has been adopted though… hmmm… blogfather, blogmother and blogparents?

  29. ObWings is certainly my favorite blog now. I enjoy the (generally) civil conversation.
    If I would make a complaint, it’s that I hate TypePad/MT unthreaded comments. Any chance ObWings could move to a Scoop-powered site? How about if I offered to help set it up?

  30. If I would make a complaint, it’s that I hate TypePad/MT unthreaded comments. Any chance ObWings could move to a Scoop-powered site? How about if I offered to help set it up?
    I hate the scoop-powered threaded sites. Virtually unreadable, especially if you want to check what has been added since the last time you looked. And once the discussion gets somewhere, the comments get less and less room…. Please, pretty please…. don’t change!

  31. Thought you’d get a kick out of that Edward.
    As for site improvements, the right side of the blogosphere is somewhat under representated on the blog roll since Moe’s roll got taken down. Sebastian, at least, should add some links – but I’m worried about Charles Bird ruining this site.

  32. Dutchmarbel,
    In fact, it’s fairly easy to check what’s been added since you last you looked. New posts have a [new] tag, which you can use a keyboard shortcut to find. You can view your comments and see if someone has responded specifically to you and if you like the current, flat comment style, you can set it that way in your prefs and Bob’s your uncle.
    Scoop is such a better technology for this sort of thing, I’m really surprised that more bloggers don’t use it.

  33. Scoop is such a better technology for this sort of thing, I’m really surprised that more bloggers don’t use it.
    I realize that talking about technology interfaces is the ur-source of flame fests, but here goes.
    While one can set a Scoop site to view in a flat comment style, if others are using nested threads, you lose the conversation. In a sense, the technology ‘forces’ people to use the nested style if they want to participate. That nested style gives rise to 1-2 line responses and more and more snark. As Nadezhda noted here on the posting rules thread, nested allows ‘food fights’ as he perceptively called them, to not spill over to the main conversation. But if you choose to go to a flat comment style, wham! you are covered with mashed potatoes.
    I agree that Scoop offers some very impressive features that suit some things and some discussion styles and topics. But in the flat comment style only interface, the audience is seeing the same thing the same way and we can discuss it from the same viewpoint. If the ‘text’ is seen differently by different people, we are asking for trouble because we can’t even agree who saw what first.

  34. I hate the scoop-powered threaded sites. Virtually unreadable, especially if you want to check what has been added since the last time you looked.
    Scoop is way better once you get used to it. As for finding new entries, hitting Ctrl f and typing [new does the trick for me.

  35. If the ‘text’ is seen differently by different people, we are asking for trouble because we can’t even agree who saw what first.
    I think that’s my fundamental problem with Scoop: It permits greater viewer flexibility, but at a cost of common understanding. A single chain promotes a community discussion — anyone can leap on anyone’s statement. Scoop encourages branch-offs, tangents, and one-on-ones.
    To me, gaining flexibility at the cost of further fragmatism is not worth it. I recognize that Scoop has certain advantages and is likely the wave of the future, but at I’m not a fan.

  36. I always have to check the value of Pi when I agree with Mr. Bird, but yes…CTRL-F works pretty well, and even better for you Firefox/Mozilla users, you can use typeahead find and then CTRL-G to find subsequent [new] posts.
    LJ is also correct. Once people start using the threaded conversation mode, viewing comments as Flat instead of Threaded or Nested becomes more difficult.

  37. If the ‘text’ is seen differently by different people, we are asking for trouble because we can’t even agree who saw what first.
    I find it amusing, the extent to which blog technology has basically recapitulated the history of USENET and newsreaders. If only someone would come out with a comments killfile…

  38. Nested comments is pretty much what got me to stop being a Tacitus commentor, just to give you an idea how much I like it.
    If I wanted things the opposite of the way I like them, I’d be driving a motorcycle to work every day.

  39. I find it amusing, the extent to which blog technology has basically recapitulated the history of USENET and newsreaders.
    Truly a frightening thought, that everything on the internet is doomed to repeat USENET…

  43. I’d prefer rn to this interface, quite frankly
    Although now that Von and Slarti have weighed in, my hopes of a Scoop-powered ObWings have been dashed to pieces.
    ((sob))

  45. chuchundra: Although now that Von and Slarti have weighed in, my hopes of a Scoop-powered ObWings have been dashed to pieces.
    But at least now you know the decision is pleasing *some* people; doesn’t that make it easier to bear? 😉
    The “find new” probabely works in Opera too (I never saw the ‘new’, but have not read scoop-powered threads in ages so cannot check). I had difficulty with people referring to other posts that were *down* from their own reply too, very confusing. More so than on usenet. Anyway: it totally made me stop reading comments that used scoop – and I hate registring before I can post too.

  46. Nested comments is pretty much what got me to stop being a Tacitus commentor, just to give you an idea how much I like it.
    Me too.
    If I wanted things the opposite of the way I like them, I’d be driving a motorcycle to work every day.
    And I’d be in a car. I just loooove the diversity of OW 😉

  47. I win!! My side is the best!!! chuchundra is a bad person!! I get to make comments about how he is a bad person based on his preferences!!
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    What do you mean, I can’t do this according to ‘just’ because he prefers a different interface? This is important, damnit!

  48. Ah, now you see the violence inherent in the system! Come see the violence inherent in the system!
    Help, I’m being repressed!
    I mean, I suppose I could set up my own Ccoop blog, but without Bird Dog to ruin it, what would be the point?

  51. I wrote:
    I can’t do this according to ‘just’ because he prefers a different interface?
    Being witty requires a cooler temperament than mine, I’m afraid…

  53. Oh, and apropos of blogs recapitulating USENET, I present this link.
    LOL, I read him on occassion, but never looked this far back 😉

  54. If anything, I could use just a touch more conservative commentary, if only to see how it really works when handled by adults. That said, I am deeply appreciative of this site, and of its commentators. On more than one issue you have changed me (I think) for the better. Thank you.

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