Update: Planet 3.0 was kind enough to publish my comment on their website on January 30th, five days after it was made. I extend my thanks to them for allowing the publication of my comment.
As the climate debate heated up in the early 2000’s a number of activists, scientists and commenters started up their own weblogs.
Some of them are quite good–best of breed is clearly Bart Verheggen’s weblog “Our Changing Climate“–but others clearly are more interested in politics than science.
What most of them have in common is the ‘Crossfire’ approach to dealing with disagreement–insults are common and dismissal for lack of scientific credentials even more so.
However, the worst tactic in evidence is the censorship of comments and commenters. The ‘moderators’ of these blogs will cheerfully trash your comments, or delay them so the conversation has moved on by the time they appear, or worst of all, ‘edit’ them.
Weblogs that practice these tactics on a routine basis include Real Climate, Rabett Run, Stoat, the spectacularly misnamed Open Mind and Skeptical Science and Planet 3.
For some reason the operators of these blogs seem to feel that censoring conversations in some way advances the debate. I don’t think the current state of the debate provides much evidence that they’re correct.
As it happens, I have had a comment in moderation for two days now at Planet 3. I’ll post the entire relevant comments below–please offer your reasons on why my comment deserves to be held out of public view…
The topic is ‘Why Environmentalists Disagree With Each Other“. Here’s a selection from the original post:
“But people are reluctant to give up their pet hypothesis, and never develop a real theory. For example, people who love technology, markets and economics will usually persist in believing those change the world, even when they don’t. Others strongly believe in political change, and persist in believing that, even if evidence suggests otherwise.
I tend towards an economics and technology bias, I guess, while others lean towards the political and cultural side of things.
My instincts tell me that we’re probably all wrong, and all right, and it will take some unusual combination of all of these theories to make a real difference in the world.”
The comments are an exchange between OPatrick and myself:
If we Cornucopians can add a note to this, there seems to be ample evidence that the world has changed for the better following the introduction of technology and the adoption of science as one of the principal tools for understanding our universe.
With those who do not believe the world has gotten better there is no point in arguing.
For those who believe it is politics or culture that drives change, I would offer the theory that you are looking at lagging rather than leading indicators.
-
OPatrick says:
I don’t believe the world is better.
Of course this is totally dependent on how ‘better’ is measured, but there is one fundamental, over-riding sense in which I think it isn’t better – that we are likely facing potentially catastrophic impacts from anthropogenic climate change and we have little prospect of averting that within timescales that would make a significant difference. If it weren’t for this looming threat and the utter sense of lack-of-controlledness my life would be exceptionally comfortable. I can also see progress in so many areas of development, nothing like the pace or consistency of progress I’d like, but something worth working for. But overall I think an objective analysis shows that my life is worse than it would have been when the threats to our stable lives were localised.
Naturally this is only a shadow of my argument, but we cannot ignore prospects for the future when analysing quality of our present.
-
Thomas Fuller says:
Hi OPatrick,
This is the debate I have been hoping to participate in here at P3, so bless your heart for bringing it up.
I am a Lukewarmer by avocation. (Essentially that boils down to being convinced that sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of concentrations is much lower than 3C. I personally think it’s around 2C and have advocated preparing for 2.5C to give us a measure of additional security.)
Reading the IPCC AR4 and Nicholas Stern’s Review of the Economics of Climate Change shows a possible world that will struggle to deal with climate change, but does not hint at the ‘catastrophic impacts’ that worry you.
As a ‘Cornucopian’, ‘techno-optimist’ believer in what science and technology have already brought us and look certain to bring us in the future, I quite obviously would differ with what you think an objective analysis would produce regarding quality of life measurements.
I would be eager to continue this discussion if it falls within the boundaries of P3 rules and goals.
-
But Tom, your optimism relies on three things all lining up: that sensitivity is relatively low; that the impacts will be linear (or not severe); that technology will be developed to solve the problems in time. I’d say the probabibility of the last is high, of the first is at best medium and of the middle is low.
Assessing impacts is always going to be difficult, but I see good reason to believe they are going to be worse than you suggest. We can’t rely on peer-reviewed evidence because to all intents and purposes there isn’t any, and it’s difficult to see how there could be. But how could the sort of changes in growing conditions, availability of water and so on we can expect, even with lower sensitivity, not reverse the positive developmental changes we can see happening?
-
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Hi OPatrick
I think I would like in a perfect world to comment almost line by line to your response. I’ll start with the bottom and see where I run out of steam.
Most of the developmental changes we’ve seen have been put in place precisely to counter the forces you think will be exacerbated by climate change. People have been working to address the impacts of drought and flooding and even variability for more than a century. We will have to spend more and spend more wisely to deal with impacts, but so far it doesn’t appear that we’ll need to invent new technologies or bring infant tech to maturity in 30 minutes or less.
We’ve been bringing water to where we want it for millenia now, and we’ve actually gotten better at it than the Romans–although I admire their style. Farmers have also changed cultivars and landcare practices in response to both short and long term changes. There is 5,000 years of best practice available to learn from. We have examples of dealing successfully with sea level rise and not just from the Dutch. Parts of Tokyo have faced 15 meters of relative SLR due to subsidence–but they’re still there.
I would urge you to remember that the bulk of development for the developing world is going to happen during the decades before the net impacts of climate change are projected to turn negative. Remember that at the beginning, even for a 3C rise, there are real winners from the changes we expect through at least 2040. The gains can be used to build resilience into communities and even regions.
Even though I don’t think we need new technology to address these issues, new technologies will certainly emerge. And that’s what I think isn’t linear–new tech will surprise us somewhere in this area, far more than any discontinuity in impacts. Think of the Mole now guarding Venice from the Adriatic or the flood barriers on the Thames as first gen examples that NYC can learn from.
During the next two decades, at least, my conception of lower sensitivity is the least important of the three elements we’re discussing. Even if you’re correct and I’m wrong,the impacts of higher sensitivity are far enough out there that we have time to do what we need to do.
But that’s if we are intelligent enough to abandon some of the memes driving the political battle. You correctly see the flaws and political goals of people like Morano and Monckton. And that’s a good thing. But you transfer that across the spectrum of those who oppose you like spreading peanut butter on bread. That’s inappropriate.
Every day you all work at establishing the Xtreme Weather meme is a day lost to effective consideration and preparation. Worse, it falls into the class of argument that contains many of the skeptical objections–it is a-scientific and aimed at emotion rather than analysis.
But that’s my personal hobbyhorse–I understand your mileage may vary.
-
The Lukewarmer's Way 
Snerk tries to be smart here when all he did was make a mess of it because what he whines about is not even comparable.
“Oh yeah? Why can other people call others warmists and alarmists then?”
They aren’t derogeratory and even accurate descrition of what they are because it is true they are pouncing on every warming event and hyperbolically screaming over major weather events and claim this is proof of AGW.
Calling people Denialists is indeed a derogeratory word because the originator of use of the word against AGW skeptics were intended to injure people.It is a clear case of namecalling that meets the intention of trying to destroy conversation and demonize people.
You should realize that your liberal use of the word is indicative of your inability to make a rational comment on a topic even people who have a PH.D have that problem too such as Micha Tomkiewicz.Who is being discussed in the link below:
“….To call a skeptic a “denier” is rank abuse, because as we have seen the word is a stand-in for vile intent. To compare “climate genocide” “deniers” with those who—what exactly? Supported Hitler? Enabled the man? Remember Tomkiewicz implied “deniers” in 1933 were responsible for Hitler—ah, the whole thing is asinine.
A far less serious crime to logic is his begging of the question. Skeptics claim, via arguments and evidence, to be less certain about climate change than Tomkiewicz. Tomkiewicz claims to be more than sure; he says he is certain. But he also implies that because he, Tomkiewicz, is sure that everybody should be, when the point at issue is how certain anybody should be. To attempt to bypass this debate by casting foolish aspersions and distasteful comparisons is a sign of weakness.,,,”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/holocaust-survivor-compares-climate-skeptics-to-hitler-deniers.html
You need to stop emplying conversation stoppers as it marks you as someone who has nothing to offer in a rational debate.
Just my opinion but this kind of post is counter-productive. Let’s please discuss climate science and leave this kind of thing to those who find it informative or helpful. I do not include myself in that group.
Nothing personal, but do attempt on occasion to tell the truth. RR offers everyone the opportunity to comment and there are only two or three magic words (Eli recalls one occasion in the past year, when he and Brian decided to take down some naughty words and of course there are Natasha and her pretty pictures which would shock, Eli says, simply shock the bunnies)
OTOH, Mr. Fuller made a living at Kloor’s old saloon while Keith slow walked the bunny.
You’re not a nice person, Mr. Rabett, and of all people who have visited here to date, you are the least qualified to lecture others on honesty. At some point even you might get around to asking yourself why Keith kept you on permanent moderation.
I saw this and thought of you, isn’t that sweet? More censorship from the (*****): http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
Still, I’m sure you’ll wave that away too.
(Blog admin: Gratuitous insult or 5,000 word diatribe on the joys of fruitbat watching deleted.)
Connelly, I’m sure everything they know of censorship they learned from you.
What is it? Do you just get home from the pub at 11:00 and find your wife wants nothing to do with you, so you just start banging away on the computer at random?
http://www.blogger.com/profile/05170143101028077396
Poptech says that WConnolley is spamming his site.
Ahh he is using blogger software making it hard to lift a comment link.This is what he wrote:
“Disgraced climate alarmist William Connolley is trying to spam my comment section. What does he think this is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia’s climate doctor: How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles
More on Wikipedia and Connolley – he’s been canned as a Wiki administrator
Unlike Wikipedia Connolley cannot rewrite this history.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Connolley is still very active on Wikipedia, and still relentlessly enforcing his bias in climate-related articles, as in this tiny example, where he inserted Scare Quotes around the word skeptics, and deleted the word “leading” (to reflect his POV that climate skepticism is illegitimate), in minor but blatant & customary defiance of official Wikipedia policy. (That just happens to be the first example that I found when I looked at his edits a few weeks ago.) Wikipedia czar Jimbo Wales loves Connolley. He’s not currently an official “administrator,” but he has administrator-like rights called “autopatrol,” “review,” and “rollback.”
Of course I inserted scare quotes, because its an abuse of the word. The people called climate “skeptics” aren’t skeptical at all – they’re credulous. Even our host wouldn’t defend Monckton, who is indefensible. And even if anyone was foolish enough to grant that your plaint here was justified – it still doesn’t address your point, which was censorship.
Come on big boy, put up or shut up.
Mr. Connolley, as Will Rogers said, “It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you know that isn’t so.”
E.g., you even presume to tell me what my point was. You say my point “was censorship.” But I didn’t even mention censorship in that comment. Rather, that comment was a response to sunsettommy’s comment, who wrote, “Connolley – he’s been canned as a Wiki administrator.”
My actual point was that, despite your much-publicized spanking, unfortunately your misbehavior on Wikipedia continues.
What misbehavior? He corrected errors and did a lot of work fixing up climate related articles. They are now better because of his efforts.
What much-publicized spanking? The one where he spoke harshly to some global warming opponent who kept putting false information into articles, and then was topic banned by moderators who were not knowledgeable enough to realize that Connolley was right all along?
afonisa asked, “What misbehavior [by Connolley]?”
Mr. Connolley’s Wikipedia edit history is full of glaring examples of his misbehavior: inserting languages that reflects his extreme Point Of View (“POV”), and deleting reliably-sourced references and even whole articles which do not comport with his POV. I’ve already given you several clear examples, and you’ve already replied pooh-poohing them, which simply proves that you’ve “chosen sides,” and support Mr. Connolley’s largely successful efforts to make Wikipedia a propaganda vehicle for his POV.
> Poptech says that WConnolley is spamming his site.
But Poptech is lying.
Just like TF is lying when he says he doesn’t like censorship, or practice it himself. What he means is, he really does like censorship, but only of people he doesn’t like, and only does it himself when he finds it convenient.
I don’t like you. I’m not censoring you. Consider the logic.
You’re not censoring me *now*. You have censored my comments in the past. But that, at the moment, isn’t the point. You pretend to condemn censorship elsewhere. But its a pretence, because you only condemn it when people you like get their comments cut. When it happens to people you dislike, you don’t care, and you make excuses for the censors – like WUWT.
Did you get home from the pub a little early? I’m not censoring you now. I have not censored you in the past. If you cannot accept my explanation–that I deleted a guest post at the author’s request and your comments disappeared with it–then too bad. Feel free to quit commenting here.
I do condemn censorship. I have banned one commenter here, for posting the same comment over 100 times using language that I don’t want to see here. If you don’t see the difference, feel free to ply your wares down the road.
Allowing your comments actually works in my favor–people can see you in your resplendent glory and make their own judgments about your character.
Because you censor your political opponents ruthlessly, I’m sure it assuages what vestiges remain of your conscience to hope that all bloggers do the same. But your whining and tap-dancing will convince few. You have form.
From Stoat, 2/26/2013: “Neil Craig
2013/02/26
Well Dean if you are in some way honest you will here publicly acjnowledge that the only people who have ever denie4d that climate changes are Mann and his followers who claimed a flat “hocky Stick” for 1,000 years.
Then you will admit that has been proven to be a deliberate fraud and [so on and so forth, the usual ranting and trolling deleted -W]”
Punt has a different meaning in this country, Connelly. Stroke on.
> I have not censored you in the past.
You’re lying. Do I really have to prove it?
> I do condemn censorship
But only when convenient to you. You’re said, explicitly, that you’re happy with WUWT censorship. And Poptech’s censorship leaves you quite unfazed. You only worry about censorship of people you agree with.
No, Connelly, I am not lying. You censor. I do not.
This conversation, while showing your (lack of) character, is not convenient to me. And yet here it is.
I think you’re a fool for censoring. I think Anthony Watts is mistaken to censor. However, if your posts are similar to the drivel you put up here, I understand his folly and sympathize with his dilemma. I have no idea of what Poptech is doing–I don’t know the gentle (wo) man nor the site.
How much does Monckton pay you to sully by association the reputation of your betters, who are actually concerned about climate change?
Go back to your pub, Connelly. It will both improve the average intelligence of those commenting on climate blogs everywhere and provide a robust source of entertainment for the good folk down the road.
Read Connollley’s comments and ask yourself, “is he trying to win converts or is he trying to alienate everyone and reinforce stereotypes?” Mr.Connolley, get back to your real job: Destroying the Green Party from within, providing intellectual cover for the nuke and fracking industries, and turning a generation of idealistic youths into carbon counters.
Mr.Connolly, I asked Tom to take my guest post down because you were making threats and I take threats seriously.
I am not convinced either way because I am not in position to know what is going on factually but I can say this that YOU William have a bad reputation to live down that make me be automatically skeptical in what you believe is going on.
> I am not lying. You censor. I do not.
Liar. See http://www.webcitation.org/6De6pHfQH
You are a maroon.
I do hope everyone clicks on that link and sees the post that I deleted at the author’s request, something that took all the comments along with it. As I’ve explained to you three times before.
You shouldn’t comment when drunk, Connelly. ‘It’s another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody, I got some money cuz I just got paid…’
Sad.
And if I may revise and extend my remarks, the reason we are having this discussion on my blog and not yours is that we both know that you censor and that I do not.
Err, no. We’re talking here because you’re to scared to come out of your hole.
> I do hope everyone clicks on that link and sees
I fear you’ve missed the point. Thinking is clearly not your strong point. If you go to your “editorial comment” post, now, you won’t find my comment. Because you censored it. The fact that you deleted (i.e., censored) a whole pile of others comments on the now rather thoroughly censored posts is another matter entirely.
You’re still in denial about your censorship.
And… although this is about your censorship, not mine, I still think its funny that your proof of my censorship of me deleting some text from NC. Just up above, in this very thread, you’ve deleted some text from me. And yet you still have the brass next to pretend not to censor. I do begin to wonder if its worth talking to you, when your grasp on reality is so poor.
You’re still a maroon. Scared to come out and play? I post regularly on climate activist sites, just not your cesspool.
Putting up with fools is also not one of my strong points. I did not censor your comment. I removed the post. There were 13 comments on it. They all disappeared. You’re either blind or blind drunk.
I deleted the word ‘denialist’, which I will continue to do. Your tribe’s attempt to associate your opponents with skinheaded thugs who claimed the Holocaust never occurred has had its day–but you won’t use it here.
How many beers have you had? In addition to your failing word choice and syntax, your logic, never very strong, has more or less disappeared.
I don’t really care whether you talk to me or not. You came here–as you do almost every weekend night after closing time.
Heh, interesting timing on the revival of this thread, given that I was just informed by Anthony that my comments at WUWT are no longer welcome unless I go into WordPress and change my general homepage link every time I want to post there. Sad, since I’ve had a hundred or two good comment exchanges there in the past year, but on the other hand maybe I’ll get to stop in here and to some other places a bit more often.
Despite that difficulty, I still believe that I’ve noticed no real censorship on the skeptics’ blogs with regard to topical discussion. I haven’t been on the AGW blogs enough to really notice much one way or the other, though “Watching The Deniers” seems to have one persona (Eddie) who seems to be allowed to challenge them both well and persistently.
Censorship is something I’ve always fought and never tolerated. It’s the tool of the liar, the supporter of an idea or belief that can’t stand up to reasonable challenge, so that supporter has to fight back simply by closing the door on the discussion. Of course there are times when censorship *is* reasonable (e.g if I stopped in here every day and left 50 messages consisting of nothing but a thousand repetitions of the F word, etc) but no one should be censored simply because their stance on a subject under discussion differs from that of the board host.
Regarding Connolly and Wiki: Again, I have to confess I haven’t examined it closely enough to say anything definitive about it, but my sense over the years is that the same sort of bullying/domination/control over the topic takes place and is run by professionals in the smoking-topics area of Wiki. Someday when current projects are done maybe I’ll head over there to fight: it’s good to know that the Controllers *CAN* be successfully challenged there!
– MJM
Well, if Anthony is too good for your business, I am not–you’re welcome here and (as you mention) most anywhere else.
“Anyone subscribed to your posts will know exactly what you are censoring.”
Actually, I’ve been subscribed for a while now … and I know what you mean about seeing the posts before they’re censored… BUT I HAVE NOT SEEN ANY INSTANCES OF THAT HERE (other than possibly a few of those “thanx for a good blog reading here I like for my world internet. see my blog brighting too at…” abominations).
Shadow banning is something different. Topix shadow bans and no longer gets my business (if you can call free posting a business! LOL). I’m not sure exactly what happened there, but it seemed that someone who profoundly didn’t like my political stance on smoking either moved into a position of power or got someone’s ear. After having posted perhaps 500 posts over a period of a couple of years without a problem I suddenly noticed that I was getting no responses, not even the knee-jerk “McFaggot’s at it again” posts from some of my opponents there. I happened to sign on with AOL one afternoon without actually signing in and was amazed to find that all of my posts had been rendered invisible to everyone except myself!
I know one of the people who worked on developing the shadow-banning software. He’s NOT at all happy with how it’s gotten abused. It was intended to derail the commercial spammers who’d sign on with different names once they realized they were banned. If they saw their posts and hadn’t caught on to the trick they’d just continue posting their garbage without changing IDs and moderators wouldn’t even have to deal with them. It was NOT meant to be used as a political censorship tool.
– MJM
Tom, if you don’t censor then how did you accidentally delete one of your own posts a couple of weeks ago? Presumably you were trying to delete SOMETHING. At that, I saw a post on THIS thread last week by someone (an ‘f’ handle? ‘fairlyfare’ or something?) complaining (rather vulgarly) about being censored. Yet now it is gone.
That said, censorship is not inherently bad. If used, as some of the sites you denounced in the original post do, to enforce a code of conduct it can be the only way to create a civil environment where all sides can discuss matters in detail. Yes, censorship can also be abused… most readily when it is done in secret.
CBD, I deleted more than one post written by a guest author at his request. He had received threats in the comments and asked me to do so.
I have banned snerkersnerk as he posted the same comment about ‘deniers’ more than 100 times. The first 50 or so, I asked him politely to stop. Then I banned him.
Censorship is bad. I don’t censor. Banning is different, IMO.
Ah, my recollection was wrong about the ‘f’ name… it WAS ‘snerkersnerk’ that I saw in passing. Thanks.
As to the rest… you ban people from your site. You delete comments (for WHATEVER reason). You edit posts to remove terms you find objectionable. But you DON’T censor? Sorry Tom, but that only works with some strained re-definition of censorship which doesn’t appear in any dictionary.
That said, as already noted, I don’t agree that censorship (standard definition) is always bad. Some of the sites you denounce above have similar justifications for the actions they take. No matter what you call it there IS the appearance of a double standard. You do these things which are not censorship for only the best and most moral of reasons… but when they do the same things it is foul wicked censorship without cause?
What was that most recent post about emotional blinders and seeing things in black and white rather than as they truly are?
I don’t delete comments except from people I have banned. I replace the word ‘denier’ with asterisks.
Maybe in your world that’s censorship. Not in mine.
Replacing words you object to with asterisks?
Yep, in my world that’s pretty much the textbook f***ing definition of censorship. :]
You live in a strange world, then.
Well, at least when it’s a person doing the censoring, the asterisks make some sense and you don’t end up reminiscing about your old cl***mates.
I’ll end with this note: “I though* *** ***umption wa**** perfectly.”
🙂
MJM
btw… since someone asked in an email, that statement should read:
” I thought its assumption was hit perfectly. ”
– MJM
The “Green Grok,” “Yale Climate Forum,” and Peter Gleick’s new National Geographic blog are all also strictly censored to stifle dissent and hide inconvenient facts.
That seems to be the rule for alarmist climate blogs: almost all are strictly censored. The only prominent exception I’ve found is Peter Sinclair’s ClimateCrocks.
In contrast, I’ve found that most skeptical climate blogs, such as WUWT, welcome dissenting views, courteously expressed.
At “Tamino’s Open[sic] Mind,” Grant Foster (a/k/a Tamino) censors even poetry. Yesterday he posted a light-hearted “Pi-ku” in honor of “Pi day” (3/14), with verses having the number of syllables equal to the first six successive digits of the decimal approximation of Pi:
I posted the following friendly comment:
Tamino/Foster simply deleted it.
Sad. Even if they disagreed strongly with the sentiment, they should have left you up there purely on stylistic points!
– MJM
Thanks!
Not true. WUWT is heavily censored, and the moderators even use sock puppet accounts to flame dissenters and then ban them when they respond.
Watts also abuses the DMCA to take down criticism of himself on other sites.
Amz, I can’t say that I noticed heavy censorship at Watt’s blog (although if censorship is carried out both ruthlessly and skillfully it’s hard to detect) but I have to admit that after close to a year of productive posting there I suddenly found myself banned a month ago unless I agreed to fiddle with my WordPress ID url every time I wanted to post there.
Mr. Watts is quite skeptical of climate science, but it seems he’s not willing to apply the same level of scrutiny to claims about secondhand smoke and smoking bans. Because my name links to a booklet that challenges the lies that serve to buttress smoking bans he’s evidently been going into my postings and deleting the name link manually without informing me for an indeterminate time into the past.
Obviously I was rather upset when I found this out: one of the VERY big no-no ‘ s in the area of any sort of tobacco-related research is neglecting to state one’s possible conflicts of interest. That’s what got the tobacco companies in a lot of trouble in years past: they’d hire researchers and set up companies in ways that made it appear they had nothing to do with Big Tobacco. An *enormous* amount of the credibility I’ve built up for my writings over the years rests upon the fact that I’ve been able to do this withOUT any Big Tobacco connections. However, for the last eight years or so I *have* had at least an arguable “competing interest” as the author of a book that’s sold on Amazon.
Sooooo…. any time that I’m writing a post that has to do with research critiques that I’ve applied or draw comparisons to the tobacco area, I need to at some point make that connection very clear. Sometimes I will do that by signing my posts (as I’ll do here for illustration), but I prefer to simply have it quietly in my link: if someone is curious about me, they can click on my name and pretty quickly see what’s up. WordPress allows for that: it covers my butt if anyone starts jumping up and down and screaming about my “real identity.” LOL! So yeah, I was pretty upset to find out that my posts had been tampered with, even if it was just a tampering with my personal identity rather than my written content.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
http://davidappell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/how-deniers-enfore-solidarity.html
Very deceptive on your part, coward.
Hunter, “enforeing” is rough work. It involves standing in the spot where a golfer intends their ball to land and then ducking when the golfer yells “Fore!” After a lifetime of getting hit in the head with golf balls, people tend to get a bit… odd, shall we say?
– MJM
WTF are you talking about? I’m a coward because… I’m posting in the enemy camp, unlike you and our host who never venture so bravely out?
And its deceptive because… its entirely accurate?
Have you been through the WUWT Orwellian bootcamp or something?
I think Anthony is mistaken to do that. I think you are mistaken to snip text. The world is full of mistakes and mistaken people. I make mistakes, too!
But you’re saying that waaaaay down in the comment thread, and your heart clearly isn’t in it. Remember, you were initially entirely happy that AW had banned me – and you still haven’t properly retracted that.
Anyone reading this post, and seeing “Weblogs that practice these tactics on a routine basis include…” followed by a one-sided listing might get the impression that you’re one-sided, no?
William, I don’t think Anthony should have banned you. I sincerely mean that. And I don’t think that you should over-moderate your own comments. I sincerely mean that, too. I think banning someone is actually, in one small way, better than extreme moderation.
I say that because someone who is banned knows not to spend their time composing comments that will never appear. Someone who is the target of extreme moderation may spend a lot of time and effort composing a post only to find out post facto that it will never see the light of day, or be so severely edited that it no longer says what they wanted to say.
I don’t like either scenario at all. I don’t think you are better than Anthony in this regard–just different. As I think both of you have something to contribute to the discussion, I wish both of you would change.
But I am not responsible for either of you and I don’t consider myself any more responsible for Anthony’s comment policy than I am for yours. Which leads me to my overwhelming question–why are we discussing it?
> why are we discussing it?
Because that’s the entire point of this post.
No, Anthony’s supposed villainy is not the point of this post.
Well, the point of this post is how tewwible censorship is (except when you do it, of course). So examples of censorship, and people’s comment policy, is clearly on-topic.
I really can’t see how you can think otherwise.
Could everyone please look at all of Connolley’s posts here and ask yourself if this is really someone who is trying to win converts to the Green Party, environmentalism, etc. or is he deliberately trying to alienate people. Please do not take this ******* at face value.
Do you really find me pointing out censorship at WUWT so threatening?
WC,
Skeptics don’t post at RC or Romm’s place because we are not able to by decision of the blog owners.
You are a boring deceptive hypocrite, and watching you act out here is like listening to a lecture by Peter Gleick regarding ethics.
Tom, nodoby’s purrfikt!
;>
MJM
I find it amusing that Mr. Connolley whines repeatedly about censorship when he did that at Wikipedia.
Carry on with your selective indignation.
You’re lying, because what you’re asserting is impossible. No one person can censor anything on wiki. “Censorship” is only possible if the balance of opinion is that a given item of information shouldn’t be included.
Got any actual examples, or is this just your own private fantasy?
You are not normally boring. Is something wrong?
Sent from my iPhone
> Is something wrong?
Yes. You’re being selective in what interests you. You’re letting trivia from bozos like sunsettommy past without comment (I presume the subtext is that sunsettommy always *is* boring, so its nothing new) and then whinging when I reply.
You did it to me, Mr. Connolley, on Wikipedia.
Dahling *what* did I do to you? Was I dweadfully sawcastic? Did I hurt diddums sense of self-worth?
The beauty of wiki is that all the changes are tracked (apart from a very few that get oversighted). All you have to do is provide the article name, the date (approx) and the pseudonym you were cowering underneath and I can find the change you’re soo sad about (of course, you could do the same, were you competent, which you aren’t).
Go on, do! Think how impressed everyone will be when they have clear direct proof of the wonderful change that I (along with thousands of other editors, but never mind that) didn’t allow.
But if you don’t, we’ll all know that your change was just the usual septic nonsense.
William Connolley, now “climate topic banned” at Wikipedia
He he…….
Thanks for the link, but, unfortunately, Mr. Connolley is no longer topic banned, and his misbehavior on Wikipedia continues, as you will immediately notice if you view his edits.
E.g., a few days ago he deleted (“reverted”) a reliably sourced newspaper reference, when someone attempted to add a bit of balance to the GWPF article, and about a week ago he deleted without comment someone’s attempt to add to the “Global warming controversy” article a reference to organisations which have non-committal positions on climate change.
Worse yet, he also deleted the entire contents of a >5 year old article entitled, “Greenhouse and icehouse Earth.” On the associated Talk page, he wrote, “lets[sic] see who squeals”.
All of those examples are within just the last 8 days.
> Worse yet, he also deleted the entire contents of a >5 year old article entitled, “Greenhouse and icehouse Earth.” On the associated Talk page, he wrote, “lets[sic] see who squeals”.
A good example, both of your dishonesty and your lack of understanding of wiki. For dishonesty, you’ve deliberately omitted my prior discussion on the talk page. For the deletion (technically, redirect): so what? I don’t have the casting vote. If other people disagree (you could have, if you’d wanted to) they can say so, and revert my changes. As indeed they have. “Censorship” of the type you fantasise about is simply impossible on wiki.
> he deleted (“reverted”) a reliably sourced newspaper reference”
the Daily Mail isn’t a reliable source for anything scientific.
> about a week ago he deleted without comment someone’s attempt to add to the “Global warming controversy” article a reference to organisations which have non-committal positions on climate change.
Ha ha, you really are incompetent. That edit is me *restoring* text an anon had deleted. I’m *re-inserting* the text you accuse me of censoring. Probably, now, you’ll assert that adding the text is bad.
Your examples of so-called “misbehavior” all seem perfectly fine to me. He corrects errors, removes POV propaganda, and redirects a useless article that serves no useful purpose.
You are quote-mining his “squeals” comment. He was commenting on how no one opposed his remarks, so he redirected it and waited for someone to actually take notice (if anyone).
Good job showing how Connolley is doing useful work on Wikipedia to this day.
William Connolley wrote, “A good example, both of your dishonesty and your lack of understanding of wiki. For dishonesty, you’ve deliberately omitted my prior discussion on the talk page…”
There he goes again. I omitted nothing.
The link which I gave shows the entire “discussion” on the Talk page, which consisted only of two brief comments by Mr. Connolley, himself.
In the first comment he complained about the article, but did not suggest deleting it. He said, “the basic premise of this article appears dubious to me [or] possibly uninteresting…”
That, in Mr. Connolley’s mind, was sufficient justification to delete the entire article, which represented considerable work by many other editors.
The second comment, which he posted just after he deleted the article, said, “lets[sic] see who squeals.”
He did not attempt to get a consensus to delete the article. He didn’t even mention his intent to delete the article before doing so.
Nor did he notify any of the many other Wikipedia editors who had worked on the article.
He didn’t merge any of the article’s content into any other article, either. He just deleted the whole thing, with its dozens of scholarly references.
No other editor supported deleting the article. Mr. Connolley is used to flouting Wikipedia’s rules to impose his POV, bullying other editors, and getting away with it. He obviously hoped that nobody would notice his vandalism — and if it hadn’t been for this discussion, perhaps nobody would have.
The only reason I was able to restore the article is that Mr. Connolley is not a full-fledged administrator anymore. If he were, then he could have deleted the article in a way that would have made it impossible for a non-administrator to restore it.
William Connolley wrote, “That edit is me *restoring* text an anon had deleted. I’m *re-inserting* the text you accuse me of censoring.”
He’s right, my apologies. I’ve gotta stop posting after midnight, I make too many mistakes.
Dave, when someone makes a special admission/correction OF their mistakes, that’s always a big plus in my book.
– MJM
Thank you, Michael! That’s a lot nicer to hear when I screw up than how incompetent I am.
“If an honest man is wrong, after it is demonstrated that he is wrong he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest.”
-unknown (related by Andre Bijkerk)
Wikibullies at work. The National Post exposes broad trust issues over Wikipedia climate information
WMC> Got any actual examples, or is this just your own private fantasy?
sunsettommy> …dribbles…
No, you have no examples. Fantasy from WUWT, or Solomon doesn’t count as reality. But if you want Solomons pile o’ shite rebutted, try http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/04/a-childs-garden-of-wikipedia-p/
Neither you, nor Solomon, nor Watts (try http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/05/02/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-1/) or, I suspect, our host have a clue about wiki or the editing process.
Ha ha,
I post credible links exposing Mr. Connolley’s hypocristy and he comes back with this feeble reply:
“You’re letting trivia from bozos like sunsettommy past without comment (I presume the subtext is that sunsettommy always *is* boring, so its nothing new) and then whinging when I reply.”
Your reply is dumb.
Are you sad because even TF won’t talk to you?
LOL,
you are an unhappy man William.
You need a vacation since you and many other CAGW believers are posting material that gets ever more juvenile and stupid as time goes by.
Still boring, and still our host can’t even be bothered to tell you so. This is like usenet before it drowned in noise, or perhaps a bit after. You can dribble to yourself from now on.
It’s possible I’m wrong, but aren’t there mechanisms in place for “contentious topics” on Wiki where dissenters have difficulty getting their points seen? There’s a big difference between having information or argument displayed on the main Wiki page and having it buried in the middle of page 897 of the page’s “editing history.”
Just operating from a vague memory impression of roughly ten years ago, but I believe I tried to add some pretty valid information/corrections to one of the pages dealing with secondhand smoke and had it pretty quickly and effectively blanked out.
– MJM
It’s the best time to make some plans for the future and it’s time to be happy.
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