Kinder Words

I make the severe attempt to stay away from the internet sometime. But I keep coming back to have a place to scribble down ramblings. Might as well make the dollars a month I spend on this webserver worthwhile. I think it’s important to actually choose a title for my “meta-commentary” on the news we put up at Punknews.org. I went all out, pulled out some pretension and now I give you all…

Kinder Words: The Things We Say

For today, I’ll just go with a quick listing:

• Tim O’Reilly presented the world with his Blogger’s Code of Conduct recently. Reaction on the Org was very similar as to what I expected. I fall along the lines of preserving the institution of anonymous commenting, although I’m not clear as to why at this point. While anonymity can help some “industry insiders” (for lack of a better term) out certain things, we also have the news submission queue, which is just as anonymous and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
  I think that O’Reilly’s point about censorship is off the mark. It’s not that I believe the internet should be a den of “you’ze is gayz” and the like but I think that the needlessly offensive comments are a part of the discussion as much as the well-reasoned ones. I guess if you are going to be disabling anonymous commenting you are basically creating a self-selecting message board. Simply put, I can’t stop people from saying things that piss me off when I’m on the street, in a restaurant or at work, I guess I’ve gotten used to the idea (and enjoy the fact) that not everyone will always say things I want to hear.
  It also brings up an interesting point about whether or not your blog or website is meant to be a place for people to talk or a place for you to direct conversation. On Punknews we generally take a hands off approach, letting people take conversations where they will. There have been times where people have abused this policy and been either banned or had their comments deleted. I am generally fighting against these actions but often times they are neccessary in the eyes of one of the administrators. This is the type of situational approach that I appreciate and would prefer people to move towards instead of a dogmatic “one size fits all” code of conduct. I feel that one of the coolest things about ye olde interwub is that it gives us a chance to adapt and chance quickly to situations and that this kind of old school approach saddens me.
• I talked with Gunner about his decision to leave Much The Same and I really appreciate what he wrote. Rather than taking the approach of being insulting like I feel some have he put forth a very true and to the point assessment of how the punk scene and business aspect affected his life. I know that he’s also in the minority on a lot of points when it comes to the scene and I can only imagine how much the “faux-liberalism” that permeates people’s thinking in the punk world impacted that. Punks are liberal and open-minded as long as your mind is made up in the same way their’s is. Sad fact.
• Bad Manners. ’nuff said. Buster apparently lost a whole ton of weight a few years back, which is good for him.
• Go download Samantha by the Unlovables. Thanks Jonnie and Hallie!
• This whole thing is just hilarious.
• Sometimes the people you thought would live forever don’t. One was Kurt Vonnegut. I also had two friends lose important parts of their lives recently. Hopefully it’s not too hard for them.

justinª