You can't escape it. If you have a blog and start talking with other bloggers for interview and story ideas, they will eventually lure you on Twitter. From then it's like a Mafia. You can enter but you can't leave without an awful lot of effort...
I must be the exception that proves the rule. I started a Twitter account yesterday so I could post insults on my friend's page, and then closed it out 10 minutes later.
Two things were learned:
1) I learned that 10 minutes in Twitterland is roughly equivalent to a month of normal time.
2) He learned not to send me any dopey spam mail encouraging me to sign up for BS like Twitter.
I refuse to do the twitter thing. Mostly because I abhor cell phones and I don't feel the need to compulsively tell everybody I know what I'm up to at any given moment.
I would suggest that PZ clean out his killfile and start over. There are at least 46 users in PZ's "dungeon" and it damages his credibility for him to keep these people all blocked permenantly, even if they are idiotic extremists.
"Just for clarification: being a Christian or a Republican is not grounds for being banned, nor is disagreeing with your host. Try it, you can call me all kinds of names while praising Jesus and GW Bush, and I won't care…unless you turn it into a crusade and disrupt threads with constant iterations, of if you bore me by saying nothing else but jingo."
Where do you draw the line, PZ? Plus, GW Bush is no longer President. But the Republican Party is still a threat.
1. We admitted we were powerless over Twitter - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our software over to the care of Google.
4. Made a searching inventory of the web.
5. Admitted to Google, to ourselves and to another avatar the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have Google reformat all these defects of computer.
7. Humbly asked Google to remove our privacies.
8. Made a list of all blogs we had harmed, and became willing to post nice comments to them all.
9. Made direct posts to such bloggers wherever possible, except when to do so would cause loss of readership.
10. Continued to take Technorati inventory and always had Google Analytics open in a tab.
11. Sought through searches and trackbacks to improve our conscious contact with Google, hoping only for knowledge of everything that is or isn't online.
12. Having had a technical awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to blogoholics and to practice these principles in all our online affairs.
OK, I threw that together quickly. Feel free to improve on it as you wish.
I am proud to say I am not someone who is on Twitter. I also just joined Facebook a few weeks ago and I am not digging it. I just don't get it for the most part. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Who needs Twitter? I finally have enough live bookmarks, sidebars, & widgets to open one browser and be in 100 cyber-places at a time while keeping tabs on the weather, the stock market, the news, and several other things AND do puzzles. AND I can take it with me everywhere.
What's really sad: I'm not kidding or exaggerating.
I also just joined Facebook a few weeks ago and I am not digging it. I just don't get it for the most part. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Try this: search for somebody from your past with whom you parted on bad terms and send them a friend request asking how they're doing. You'll exchange three wall comments, maybe remember to send them a Happy Birthday on the appropriate day, and it'll be like you went into the past and righted a wrong, but without Ashton Kutcher looking all overly dramatic.
Also, use the status updates learn to write pithy witticisms starting with a reference to yourself in the third person. Forcing yourself to adhere to the convention will make you a better writer, though it lacks the pretentious cachet of telling people you exercise in E-Prime.
Oh, I dunno. This whole blogging thing opened my eyes to the fact that computers can be used for more than work, games, and porn.
I do not blog at work. I'm in the middle of a Civ 4 game (Fall From Heaven mod). At the age of 60 porn doesn't have the allure that it did even ten years ago.
The last time we had someone telling PZ to empty his dungeon, it was one of those plonked there for a good reason. We tend to be supicious of those advocating amnesty as a result.
I agree that permanent blockage of abusers is the correct thing to do.
1. Those people are not mentally stable.
2. They most likely will just go back and do the same thing they did before.
3. If they were no longer blocked and they just went away, then unblocking had no effect.
4. If someone thinks that unblocking them would result in them becoming a good member of the community, then let me know who you are - I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you at a cheap price.
Actually, I find excessive blog commenting is a self-limiting condition: eventually I find I just can't face reading whatever ludicrous nonsense whoever I'm arguing with has come out with now! Then I take a few days off, and am ready to return to the fray.
That's impressively small for such a popular and politically charged site.
Indeed. Some fun facts:
World population: 6.7 * 10^9
Current population of PZ's 'too obnoxious/repetitive/annoying even to comment here' file: 46
Latter and former values expressed as ratio: approx. 7 * 10^-9
Tentative conclusion: to be banned from posting on Pharyngula, you have to be in the most annoying .0000007 percent of the world population...
So they're a pretty select group.
I think another important thing to grasp, though more anecdotal, is: I'm really annoying. I've been kicked out of 'Annoying People Anonymous' meetings. Too annoying, apparently. But PZ's put up with me for years...
So I wouldn't worry too much about the population of that dungeon.
Somewhat more seriously: you also need to grasp the nature of the central argument that tends to get most of 'em plonked: creationists specifically (and cranks and denialists in general)--and creationists determined enough to evangelize on an atheist evo-devo biologist's blog especially--are kinda, well, repetitive by nature. And some of 'em do get a bit stubborn. And some of 'em do get a bit obsessed. Where 'obsessed' is sorta like stubborn, only you find yourself thinking maybe medication wouldn't be so inappropriate. Add the fact that they tend to argue incredibly circularly and frequently with patent, blatant dishonesty, and demonstrate a remarkable dislike for such banal concepts as good faith, open discussion, or commitment to being even remotely honest about, well, anything whatsoever--well, put all that together, and it does seem to me that having to send a select few of the worst offenders on to other fora is probably pretty much an inevitable necessity, if you want *any* kind of signal to noise ratio in your blog comments (and, for that matter, space left in the database). It strikes me as about as much as PZ can do...
Yes, I know it may not seem like much. But the mental healthcare system is underfunded. What can ya do.
I've been banned at Conservapedia and the FREEP. Does that count for anything?
A friend of mine has a hobby in which he tries to get banned from both Free Dominion (the Canadian version of FREEP) and Rabble.ca (the, er, Canadian version of FREEP if FREEP was liberal) in the same day. Being net-savvy, he tends to spoof his IP and does this about once a month, more if he's especially bored.
Hi, my name is Katkinkate and I'm a blogoholic. I have over 35 webblogs and forums on my favourites list which I check out regularly (ie. at least daily) as well as 46 webcomics. I add to this number weekly. I am currently unemployed so I have lots of time to kill ... and I do.
I use to post as "Kenny P" (my name and middle initial) when I didn't know about the dungeon. I was assailed by "Patricia and the Troll Patrol" (my name for the guardians of Pharyngula) until I realized that they thought I was the infamous "Kenny" (see Dungeon). I assure you I am not.
Anyhow, I agree with keeping those in the dungeon in the dungeon. Most tend to say the same thing ad nauseum. And, as someone pointed out, many have stopped taking their meds.
I've been banned at Conservapedia and the FREEP. Does that count for anything?
Well, being banned at Conservapedia only really means that you:
a) Made the shocking suggestion they actually use reliable information to create their encyclopedia;
b) Made the equally shocking suggestion that their glorious leader Assfly may be wrong when he says things like 'abortion causes breast cancer', that Obama is the first 'Affirmative Action President' or suggesting that genuine humor didn't exist before Christianity, or;
c) You're liberal, which, by Conservapedia standards, is anywhere left of Jerry Falwell.
I just realized that blogs have become fancy feature-full usergroups. I'm sure 98% of the readers here have no reference, but my blogroll sure reminds me of the 30-or-so alt.talk.timewaster.group subscriptions I'd read in amber or green as posts came in. Jeez, I'm old!
BTW, PZ can ban whomever the hell he wants. Would you insist that he let everyone into his house? It's his blog, man. We're all just guests.
The last time we had someone telling PZ to empty his dungeon, it was one of those plonked there for a good reason. We tend to be supicious of those advocating amnesty as a result.
If you have doubts about my indentity and intentions, just follow the link with my name and check out my blog.
Started a Twitter account, posted two entries, decided this was stupid, and quit.
I don't do sound bites. I'm going to take the time to type something out, I'm going to do it at length.
Where PZ and his reasons for plonking folks are concerned; his house, his rules. You don't inform, intrigue, or entertain him, and you annoy him sufficiently, then it's his business as to putting you in the dungeon. Far as I can see PZ works harder for God than any creationist you can name. I just don't see how his atheism has any bearing on the value of his work. Better honest doubt than dishonest belief.
(No, I am not going to defend my acceptance of the existence of God, because I haven't the tools. At the moment atheism has the advantage because the available evidence speaks against the existence of God, but keep in mind that things will change. Because we are finite our knowledge is finite, and shall always be finite. Because we are imperfect our knowledge is imperfect, and shall always be imperfect. And broccoli tastes like crap.)
I do not know what you are talking about.
You're powerless over SIWOTI and your life has become unmanageable. Let go and let Plait.
I think I have to go outside now.
Outside? where is that? care to share the url?
I resemble that remark!
Bloggers anonymous has computers? What in the hell... that would be like having an openly accessible minibar at AA meetings.
You can't escape it. If you have a blog and start talking with other bloggers for interview and story ideas, they will eventually lure you on Twitter. From then it's like a Mafia. You can enter but you can't leave without an awful lot of effort...
@#6 - it's called learning self control ;)
And an open bar at AA meetings sounds like a plan to me... I might just have to become an alcoholic.
Do BA meetings require you to submit to God as much as AA meetings? If so I guess we're going to remain addicts.
@#7 Greg
Shut up...they are already tempting me, and I might not hold out for much longer and you're stories of an epic mafia life aren't helping.
'Outside? where is that? care to share the url?'
More to the point..what in the name of Beelzebub's night attire is this...'Outside' ?...outside what?...space and time...?
I must be the exception that proves the rule. I started a Twitter account yesterday so I could post insults on my friend's page, and then closed it out 10 minutes later.
Two things were learned:
1) I learned that 10 minutes in Twitterland is roughly equivalent to a month of normal time.
2) He learned not to send me any dopey spam mail encouraging me to sign up for BS like Twitter.
Do you have cravings to blog first thing in the morning?
Do you often think about how or when you will next be able to blog?
Has your blogging ever interfered with your personal life?
Has your blogging interfered with your health (loss of sleep, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc.)?
Is there any recurring time during the day when you find yourself thinking of blogging?
Do you try to overcome shyness or become more confident by blogging?
Do you find yourself pressuring other people to blog?
Have you gained a reputation as a blogger?
Has blogging increasingly become the central focus of your life?
Oh, dear. I'm in trouble.
Sorry, I don't need to share the minutiae of my life like that. That's what Facebook is for.
#12 DaveX, your friend learned to not send you spam email and the rest of us learned that you act childishly.
I have an abandoned myspace and a never really got started facebook. I will not twitter.
Butbutbut...I don't have a problem with blogging. I can stop anytime I want. Really.
Twitter is right up there with Ravelry as the greatest time suck the world has ever seen.
I refuse to do the twitter thing. Mostly because I abhor cell phones and I don't feel the need to compulsively tell everybody I know what I'm up to at any given moment.
The periodic spewings on my blog are enough.
Actually, that rather looks a lot like WoW nights at my house...
Off topic, but someone has to say it:
I would suggest that PZ clean out his killfile and start over. There are at least 46 users in PZ's "dungeon" and it damages his credibility for him to keep these people all blocked permenantly, even if they are idiotic extremists.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/plonk.php
"Just for clarification: being a Christian or a Republican is not grounds for being banned, nor is disagreeing with your host. Try it, you can call me all kinds of names while praising Jesus and GW Bush, and I won't care…unless you turn it into a crusade and disrupt threads with constant iterations, of if you bore me by saying nothing else but jingo."
Where do you draw the line, PZ? Plus, GW Bush is no longer President. But the Republican Party is still a threat.
Right now I am writing a comment in response to the comments I was reading about people who use Twitter (Twits).
Bloggers need to do something more productive with their time, like drawing comic strips
Hello, my name is Mad... [hello, Mad...] and I'm a Twitterholic... =^..^=
I think they just recycle this comic every 2 years when a new website/program comes out.
OK, I threw that together quickly. Feel free to improve on it as you wish.
#22
Or leaving blog comments?
Hi P.Z.
Oh, I dunno. This whole blogging thing opened my eyes to the fact that computers can be used for more than work, games, and porn.
I am proud to say I am not someone who is on Twitter. I also just joined Facebook a few weeks ago and I am not digging it. I just don't get it for the most part. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Brownian:
In a way, isn't blogging all three at once? Or is that only if you're doing it right?
Who needs Twitter? I finally have enough live bookmarks, sidebars, & widgets to open one browser and be in 100 cyber-places at a time while keeping tabs on the weather, the stock market, the news, and several other things AND do puzzles. AND I can take it with me everywhere.
What's really sad: I'm not kidding or exaggerating.
No, I said more productive. Now granted, I get paid for leaving comments on blogs, but, um, my boss doesn't know that. *shifty eyes*
Try this: search for somebody from your past with whom you parted on bad terms and send them a friend request asking how they're doing. You'll exchange three wall comments, maybe remember to send them a Happy Birthday on the appropriate day, and it'll be like you went into the past and righted a wrong, but without Ashton Kutcher looking all overly dramatic.
Also, use the status updates learn to write pithy witticisms starting with a reference to yourself in the third person. Forcing yourself to adhere to the convention will make you a better writer, though it lacks the pretentious cachet of telling people you exercise in E-Prime.
@Ranson,
I wouldn't know; I'm left-handed.
What are these 'work' and 'games' you speak of?
Why?
How?
Wherever he feels like. Why do you care?
I do not blog at work. I'm in the middle of a Civ 4 game (Fall From Heaven mod). At the age of 60 porn doesn't have the allure that it did even ten years ago.
But I blog a lot.
The cartoon is far too true....
while we are on the topic of comedy I just found this:
http://thebricktestament.com/
The last time we had someone telling PZ to empty his dungeon, it was one of those plonked there for a good reason. We tend to be supicious of those advocating amnesty as a result.
I feel the same about food, but I still gotta eat at least a few times a day.
That's impressively small for such a popular and politically charged site.
Why? I think it demonstrates his commitment to openness and tolerance of opposing viewpoints.
Do some research on those in the dungeon and find out. It's hardly a secret process.
I agree that permanent blockage of abusers is the correct thing to do.
1. Those people are not mentally stable.
2. They most likely will just go back and do the same thing they did before.
3. If they were no longer blocked and they just went away, then unblocking had no effect.
4. If someone thinks that unblocking them would result in them becoming a good member of the community, then let me know who you are - I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you at a cheap price.
Actually, I find excessive blog commenting is a self-limiting condition: eventually I find I just can't face reading whatever ludicrous nonsense whoever I'm arguing with has come out with now! Then I take a few days off, and am ready to return to the fray.
"I can't go to bed! Someone on the internet was WRONG!"
http://xkcd.com/386/
Indeed. Some fun facts:
World population: 6.7 * 10^9
Current population of PZ's 'too obnoxious/repetitive/annoying even to comment here' file: 46
Latter and former values expressed as ratio: approx. 7 * 10^-9
Tentative conclusion: to be banned from posting on Pharyngula, you have to be in the most annoying .0000007 percent of the world population...
So they're a pretty select group.
I think another important thing to grasp, though more anecdotal, is: I'm really annoying. I've been kicked out of 'Annoying People Anonymous' meetings. Too annoying, apparently. But PZ's put up with me for years...
So I wouldn't worry too much about the population of that dungeon.
Somewhat more seriously: you also need to grasp the nature of the central argument that tends to get most of 'em plonked: creationists specifically (and cranks and denialists in general)--and creationists determined enough to evangelize on an atheist evo-devo biologist's blog especially--are kinda, well, repetitive by nature. And some of 'em do get a bit stubborn. And some of 'em do get a bit obsessed. Where 'obsessed' is sorta like stubborn, only you find yourself thinking maybe medication wouldn't be so inappropriate. Add the fact that they tend to argue incredibly circularly and frequently with patent, blatant dishonesty, and demonstrate a remarkable dislike for such banal concepts as good faith, open discussion, or commitment to being even remotely honest about, well, anything whatsoever--well, put all that together, and it does seem to me that having to send a select few of the worst offenders on to other fora is probably pretty much an inevitable necessity, if you want *any* kind of signal to noise ratio in your blog comments (and, for that matter, space left in the database). It strikes me as about as much as PZ can do...
Yes, I know it may not seem like much. But the mental healthcare system is underfunded. What can ya do.
"I can't go to bed! Someone on the internet was WRONG!"
http://xkcd.com/386/
I've been banned at Conservapedia and the FREEP. Does that count for anything?
Oh, bad form, Crispin. Your mangled version of "Someone is *wrong* on the Internet!" messes up the acronym. It's "SIWOTI", not "SOTIIW".
A friend of mine has a hobby in which he tries to get banned from both Free Dominion (the Canadian version of FREEP) and Rabble.ca (the, er, Canadian version of FREEP if FREEP was liberal) in the same day. Being net-savvy, he tends to spoof his IP and does this about once a month, more if he's especially bored.
Hi, my name is Katkinkate and I'm a blogoholic. I have over 35 webblogs and forums on my favourites list which I check out regularly (ie. at least daily) as well as 46 webcomics. I add to this number weekly. I am currently unemployed so I have lots of time to kill ... and I do.
I need to get out more...
For authenticity it should have said:
"Hi, My name is Bob and I'm a Twitter addict!"
"@Bob Hi!"
"@Bob Hi!"
Ah, never mind!
Sorry, that just means you have a functioning brain stem.
Not to denigrate your functioning brain stem. Indeed, some of my best friends have functioning brain stems.
I use to post as "Kenny P" (my name and middle initial) when I didn't know about the dungeon. I was assailed by "Patricia and the Troll Patrol" (my name for the guardians of Pharyngula) until I realized that they thought I was the infamous "Kenny" (see Dungeon). I assure you I am not.
Anyhow, I agree with keeping those in the dungeon in the dungeon. Most tend to say the same thing ad nauseum. And, as someone pointed out, many have stopped taking their meds.
Well, being banned at Conservapedia only really means that you:
a) Made the shocking suggestion they actually use reliable information to create their encyclopedia;
b) Made the equally shocking suggestion that their glorious leader Assfly may be wrong when he says things like 'abortion causes breast cancer', that Obama is the first 'Affirmative Action President' or suggesting that genuine humor didn't exist before Christianity, or;
c) You're liberal, which, by Conservapedia standards, is anywhere left of Jerry Falwell.
Naked Bunny with a Whip @ 22
I finished drawing a comic today, and am now reading blogs to basically rest my carpal tunnel. That long with a pen and tablet gets tiring.
So do I get a cookie or something? ...or considering we're mostly godless heathens here, furry porn?
On a related note, my pre-reader suggested giving gay furry spooge porn to fundies and seeing if they explode. Sounds like a Mythbusters experiment.
Hi Bob!
I just realized that blogs have become fancy feature-full usergroups. I'm sure 98% of the readers here have no reference, but my blogroll sure reminds me of the 30-or-so alt.talk.timewaster.group subscriptions I'd read in amber or green as posts came in. Jeez, I'm old!
BTW, PZ can ban whomever the hell he wants. Would you insist that he let everyone into his house? It's his blog, man. We're all just guests.
If you have doubts about my indentity and intentions, just follow the link with my name and check out my blog.
Or maybe see these:
http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=112601330
http://www.myspace.com/seeker_alpha
Maybe my concern stems from my abhorrence for eternal punishment. That's why many people don't beleive in hell.
Dale, is this like your first day on the web or something???
Sheeesh.
What is a "twitter" and why would one be addicted to it?
Started a Twitter account, posted two entries, decided this was stupid, and quit.
I don't do sound bites. I'm going to take the time to type something out, I'm going to do it at length.
Where PZ and his reasons for plonking folks are concerned; his house, his rules. You don't inform, intrigue, or entertain him, and you annoy him sufficiently, then it's his business as to putting you in the dungeon. Far as I can see PZ works harder for God than any creationist you can name. I just don't see how his atheism has any bearing on the value of his work. Better honest doubt than dishonest belief.
(No, I am not going to defend my acceptance of the existence of God, because I haven't the tools. At the moment atheism has the advantage because the available evidence speaks against the existence of God, but keep in mind that things will change. Because we are finite our knowledge is finite, and shall always be finite. Because we are imperfect our knowledge is imperfect, and shall always be imperfect. And broccoli tastes like crap.)