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Troll-whispering

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15:43 / 21.05.07

Sure thing.

And, you know, it did work kind of like that, I was on the point of calling him a magical tourist in plain text, and then thought "Hey, that's (truebut)mean! But maybe it would be less mean if it had a cat in it..." And then because there was a cat there it wasn't subject to the pruning that I give 70% of my other posts so you all don't know what a poopyhead I really am.

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15:47 / 21.05.07

Although really, extra thinking makes me feel like putting it in another thread is sort of disingenuous. Like snickering behind someone's back—they might possibly hear you and turn around and yell back at you if they want, but you still haven't done them the courtesy of coming up and saying "Excuse me, but you have a piece of spinach dangling out your nose, and it makes you look like a fool."

16:48 / 21.05.07

I haven't really been following the lolcat debate, but shouldn't the technology be reserved for posts that are, or at least seem, willfully ill-intentioned? Inflicting the kitty on opinions that one happens to disagree with, but which are politely enough expressed, seems a bit problematic as standard practice.

And in cases where people are genuinely trying to cause trouble, would Barbelith really benefit from free and frank exchanges as conducted in lolcat? I mean imagine if Hawksmoor (from the Bleed) had gone down that road - 'I IZ IN YUR GAY BAR ...' etc.

18:30 / 21.05.07

entity, I think the Kitteh filter thread can be non personal lolcatness too and well, it is a statement of not a little value.

AG:
I haven't really been following the lolcat debate, but shouldn't the technology be reserved for posts that are, or at least seem, willfully ill-intentioned?

If you had been following the debate you might already have discovered that answer.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:55 / 21.05.07

Well, if putting it in another thread is disingenuous (I think you might mean cowardly, incidentally - disingenuous behaviour exhibits a false show of naivete, which I suppose pretending to be a tiny tabby might, but would wheresoever one was) and putting it in the same thread is actively inviting a flamewar, it seems that one's only reasonable response would be not to use lolcats as a way to criticise somebody else's posts.

It's worth noting, I think, that the lolcats in the Kitteh thread have been based on procamations by people who have been banned, or generic proclamations not from a specific person. I think that may be providing something of a buffer.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:26 / 21.05.07

If you had been following the debate you might already have discovered that answer.

I thought Granny was referring to the particular case of Id's lolcat in the Temple, and as such was making a valid point; even Id seems to be of the opinion that the lolcatworthy behaviour which was rewarded with the kitteh wasn't ill-intentioned. I thought Granny was just adding weight to that side of the discussion. And FWIW, that's the side I'm on, really.

19:57 / 21.05.07

I thought Granny was referring to the particular case of Id's lolcat in the Temple.

Well I was trying to, in any case. Which is not to say that I found id's lolcat experiment in the Temple unreasonably hard-edged, so much that I'm not sure if, in practice, as adopted generally, the kitty material mightn't lead to a more fractious board, really.

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21:05 / 21.05.07

Thanks, Haus, both for the grammatical correction and the gently helpful reframing.

There's just something really addictive (to me) about lolkittehs, and appealing about the idea that they might be useful in some way.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:17 / 21.05.07

I can see that, and I can see why one might want to get them in there - despite having real ambivalence about the mockery of another person's sexual experience of the world, no matter how unfortunately expressed, I've been shouting "You iz a male! Athaletick! Musiclar!" at bewildered citizens. However, even that gives me a bit of a twinge of conscience...

I just don't think that non-consensual lolkatting is going to be much use to us. Flyboy just used the java hide in another way in the eyegouge thread in Head Shop, which was quite interesting, I think, though.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:22 / 21.05.07

Yeah, I thought that was nifty.

21:22 / 21.05.07

I look forward to seeing how the lolcat meme impacts on Barbelith, certainly.

21:24 / 21.05.07

I can honestly say Flyboy's use of the hide/reveal function in Head Shop, did prove to me how effective it could be. I can honestly say, if I'd come to the thread after the summary had been changed, I wouldn't have clicked that plus sign until after replying to the thread, and the reply would have been less pissy.

21:40 / 21.05.07

In what respect though, DN?

Your reasoning seems unclear?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:49 / 21.05.07

I don't see where the confusion arises. I interpreted DN's post as saying that the original summary evoked strong emotions which coloured hir reply. Had the summary already been redacted and placed behind the tags, the reply would have been different in tone.

21:52 / 21.05.07

TTS has it, exactly.

22:04 / 21.05.07

Had the summary already been redacted and placed behind the tags

Honestly, amd I genuinely don't wish to cause offence (so I'll pick up my stuff and go home, I guess) I've got no idea what any of this actually means.

Smiley, though.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:14 / 21.05.07

"Had the summary been redacted" means "if the summary had been edited into its new, hopefuly less-eye-gougy form." "Placed behind the tags" means "the old summary being hidden with the little bit of javascript so that you have to click on a tag if you want to read what it said."

23:12 / 21.05.07

Ok, but then if I wanted to write, say 'Alex's Grandma is a load of old cobblers, and ought to be taken outside and shot' (and I was not hir) would this kind of thing be acceptable as an opinion in Javascript, any more than it would be in ordinary Barbe-text? And if so, to what end?

As I understand it, everyone's going to look at the ominous ('please don't look at this') link in question in any case, so the point of flagging it off as something different escapes me, a bit.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:37 / 21.05.07

Possibly time for a straw poll. Who WOULDN'T click?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:39 / 21.05.07

I really don't get what the issue is here, Granny. The post made by Flyboy wasn't a personal attack on another poster. It was the original summary, as it was written by the original poster.

I can't speak for Flyboy but I would surmise that ze put the post behind tags so that those who want to know what all the "please can we get rid of that horrible summary" posts upthread were about can click on them and those who are prepared to take the offensiveness as read need not do so. It's been recorded as evidential of the need for a summary change and put behind tags because it's offensive and crap and was winding people up.

This is all very simple stuff, to be honest. What do you not understand about this? What does it have to do with the entirely fictitious scenario you've outlined above? How is recording dodgy material in case we need to refer to it later anything like harrassing another poster?

I don't understand what you'd like to have seen done differently. Do you think we should have left the summary as was (NB: you don't even have to click on the thread to see the summary, it's just right there on the front page of the forum, which was why it was changed). Do you think we should have allowed the summary to be wiped without any record being kept on the board?

Or are you just stirring again because you're bored, in which case can I recommend a fucking Neopet?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:44 / 22.05.07

Hmm. Fly's usage was actually pretty cool, given that it was later quoting of something that had, in the summary, been pretty wrong, really.

Whatever Gran's saying, I do kind of take the point that IN A THREAD, if something's been flagged up as being likely to piss people off, people are likely to click on it if they think it would piss THEM off. I know I would, certainly.

I am totally aware that this is pretty much the opposite of what I was saying 24 hours ago. I'm thoroughly torn on this one, to be honest.

How about if people hide their own stuff? Is it less offensive if measures were taken to warn people, then we click on it anyway, and does that give people carte blanche to say what they want, given that "well, I did warn you"? I know that's not the model we're looking at, but people WILL do it, given that the code is usable by anyone.

I'm partially playing devil's advocate here, but I am actually very confused by the whole thing the more I think about it.

I really like the idea, but thinking it through is causing me some trouble.

01:10 / 22.05.07

I don't understand what you'd like to have seen done differently.

Well all right; I don't see what's so dreadful about Babelith, as it currently stands.

It's just fine as it is, or has been, prior to all the latest innovations in geek/wank-text, I guess.

07:37 / 22.05.07

(I should stress that the above ramblings were not to do with any specific member of teh board, presently, so much as the possibility of what might happen if Javascript/Kitty was widely adopted.)

I should (dis)gracefully bow out of this debate, I guess.

And apologies for the post directly above - I've sometimes wondered if my ideas are too radical for Barbelith, and if I might not be better off shooting the virtual breeze with the guys on Stormfront. That perhaps that's where I deserve to be.

On the plus side though, I'm currently putting myself about on the internet as a trained practioner in reiki,* so I should be all right, during what I suspect should be a long hiatus from the interweb. There's something about it that seems to bring out the worst in me, I fear.

* I'm not really doing this, and herein lies the problem.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:47 / 22.05.07

Oddly, this is one of those situations where, as far as I can tell, Alex's Grandma is making a perfectly coherent and apposite contribution, and is getting kicked unusually hard for it.

So, to recap. I think we have one specific situation here where the javascript comes in handy. A topic title/summary causes eyebleed, it is edited and the original is put behind the javascript in the tags so that people who want to understand the initial arguments about the title/summary can consult it, but it is not on the front page of the forum. I think that's perfectly sensible, and a good use of the technology available. It's a bit like a spoiler, except the spoiling would be of one's brane.

Using a javascript concealer to hide a kitteh! picture, as id concluded, is probably not a progressive step; nor would posting a kitteh! picture in the thread, IMHO - it would be more likely to incite threadrot than prevent it. If people want to have a kitteh! thread in Convo, which would effectively be a pictorial Barbannoy, I don't see a problem with that.

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