Posted on 06/29/2011 6:54:11 AM PDT by Neoavatara
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third in the Transformers series, is in some ways the perfect summer movie. A movie where you can turn off your brain, ignore reality, and simply enjoy sugar sweet Hollywood mayhem.
The movie starts with a basic concept: that the space race in the Cold War was focused on reaching the moon first, not for its scientific achievement, but to obtain alien technology that both the Soviets and Americans secretly knew had crashed on the dark side of the moon millenia ago. Americans, led by Neil Armstrong, get there first...but keep the information hidden.
(Excerpt) Read more at neoavatara.com ...
I've taken the time to read through what Humblegunner is doing and how others are responding. I did that after I ran afoul of Humblegunner and his friends about a month ago, after several years with no problems or objections being raised to my own excerpting, and I ended up as one of their targets.
Over the last month or so I've read thousands of posts in several hundred threads on this “blogpimp police” issue, and I think Humblegunner is correctly describing Jim Robinson's position. However, that was not at all clear to me when I started digging into this.
Part of the problem is that Jim Robinson's comments are buried deeply in obscure threads started long ago, and while Humblegunner does copy them with links, anyone who spends much time on the internet knows that context counts. When post 500-something in a very long thread gets quoted, it's important to read the whole thread and other related threads to be sure there aren't other items somewhere which need to be read in context to understand what the author meant.
The result is that I think there's honest misunderstanding on the part of some people who didn't know there was a problem, combined with others who really **ARE** trying to use Free Republic links as a way to build web traffic and/or improve their Google rankings.
Neoavatara wrote: “At any time, Mr. Robinson or his direct associates can tell us what we can and cannot do. It is ultimately his site, and we only have as much freedom as he is willing to give us. If he states I am wrong, and over the bounds, I will happily accept his ruling. He, not you, is the ultimate determiner of what is acceptable.”
TheOldLady wrote: “Mr. Robinson is one man, and his time is better spent taking care of his own business. He does not have time to babysit the bloggers’ forum, and he has delegated that authority, in writing, to humblegunner.”
Neoavatara and TheOldLady: this gets to the crux of the issue. I've heard this and similar things said repeatedly about Humblegunner’s role. I'm assuming it is true since if it weren't, Jim Robinson would have long ago responded. Can someone show the link indicating that the site owner has delegated this authority in writing to Humblegunner?
If that written delegated authority exists — and I am **NOT** saying it doesn't, in fact I think it probably does exist based on how many times I've heard it said — having a link available may help reduce a lot of problems.
FourPeas wrote: “How is it you’ve been around Free Republic all this time and haven’t yet read about Mr. Robinson’s opinion of blog pimps? It’s quoted and linked to in so many blog pimp threads that it’s certainly no secret.”
I can't agree with this.
Jim Robinson's comments are buried deep in threads that are on topics that not everybody would be interested in reading. And when I mean deep, it's hundreds of posts down in threads that, if I remember correctly, were originally posted sometime in 2010.
It's not at all clear to the casual observer — or even some people who are paying pretty close attention — that Humblegunner speaks with Jim Robinson's authority. For those people who don't happen to click on one of these blog fights and sticks mostly to the news section, it's quite possible not even to be aware of the issue.
To all five of you: I have no authority here at all. Zip, zero, nada. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that this fight is simply unnecessary.
There are people — Neoavatara, Tribune7, and Madd Dawg may or may not be among them — who fully agree that Jim Robinson can do what he wants with his own private property, but don't necessarily believe that Humblegunner speaks for Jim Robinson on this issue.
The result is a lot of yelling back and forth. I think that wastes everybody’s time. There has got to be a better solution.
My own thoughts would be to put the items in dispute in a FAQ with a link on the homepage that clearly answers legitimate questions in advance, and then to clearly designate somebody — Humblegunner or someone else — as the person responsible for enforcing the FAQ.
But again, I have no authority whatsoever and only the owner of the site can decide what he wants to do with his own private property.
It does not.
No more than you need written authority to speak out against what you think is wrong.
When some goblin cuts in front of you in line, do you call the cops?
Do you hesitate because you have no documented authority?
Or do you call him on it and make an issue of his bad behavior?
Me, I don't call the cops or need a badge.
The anti-blog faction does have legitimate concerns that should be respected so if you are going to excerpt make sure you provide enough info so a reader will know whether it's worthwhile for him to click the link, and to show that you are not a spam site. If you are a conservative you should proudly support FR on your site.
Other than that don't let the bastards grind you down.
I have been trying to watch “Falling Skies” and have been very disappointed. Could have been a lot better.
By the way I think you are right about Spielberg, he just is not what he was. I would say total creative burnout.
They also attend Furry conventions and have tissues near their monitors.
Nothing seems to happen to them.
Other than AIDS and various other nasty diseases.
Gunner does not speak for JimRob and has no authority.
Nope, I sure don't. I speak for myself. That's even more a problem for you.
The anti-blog faction does have legitimate concerns that should be respected so if you are going to excerpt
I'm unaware of any anti-blog faction.
I've heard rumors that there is an anti blog excerpting faction.
Bloggers would do well not to excerpt their own material.
I've read enough of Jim Robinson's posts — not copies-and-pastes by other people, but by Jim Robinson in his own words posted from his own account — that I think you do in fact reflect his position against people
1) posting excerpts instead of full text, unless required by a copyright claim, and
2) posting anything from blogs, even full text, in the news section without prior permission to do so.
Humblegunner, it's pretty obvious that I don't think your tone is helpful, but that's not relevant here. In this thread your opponents are using language which is just as strong.
It's also not really fair to pick on what TheOldLady wrote here because others have said similar things: “Mr. Robinson is one man, and his time is better spent taking care of his own business. He does not have time to babysit the bloggers’ forum, and he has delegated that authority, in writing, to humblegunner.”
However, if Jim Robinson has not “delegated that authority, in writing, to humblegunner” it does not help to say that he has done so.
Mistakes happen. I'm not trying to jump on anyone here, just saying that honest mistakes do happen, and when they happen they need to be corrected when it's possible to do so.
IOW, feel free to ignore.
I'm unaware of any anti-blog faction.
Sure there is. Some of them even think the old media are "legitimate news organizations".
I only have three, this one is the most social.
but that's not relevant here
Why bring it up?
The issue is simplicity itself:
I dislike blogpimps abusing Free Republic and will speak out about it.
What need is there for debate over this? It seems quite clear to me.
As opposed to accepting any mis-spelled unchecked regrugitated crap from yesterday or stolen video some fat-ass blogger might wake up and post.
Yeah, that's the new media.
Suck on this:
Not everyone with a blog is credible.
I know, that's a rough one.
Oh, I agree with you 100 percent.
OTOH, nobody at ABCNNBCBS, NYT, WAPO, LA Times etc. is credible.
You think otherwise and that's where we disagree.
Yeah, we all know there are regular readers from Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, etc., who come here. Yeah, we all know that they sometimes impersonate conservatives with trollish comments. I suspect that idiot who was posting stuff about low-functioning kids “drooling” on regular kids in the classroom and suggesting eugenics was a troll who came here because he wanted to see if he could get people to agree with him. What happened instead was that he got zotted by Jim Robinson as a crypto-Nazi. Hip, Hip, Hooray! Whether he was a leftist troll or a guy from Stormfront who really believes that garbage, he doesn't belong here.
But that's not the normal person who posts.
I'd be a lot happier if we could reserve our fire and our anger for people who bring conservative positions into disgrace. We need to make it clear to everybody that such people do not represent conservative views.
Most of the rest of the people here, even if they make mistakes, are well-intentioned. This isn't basic training, so a “shark attack” by a group of drill sergeants isn't necessarily the best way to force change, even with somebody who may need an attitude adjustment.
I really do believe there are people who don't understand they're doing anything wrong. Honey usually works better than vinegar with such people.
I think nobody here has a problem following the rules when they are spelled out.
Ping to post #19.
Of course not. Jim Rob speaks for Jim Rob:
Jim Rob: "it would be best if you do not excerpt your own material...We’re not really that interested in driving OUR traffic to YOUR blog."
lol......Hey HG, how they hanging?
I can see both of your points.
On the one hand, I've spent my entire adult life in the news media, my mother was trained as a reporter all the way back in the 1950s, and growing up as the son of a Republican politician, I learned early on how much damage can be caused by the liberal presuppositions of the traditional media. (The presuppositions are actually a worse problem than outright bias, but that's a different issue.)
On the other hand, I'm also painfully aware of the major problems with the internet, caused because the cost requirements (buy-in, investment, initial outlay, or whatever you want to call it) to publish have now dropped to the point that virtually anyone can have their stuff available for virtually anybody to read, all for the price of a $200 computer and an internet connection.
Not that long ago, because it cost literally millions of dollars to buy a printing press and dozens of employees to operate even the smallest daily newspapers or book publishing houses, editors and publishers were the gatekeepers who controlled what got published and what most people would be able to read without a lot of extra effort.
Unfortunately, most of those gatekeepers became quite liberal in the 1960s, accelerating a trend that began several generations earlier. Dropping the cost requirements of publication has allowed all kinds of stuff to get published without going through the mostly liberal gatekeepers, and that's a good thing.
While that allowed conservative voices and news sources to get readers that weren't possible even as recently as the beginning of the Bill Clinton era — without Drudge Report, I seriously doubt that Clinton's goals could have been derailed, and his sexual escapades would likely have been covered up like JFK's dalliances and FDR's polio — it's also allowed all sorts of garbage to get on the internet that would never have made it into newsprint or the pages of a book.
For now, we're living in an age where the internet has caused disruption to the long-established methods of distributing information not unlike what the invention of the printing press did shortly before the Reformation and subsequent Counter-Reformation. Even for those who support the Protestant Reformation (which I do) it's impossible to deny that the printing press allowed a lot of really dangerous stuff to be distributed all over Europe.
Eventually this will probably all get sorted out, but it's going to take time. For now, I think we can quite correctly point to the truth of Jim Robinson's statement that some stuff on the internet is better than others, and that's just the way it is.
If Jim Robinson wants to make a distinction between traditional newspapers, magazines, and television stations and “new media,” that's reasonable. There's a huge difference between an online-only news operation like the St. Louis Beacon run by former journalism professors and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters and editors, and some guy with a blog and no training who posts his opinions at night when he gets back from work in a business that has nothing to do with journalism. For now, online-only news operations lack credibility, and have to prove themselves.
Making new media prove their value seems reasonable to me.
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