Dan G

Little new has come to light but the general opinions and thoughts of people have become clearer.

One thing I'm seeing is continued confusion over what actually happened and who is involved. It seems quite common for people to think that this is only about Kathy Sierra - not so.

There was a horrific attack made on Maryam Scoble posted to meankids.org - this, in particular and rather understandably, upset Robert Scoble. That entry was posted by a member of meankids using the name "Rev Ed".

A commenter going by the same name left sexually abusive comments on the second site, unclebobism, but these comments were not directed at Sierra. He did call Sierra a "crack whore", however. Rev Ed, by the way, used Alan Herrell's picture as his avatar.

Furthermore, there was at least one racist post made at meankids - look at the title of the post.

What was was directed at Sierra was picture of her with a noose next to her posted on meankids, and on unclebobism a digitally-altered image of her suggesting sexual violence was shown. Who actually made and posted those images remains unclear (there's no record of the meankids.org image, and posts to unclebobism aren't credited), which brings me on to...

Who was responsible. We know Paynter founded meankids.org and Locke was one of the bloggers there. We know that Locke objected to Paynter's moderation, possibly of the Maryam post, so that once meankids was closed Locke started unclebobism. Beyond those two, the only other blogger we know for sure who was on unclebobism is Paul Ritchie. Ritchie, incidently, is proud to have vandalised Kathy Sierra's Wikipedia entry. He seems to be a bit of a nobody really though.

"Joey", who blogs as the Angry Phuqe, was only involved insofar that he left a comment on the noose image post, possibly referring to the "Kat Herding" character invented by Chris Locke and Jeanene Sessum.

Alan Herrell is a tricky one. We know his image was used as the avatar for Rev Ed, but Herrell himself issued a denial of involvement.

Jeanene Sessum, the fourth person mentioned in Sierra's original post, doesn't seem to be involved at all. She has denied ever being part of unclebobism or any other group blog and no search engine cache searches have shown any kind of link between her and meankids. Pending further evidence, she's innocent.

Then we have the reactions: the "get used to its", the "outraged" (waves) and the "I've had it worse"s.

Finally we have some ideas for what should happen next. Robert Scoble calls for sexist posting to be stamped out. I've called for sexist bloggers to be ostracized. Finally, we have the Stop Cyberbulling Day tomorrow.

What happens next? Well, while Sierra has updated her blog post, she is yet to blog again. Will she? I sure hope so - bullies must not win. Scoble will also post again in a few days. What will his reaction be after silently observing the conversation for a week? And what of the people involved? Will Locke and Sessum post again? When will Paynter post about something else? And will Herrell ever return to the blogosphere?

It's interesting to see what's been modded up on Slashdot regards Sierra. Largely the posts modded up the most are of "the internet is a big bad place and you need to accept that" nature.

Huh?? This behaviour is acceptable? Newsflash: it isn't.

That said, this view probably just reflects Slashdot's roots and demographic - lots of ex-Usenetters, people who have been on the web along time, few or no females.

Load Kathy Sierra's original post then do a find-in-page search for Joey to see what one of the anonymous accused has to say.

In my previous post I accused Paynter of being complicit as the post attacking Maryam Scoble was made on March 16, and for some time thought Paynter didn't take meankids down until March 24. As I researched more, I realised he in fact pulled the blog on March 17 - the next day, quite possibly in reaction to the Maryam post.

But I didn't process that fully and left my call to ostracize Paynter standing. I now withdraw that statement - Paynter is one of the better guys in all this. Not the best - he is still the founder of a pretty pathetic site - but not the worst.

Chris Locke is.

I've already posted this in comments on Scoble's blog, and Shelley has picked up on it, so I may as well repeat here what I believe the blogosphere should do as a result of this incident. Scoble asked for opinions and here's mine.

"How about making an example of the people behind meankids and unclebobism to show that this behaviour - I’ve read the posts about Maryam and others now too in Google’s cache - is not tolerated, and blackball them.

No conference invites, no comments on their blogs, comments from them deleted onsight, no links, no dinners, no meetups, nothing. Excise them (Locke, Paynter et al.) from the commumity."

That is, zero-tolerance of abusing women online.

I should add that I made that suggestion in response to not just what was posted on meankids and unclebobism about Sierra - but also what was posted about Maryam Scoble and others too. Not death threats, which I don't believe were made by anyone on those sites, but abusive, perverted, but ultimately pointless attacks made against women in the tech industry.

Even if the two main players (Paynter and Locke) deny that they themselves made the attacks, they provided the platform and turned a blind eye until the complaints came (and in fact it looks like Locke never deleted unclebobism, Wordpress did).

That should not be tolerated. I hope this is the end of Paynter's and Locke's participation in the blogosphere.

(Update Paynter is innocent here - he did delete meankids right after the Maryam post was made.) I don't care that Paynter has since posted an apology to Sierra regarding meankids, the site he started. The post attacking Maryam Scoble was made on March 16, long before this storm broke and the apology was forced from him. Paynter clearly endorsed that post, or he would have deleted it much sooner.

You'll note that I haven't mentioned the other two "accused" - Jeneane Sessum and Allen Herrel. Sessum was not involved in Locke's unclebobism site and I'm not sure what her involvement in meankids was. All that I can tell is that she worked with Locke on the satirical Kat Herding blog.

Regards Herrel, the avatar picture used on unclebobism is Herrel's picture. Herrel did briefly appear to claim a case of ID theft before deleting his blog. That's a long way short of proof that he was involved at all - anyone can steal a picture. Hunt as since stated in the comments to a post on her blog that she has IP evidence, but I don't believe that (my response is on Hunt's site).

Sorting out the time line behind the attacks on Kathy Sierra... (update: link now dead. Kathy didn't want that remaining as the last post on her blog.)

(NB no specific death threats were made on either site discussed here. Those were made in comments on Sierra's blog. )

First a blog called "meankids" was set up by Frank Paynter after Tara Hunt used the term to describe people attacking her in the comments of blog. Meankids was just another attack-site attempting to satire other blogs/companies - you can see a sample of their work in the google cache (don't know how long that link will be active). On this site an unnamed blogger posted an image of Kathy Sierra next to a noose. A member of the site called "Joey" then posted "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size". The same person then went on to make several sexual remarks about Sierra.

On March 17 meankids was deleted by Paynter who later stated that he "tore the site down" after a subset of the contributors - including Chris Locke - objected to him moderating their misogynistic posts. Locke replaced meankids with "unclebobism" on wordpress.com, with the same aims. This site appeared to open on March 20, when Paynter first linked to it.

Then, on March 24, a horrific photoshopped picture of Sierra was posted on unclebobism with underwear digitally superimposed over her head. Someone also posted disgusting sexual comments to the blog on a different post. Herrel's name wasn't used, but look at the avatar picture used on unclebobism - it's Herrel's picture. Locke, after being mailed by Sierra, claims he deleted unclebobism. But click this link - it seems that unclebobism was not deleted by Locke, but was taken down by Wordpress.com as a breach of their terms and conditions.

What is abundantly clear is that if the originator of the pictures and threats was not either Paynter or Locke, they know who he his.

Footnote: Painter said on March 17 "MeanKids dropped the curtain last night. The world will little note nor long remember how offensive…"

^*Herrel briefly had a post on his blog with a vague denial that he was behind the comments. A few commenters weren't particularly impressed. Herrel then deleted his entire blog.

Kathy Sierra has had death threats and other obscene things posted about her. This is, of course, totally unacceptable behaviour. The police are investigating and I look forward to the people behind these pathetic comments being arrested.

This has caused much activity in the blogosphere, as you can imagine. Robert Scoble is even stopping blogging for a week to show his support for Kathy - good for him, I totally support Robert.

Frank Paynter, who is one of the people behind the blog where the comments appear, has his say here.

Chris Locke (aka "RageBoy") also responds and explains much of the background. However Locke tries (but fails) to score points where he can. Locke even states that he "didn't think for a minute that they were "threatening", referring to the horrific picture you can see on Sierra's blog.

Reading his explanation for the "meankids" and "unclebobism" blogs he posted on which hosted the attacks on Sierra, it's clear that Chris Locke is an idiot.

Jeneane Sessum, who was also implicated, says she was never associated with "unclebobism" but that's not the accusation - Sierra says she was part of the original "meankids" site. BlogHer, who Sessum contributes to, has a post up.

BTW this pathetic behaviour is endemic in the blogosphere - I guess there are a number of men who retain incredibly sexist views. Just read the comments on TechCrunch about the Ning demo to see.

Why are comments like that ever tolerated? Why did TechCrunch not delete such purile comments on sight?

Apple TV will work because people buy it and plug it in, and it “just works”, in the same way the iPod “just works” with iTunes. It is to watching video via the internet what the iPod is to listening to music via the Internet.

It’s a shame that Microsoft, for all the fantastic work they do, don’t get this. They did briefly license Media Center Extenders but they’ve all gone now. They *should* develop a simple WiFi box that just automagically hooks into WMP11 on _any_ computer, but of course that wouldn’t drive sales for Vista Premium...

Mind you, it would be nice if iTunes Europe had some decent content - as yet, no TV shows and no movies.

Marc Canter has some good posts calling Apollo: Yet Another Closed Platform and Apollo supporters speak up, I point out that….

Particularly telling is that it seems that Adobe has done this before, yet everyone forgot it. What's different this time?

And what about Java? Java is a cross-platform runtime that lets people code a variety of apps, from a tool that analyses harddisk usage to excellet JUploadr, which allows you to load your photos onto Flickr or Zooomr from any computer, be it Linux, Windows or Mac. People knock Java for poor performance but those days have gone - go to java.com to get the latest updates, as they're much faster than before.

Apollo - and competitors such as Microsoft's consumer-confusing WPF/E - seem to be about being "rich", i.e. full of glitz and candy like 3D and shadows. To be honest, I could do without that - I'm not a fan of OSX or Aero, as they don't enhance my productivity. I'd rather have a well-written Java app than a fancy but hard to use Flash app.

TechCrunch has a "Deadpool" which lists failed web start-ups. One of the residents is FilmLoop, a product that makes Flash slideshows of still photos. TechCrunch "added" FilmLoop into the Deadpool with this post, followed up with this, on 12 February.

But a visit to FilmLoop reveals a very-much-alive service. Videos play and the homepage lists new slideshows that are only six hours old.

What gives? Maybe the servers are still running until the money for hosting runs out. But I'll be amazed if there's no sysadmins looking after it, and if your company was wound up wouldn't you pull the power and hosting plugs straight away? No, it looks to me like Filmloop is very much an ongoing concern.

FilmLoop isn't the only example, either. Browster was also declared dead by Arrington, although tellingly he says "everyone connected with the company is being so quiet about this is a little odd, given that the site is down". The site is in fact very much not dead. Browster's (rather sporadic) blog even has a post from the day after Arrington declared it dead.

This new page combines the now-defunct pages of Verifiability and No original research. Those two pages were among the oldest of Wikipedia's policies, and along with the Neutral point of view.

The basic idea behind the merger was to clarify these core policies and make them more understandable. A very noble thing, but it came as quite a shock to me to find such sweeping changes made to such established pages.

If you're curious, here's the discussion where the new page was made "official", with the change taking place on or around 16 February.

Ostensibly the new page was to be a straight-fowards merger of the two original pages, but that's not the case - there have been over 1,100 edits to the page since the merge was made.

I've long thought that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines should reflect the consensus of the people who are creating the content. But the reality is that most of the vast array of wikilaw (around 42 different policies) is an attempt to force top-down changes onto the community, even though I doubt that even a tiny portion of contributors have ever read any of them. Personally I never did - I just looked at how existing articles were written, and copied that style.

On Wikinews we have a far smaller set of rules. It could be argued that that's because we're a far smaller community but I don't think that's the case. We simply decided - all of us - that to produce accurate, timely articles everything has to be sourced in a uniform style, no exceptions. Combine that with the universal Wikimedia Neutral Point of View (i.e. all sides presented fairly) and we didn't really need anything more.

That's the joy of Wikinews - the site is still all about the content, unlike Wikipedia which has kind of split into two - everyone who writes and edits articles, and then a subset of editors who write and edit wikilaw (and then wikilawyer over it). I note that there's often little cross-over between the two camps - contributors either work with the articles or the wikilaw.

Which is the most useful group? Well as I said very little of the wikilaw is ever looked at or used, i.e. it doesn't contribute to building an encyclopedia. There's your answer.

One of the things I used to write about a lot on this blog was journalism and Wikinews, to which I used to be an active contributor.

One of the main hopes I had for the site - still do, in fact - is that it can avoid the mistakes that media falls into so readily. A good example is the case of the Lebanese ambulance. At the time, all the media fell for what later turned out to be a hoax; Wikinews gives anyone the chance to present news without making mistakes like that.

As it is though it does look like a new phenomenon is beginning - bloggers fact-checking the media. Although it would probably help if they weren't so desperately wordy and drawn out as the Zombietime piece is, although taking 1,000 words when 100 would do seems to be a common failing for a lot of bloggers - the price of life without an editor, I guess.

It turns out that the issue is that Microsoft has started blocking Opera from viewing the site, even though it used to be just fine in Opera.

Why do companies do this? Google is equally guilty, blocking access to Docs & Sheets. Yet Opera is the most standards-compliants browsers around, passing the Acid2 test, and also has the fastest Javascript engine.

In fact, Opera users can often gain access to "blocked" sites by changing the browser's ID from Opera to something else (say, Firefox). In this case though doing that still doesn't gain access to Live Local.

There's a new start-up (currently vapour-ware) claiming it will be offering the first "real" word processor for the web. I guess Zoho and Google Docs & Sheets are just imaginary. Worse, Virtual Ubiquity are far from first: they were beaten by ThinkFree, who first released their Java-based office suite quite a few years ago.

If you only read Slashdot, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Vista is some defective-by-design DRM infested white elephant that will either drive you insane or into the waiting arms of OSX. Only, that's not Vista is. At all.

Here's a nice review of more than a year and half of using Vista betas and now the final release. It's not terribly sensationalist but is probably somewhat closer to the truth than the mad ravings on some other sites.

A few bottom lines about Vista:
*Vista looks a lot like XP with a few improvements to the user interface. Bear in mind that Microsoft spend many millions on interface research (witness the breakthrough that is Office 2007) - despite what many Mac-fans say, the Vista interface is very good.
*Aero off-loads drawing the screen from the CPU to the GPU, so performance actually improves.
*It is secure. It's been out in final for more than a month and beta for more than a year, and you can bet *every* malware author on the globe has been trying to break it. They've failed.
*Yes it has DRM, no it does not cripple the system. No user will ever notice it if they stay within the bounds of the law (every heard an iPod/iTunes user complain about DRM?).
*All that said, it's probably not worth upgrading. XP SP2 is rock-solid and secure itself. Wait until you buy a new computer to get Vista.