Cyber Civil Rights, How anonymous mobs destroy civil discourse Options

[Jon Awbrey]

When faced with mob mentality, everyone needs to be protected — even those who when they have the numbers use the very same tactics. That includes Scientologists, as well as Holocaust Deniers, misogynists, and every other label the "good people" have placed upon persons whose views are incompatible with the concept of open discourse. Freedom of speech and the freedom from fear for speaking out your opinions means that even the vilest of comment needs to be able to be seen. This is why liberalism as a pure form is such a difficult concept to sell, because you have to allow the enemies of it the same rights as its proponents. No other political/social movement has ever considered allowing it.

There's a difference between freedom of expression and failure to be held accountable for one's words and deeds. The way Woody Allen put it, referring to the KKK, is, "I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats."

When my comrades and I participated in an anti-war march recently, yahoos and frat goons lined the sidewalks and shouted derisive comments at the hippies and peaceniks as they passed. However, when our bloc marched by with our black flags, balaclavas, and drums, that same peanut gallery became very quiet and very polite. Why? Because they understand that we would have no moral compunction against making someone eat a healthy serving of their words along with their teeth if their criticism takes a disrespectful form. Hippies and peaceniks make good targets because for various reasons (such as moral hypocrisy and physical cowardice) they have confused passive resistance with passivity. They have failed to force their critics to take responsibility for the form their criticism takes.

On Wikipedia, I have willingly discarded my anonymity because a person should be prepared to stand behind her or his words. I am the organizer for the ciopwatch program here in Ottawa, and I almost daily confront angry, heavily-armed police nose-to-nose over their abuse of law and civil liberties. I am not afraid of their guns or their batons. I've worn handcuffs when necessary, and when the situation called for it, I went to jail too. That's not to say I take foolish risks, but I am prepared to stand behind my actions and be called upon to answer for them by the community. I never do or say anything I wouldn't cheerfully repeat in front of a judge, the media, my parents, my friends, and the (likely nonexistent) Jewish skyfairy who is watching to make sure I don't touch myself when I'm alone in the bathroom.

Talk softly — or carry a big stick.

The way I remember it — from back in my Rough Rider days — it was "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

The thing that people keep missing here is the BIG DIFF between what worked in the Old Fashioned Meat Puppet Nation that most of us once inhabited, where — outside of Chicago — 1 person 1 voice was the rule, and what rules the day in the New Fangled Sock Puppet Nation, where there is no limit to the Clonal Radiation of Polymoronic Chain Reactionaries, nor any limit to the Immunity of Anonymous Pseudo-Communities.

So watch out for that …

Jon

[Bottled_Spider]

However, when our bloc marched by with our black flags, balaclavas, and drums, that same peanut gallery became very quiet and very polite. Why? Because they understand that we would have no moral compunction against making someone eat a healthy serving of their words along with their teeth if their criticism takes a disrespectful form.
Talk softly -- or carry a big stick.

Even a small stick would be enough, I reckon. There's nothing like a hint - the merest whiff - of "extraordinary persuasion" to concentrate the minds of peanut gallerians wonderfully.

At the risk of derailing the thread, there are even comedy videos being made about Wikipedia in academia....

That was freaking brilliant. Down to the Maxwell's equations, empty classroom, and coming suicide for Britannica. It's just a few minutes and I wish it was required viewing for users, admins, beaurocrats, stewards, demi-stewards, developers, wikiwarlocks, boardmembers, jimbofluffers, and pretty much WMF-related anything.

I was both surprised and pleased to hear the real-life person behind our and Wikipedia's Peter Damian being given a mention. I had no idea he was so old, nor did I know he was a chemist, being the first to use enzymes to ferment sugar in 1897, 1901, 1899, or deep within the confines of an anus, depending on the source. Nice one, Pete. Respect, man.

[Jon Awbrey]

It's been over a week and I still don't get the tag line about "cyber-sneeze" …

Is there maybe a joke about "cybersnaut" somewhere on this thread?

Jon

[UseOnceAndDestroy]

It's been over a week and I still don't get the tag line about "cyber-sneeze" …

Martin Luther King?

[the fieryangel]

It's been over a week and I still don't get the tag line about "cyber-sneeze" …

Martin Luther King?

The point is: if they had sneezed, they would have missed it.

Well, guys, that's not the only one that you missed...

[EricBarbour]

The reason why that Happy Day will be a long time coming is that Wikipedia successfully exploits — in a viral way — a persistent flaw in the Google PageRank algorithm, a flaw that tracks back to the faulty logic of Connectionism.

Ah....then Brandt was right, eh? Wikipedia is a mess because of Google.
We can blame sooo much on Google. (Well, actually, yeah.)

[Jon Awbrey]

It's been over a week and I still don't get the tag line about "cyber-sneeze" …

Martin Luther King?

Oooooh …

J☼N

[the fieryangel]

The reason why that Happy Day will be a long time coming is that Wikipedia successfully exploits — in a viral way — a persistent flaw in the Google PageRank algorithm, a flaw that tracks back to the faulty logic of Connectionism.

Ah....then Brandt was right, eh? Wikipedia is a mess because of Google.
We can blame sooo much on Google. (Well, actually, yeah.)

If WP was seen as some sort of obtuse game played by a buncha geeks, wouldn't you see that as much less threatening then the sum of all human knowledge?

I know that I would, personally...