Mike Godwin, "reporter" Options

[mnemonic]

The comments in response to Godwin's article are amusing, too. Reason apparently attracts a higher class of reader:

fish|10.28.11 @ 6:23PM|#

Rather you really need to develop some sort of social life. Anything.



Episiarch|10.28.11 @ 6:49PM|#

No, you're just retarded. Full retard.




rather |10.28.11 @ 6:48PM|#

I see you've been having fun with yourself again.

Honey, why don't you go back to masturbating and entertain both your little brains?




LOL|10.29.11 @ 1:19AM|#

Epi darling, tarran is confused. When I said I wanted to bang you on the head, I meant your drug addled brain, not your micropenis.

I see the confusion, same size, same IQ, and same leakage issue

Then again, there is this very insightful comment that must make Godwin, Reason, and libertarians squirm a bit:

"Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment...unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?" ~Murray Rothbard

How is the OPD's aggression to defend property values in the city not in accordance with the wishes of the founder of Libertarianism, and dean of the Austrian school of Economics?

Since I'm neither a Libertarian nor an adherent of any Austrian school of economics, I'm untroubled by this question in the comments.

[mnemonic]

I thought I was always slightly absurd. It disturbs me to think that I've only recently achieved slight absurdity. I think Google Analysis has hits on "Mike Godwin" peaking sometime in 2007 before I joined WMF. As for being a lightning rod for Wikipedia critics, certainly I've followed WR long enough to be
aware of how quickly that happens here.

Thank you for coming here and talking about your google analytics four years ago. Not often that poster put aside their narcissism. That is very very interesting.

Seems to me that a person who worked for a free speech organization being against beating up protester is kind of expected and not really much of an an occasion for At-A-Boys.

Google Analytics put all of your Google hits over the last dozen years or so into one easy-to-read chart. I happened to clink on a link that someone posted on my Facebook Wall a few days ago, and it led directly to that Google Analytics chart. I don't use Google Analytics normally, but I noticed that the chart essentially flatlined right after I joined WMF and didn't spike again until a few months later.

Don't need At-A-Boys from you guys, and I would be more than slightly absurd if I expected them from you. Yes, being against beating up protestors is consistent with my long-held free-speech beliefs.

[thekohser]

Google Analytics put all of your Google hits over the last dozen years or so into one easy-to-read chart. I happened to clink on a link that someone posted on my Facebook Wall a few days ago, and it led directly to that Google Analytics chart. I don't use Google Analytics normally, but I noticed that the chart essentially flatlined right after I joined WMF and didn't spike again until a few months later.

Google Analytics is installed by site owners on particular websites. What exactly are you talking about? Which website were you tracking the "Google hits" upon? I'm curious if you're discussing some Google tool of which I'm not aware.

Are you maybe talking about Google Trends or something?

By the way, I have Google Analytics installed on my "National Wiki Edits" Examiner.com articles that I publish occasionally. Ever since I installed the app in late October 2010 (several months after I began writing for Examiner), Google has registered about 37,000 page views of my articles. My article about Godwin saying goodbye to the WMF has accounted for 1.3% of the page views. Albeit, the Analytics tool was only installed a couple of days after that article was published. Of all of the 5,000+ searches that web users have performed, which resulted in their coming to Examiner.com to check it out, only 0.37% of the searches contained the word "Godwin".

This post has been edited by thekohser: Thu 5th January 2012, 6:40pm

[mnemonic]

Google Analytics put all of your Google hits over the last dozen years or so into one easy-to-read chart. I happened to clink on a link that someone posted on my Facebook Wall a few days ago, and it led directly to that Google Analytics chart. I don't use Google Analytics normally, but I noticed that the chart essentially flatlined right after I joined WMF and didn't spike again until a few months later.

Google Analytics is installed by site owners on particular websites. What exactly are you talking about? Which website were you tracking the "Google hits" upon? I'm curious if you're discussing some Google tool of which I'm not aware.

Are you maybe talking about Google Trends or something?

You're probably right that I'm misremembering the Google chart I came across as "Google Analytics". I can't remember which link it was now (which I suppose demonstrates that I don't normally follow that chart or any numbers generated by Google tools). Sorry for the mistake.

If I come across it again, I'll post the link here.

[thekohser]

If I come across it again, I'll post the link here.

Please do. Also, see that I appended my post just above, in case you're curious.

[GlassBeadGame]

If I come across it again, I'll post the link here.

Please do. Also, see that I appended my post just above, in case you're curious.

Let's do. Of course we are sitting on pins and needles for Kohs own results for whatever the same metric might be. I think we are making progress here.

[mnemonic]

If I come across it again, I'll post the link here.

Please do. Also, see that I appended my post just above, in case you're curious.

Let's do. Of course we are sitting on pins and needles for Kohs own results for whatever the same metric might be. I think we are making progress here.

I don't think it was a link to Google Trends. I just checked, and Google Trends has a brief spike relating to me at precisely the time the FBI story was widely publicized, but otherwise I'm pretty invisible in the last decade. Which, I think, makes perfect sense.

[Fusion]

(of course) that "Godwin's Law" bit.

Oh yes I wanted to ask. Mr. Godwin, did you really invent that law all by yourself?

[anthony]

...obviously I'm barred by attorney-client privilege and other legal and ethical constraints from talking about any privileged or confidential matters regarding either Mad River or Wikimedia Foundation.

Party pooper.

Sometimes the best answer for bad speech is no speech, Greg.

[mnemonic]

(of course) that "Godwin's Law" bit.

Oh yes I wanted to ask. Mr. Godwin, did you really invent that law all by yourself?

Yes, although my friend Richard Sexton claims he invented it independently. I wrote about this most recently here:

I Seem To Be A Verb: 18 Years Of Godwin's Law

And I was interviewed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here:

Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mike Godwin, 2010.

[GlassBeadGame]

(of course) that "Godwin's Law" bit.

Oh yes I wanted to ask. Mr. Godwin, did you really invent that law all by yourself?

Yes, although my friend Richard Sexton claims he invented it independently. I wrote about this most recently here:

I Seem To Be A Verb: 18 Years Of Godwin's Law

And I was interviewed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here:

Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mike Godwin, 2010.

Nobody else wants to take this one? Really? I mean I've seen a dozen Reviewers mock this conceit in the past. WR has become a bunch of fawning Wikipedians.

It is a "law" only in the sense that it intends to proscribe behavior of UseNet participants and the like. It is only "invented" in the sense of somebody might have said it. Not much to be proud of really.

[mnemonic]

(of course) that "Godwin's Law" bit.

Oh yes I wanted to ask. Mr. Godwin, did you really invent that law all by yourself?

Yes, although my friend Richard Sexton claims he invented it independently. I wrote about this most recently here:

I Seem To Be A Verb: 18 Years Of Godwin's Law

And I was interviewed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here:

Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mike Godwin, 2010.

Nobody else wants to take this one? Really? I mean I've seen a dozen Reviewers mock this conceit in the past. WR has become a bunch of fawning Wikipedians.

It is a "law" only in the sense that it intends to proscribe behavior of UseNet participants and the like. It is only "invented" in the sense of somebody might have said it. Not much to be proud of really.

That's an unusual interpretation of Godwin's Law -- nothing in my actual wording "proscribes" anything. And so far as I know, even the paraphrasing of Godwin's Law, quite common in media these days (e.g., Rachel Maddow has quoted it more than once), doesn't proscribe anything.

I used "invented" primarily because Fusion used that verb in his/her query.

As for "proud of" -- well, I don't know if "proud" is the right word. Basically, as I've written elsewhere, I was offended by glib hyperbolic use of Nazi and Hitler comparisons, so I designed an experiment to see if one person could change public discourse on the Internet. The fact that Godwin's Law migrated beyond the Internet to mainstream media was an unintended, unexpected result. I don't know that it makes sense to be "proud of" a result that one did not expect.

This post has been edited by mnemonic: Fri 6th January 2012, 3:54am

[Somey]

That's an unusual interpretation of Godwin's Law -- nothing in my actual wording "proscribes" anything. And so far as I know, even the paraphrasing of Godwin's Law, quite common in media these days (e.g., Rachel Maddow has quoted it more than once), doesn't proscribe anything.

To be fair, he was referring to how the "law" is used now in online discussions, not how it was originally intended to be used, if it was even intended to be "used" in some fashion at all. I can't imagine you could have predicted the degree to which it's become part of the vernacular when you originally stated it...

The fact is, there really are people who probably should be compared to Hitler and the Nazis, in practical terms at least - the real problem is that "Hitler" and "Nazi" are such loaded words because of the Holocaust that you can't make those comparisons without essentially implying that the person being compared wants to kill millions of Jews. But there are plenty of fascists and fascistic ideas out there that should be exposed as being just that, and many of them have nothing at all to do with antisemitism.

Heck, I've probably offended a whole bunch of people just by saying all that just now, for which I humbly apologize.

[mnemonic]

[quote name='Somey' date='Fri 6th January 2012, 8:47pm' post='292938']
[quote name='mnemonic' post='292745' date='Thu 5th January 2012, 8:41pm']

But there are plenty of fascists and fascistic ideas out there that should be exposed as being just that, and many of them have nothing at all to do with antisemitism.

[/quote]

I have made the same point myself, more than once.

I hid it in this column, for example:

http://www.jewcy.com/arts-and-culture/i_se...ars_godwins_law