"Truthseeker" wrote:
Gosh, I don't see Political Pale Horse listed either. Did you forget to include them, or are you going to make them "regret ever taking you on?"
The rule we have had from the beginning is that blogs which write unpleasant posts need not expect to see any of their posts linked for that day, and blogs which do it over and over will be eliminated.
Contrast the post written by PPH with the one written by CCP, which did get linked. No site which claimed to be "a safe haven for Republicans" and which set its goal as only linking to posts which would not offend Republican women could possibly link the PPH post.
Cleaning up We realized that we probably inadvertently skipped Clear Commentary yesterday. They will get two days of top billing. For mechanical reasons, we sometimes put them off until last and forget to go back and get them. Our fault, not theirs.
A slight change in plans. There will be no Sunday essay, and may not be one next Sunday.
TTR's post did not have the impact he intended. It has been about 24 hours since he published our email address, and we have gotten exactly two emails. One was a one liner: Just want to say I appreciate what you're doing. Keep it up.
The other was more troublesome. It was a claim from Yahoo that we had somehow violated their user agreement and we should stop it, or we will lose our account.
Hmmm. Since we are not sure what we could have done to violate their user agreement, we are going to ask for clarification. "Threats," which would violate it, are in the eye of the beholder. TTR called our email a "threat" and published it. We think it was a carefully worded appeal for better behavior, similar to a parent saying: "You've been misbehaving and if you continue you will be sent to your room."
On the other hand, Yahoo may be objecting to our exposing the conduct of people who we believe are behaving badly. We lay out a careful case, and let the facts speak for themselves. We are using our email account to ask the hard questions in preparation for these essays. We are EXTREMELY careful not to construct those emails in a way that they could be construed as threats. If we did otherwise, we would doubtless immediately find ourselves facing criminal charges.
Our guess is that Yahoo has no idea what it is objecting to. What we got is just an automated response to some misguided individual's attempt to interfere with our email.
This site has consistently promoted internet civility and argued against name calling and mindless attacks as unproductive. It has also worked to expose actions by lawyers and politicians that are very obviously not in the public interest. If Yahoo opposes the use of its services for either of those two objectives, and we doubt that it does, then we need to find a different provider.
Until we get this resolved, we will make no comments. If we find that a site publishes a single objectionable essay, we will cease covering it until we hear from Yahoo. By now, everyone knows the standards and almost everyone is adhereing to them.
If thecoloradoindex.com should cease to function, simply go to http:\\thecoloradoindex.typepad.com/the_colorado_index/
Yahoo has nothing to do with typepad. This may be an overreaction, but we'd rather err on the side of caution.
Again, there isn't anything sinister about this being v.2. V.1 has a carefully constructed essay on the very real dangers that essay's like yesterday's TTR essay can create. The politics of personal destruction, such as those intentionally practiced by TTR and PPH, can have very real physical consequences when people uninhibited by the norms of civilization take them as a call to action. We have an example where that happened. We think people should understand exactly what they were trying to do and what the consequences could have been-could still be.
If criminal consequences come from a post where bad consequences were the obvious intention, what legal liability does the author have, both criminal and civil?
We will eventually publish v.1 because it is a part of our hints series. It makes a great example of why bloggers should not use their names. This Yahoo situation makes us more cautious, so it can wait.
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