Comments on: Why I’ve stopped reading BoingBoing

By: Simstim

Simstim — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:04:42 +0000

I stopped reading years ago, I believe at the time my reasons were as follows:

a. They started taking advertising, pretty garish, in-your-face advertising at that.
b. Xeni “I Have No Ego And Am Not Obsessed About Sex” Jardin.
c. The relentless self-promotion.
d. Cory Doctorow’s one-sided rants about intellectual property.
e. They got rid of the comments system.
f. Most of the actually-cool stuff could be found via other sites (Robotwisdom, Slashdot, etc.)
g. Xeni Jardin posting NSFW images on the main page.

So having the comments back and with TNH disemvowelling would actually constitute reasons to go back to it. Although I can’t recall the comments on Making Light having only been partially disemvowelled.

By: freeboyusa

freeboyusa — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:15:49 +0000

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By: adrian

adrian — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:36:40 +0000

Yes, BB has been stretching my patience of late. Partly the Violet Blue thing (I just don’t feel the need to know about their little internal political things), partly the Cory whassisname publicity stuff and partly… I dunno, just a general feeling that the old “directory of wonderful things” had jumped the shark somewhat and become just another big internet brand.

I’m toying with the idea of deleting it from my aggregator, but I’m sure I’ll miss some of the many quirky posts they still publish.

By: Iain

Iain — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:38:49 +0000

No, Tom, I really don’t. Would you like to tell us?

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:16:49 +0000

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE LIKED THINGS DEVOLVING INTO FLAME WARS?

By: john b

john b — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:57:09 +0000

@ Mat – but what the hell is wrong with comments that “devolve” into flame wars? Flame wars are cool…

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:41:32 +0000

i’ve a good mind to go over there and build an elaborate argument involving aconite, king cnut, fifty cent, tom conti and ezra pound’s cantos. then call cory a wanker.

By: MatGB

MatGB — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:19:09 +0000

Heh, I stopped reading ages and ages back, every so often I’ll got there if there’s a link or a via, but ultimately there’s only so much information I can absorb, and I prefer more esoteric sources.

But, to play advocate, until fairly recently, BB didn’t allow comments at all, they’d had them in the past and they devolved into flame wars. When they switched platform and decided to bring back comments, they did it with a clear intent to keep them civil�thee and me get few comments, but a blog that busy will get many many, and unless it’s controlled in some way it will almost certainly devolve. So they hired Teresa, of Making Light/Tor Books fame, specifically because despite its popularity, Making Light’s comment threads are frequently more useful than the posts themselves. Partially this is because of TNH’s moderating style, and her disemvowelling practice is something I personally always quite liked.

But yeah, overt removal of posts that are merely critical of Cory’s relentless self publicity (and I read his personal blog fairly regularly, which has just as much in an annoying way) seems a bit OTT.

Given I virtually never read there any more, removing the link that I put in when I took the feed out as it swamped me seems apposite.

They’ve done nothing out of their normal policies, and if they want to unpublish something they no longer think suits the site, fine by me. But OTT smug silliness combined with relentless “I’m Cory Doctorow, I’ve got a book out” is annoying.