Sunday Morons: an omnibus of silly people

19 comments on “Sunday Morons: an omnibus of silly people ”

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1. Draco T Bastard 1

   10 October 2010 at 1:34 pm

   Your link to NACT creating more badly built homes goes to NRT: Labour on Singh. And, after their legislative failure that created the leaky homes in the first place, I’m not surprised to find NACT doing it again. Everything to benefit them and their rich mates (It will boost profits) but absolutely no help to anyone else.
   • lprent 1.1

     10 October 2010 at 1:41 pm

     Fixed (usual editing error).

     The consultation document is pretty explicit that the main reason for the change is to simplify the supply chain and the site management of materials. The support in the document about the potential effects on the robustness of dwellings is cursory at best. It appears to rely almost entirely on a single study which I couldn’t link to.

     The timeframe and end-date for the ‘consultation’ follows the well established NACT pattern when they want to slide something dubious under the radar. It is very short and the decision time is designed to happen during the mid-summer torpor.
2. Richard 2

   10 October 2010 at 1:36 pm

   You missed this silly sausage.

   http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/4213956/Councillor-fakes-blog-posts-by-fans
   • lprent 2.1

     10 October 2010 at 1:50 pm

     Interesting. But I’d agree with the statements made by the Councillor on the use of psuedonyms, and disagree with the WCC Watch site. If you read our policy on privacy you’ll see that we explicitly disapprove of that use of private information.

     Quite simply you have to be in a position running a blog site where people are able to trust that the private parts of the information that they leave remain private. If you want to deal with someone being a silly bugger, then you should deal with it in moderation, without disclosing the reasons to all and sundry. To do anything else is to reduce the flow of candid comment.

     The alternative is the ‘outing’ circus that went on in 2007/8 largely by such luminaries as Cameron Slater, but also by some on the left. The numbers of comments on sites (and that are still running) that did that is still minimal. The really daft thing is that most of the ‘outers’ were proponents of free speech who managed to stifle it with being silly buggers.
     • smhead 2.1.1

       10 October 2010 at 1:55 pm

       That is interesting Lynn. I take the view that people seeking public office have no right to pseudenyms. People voting should have a right to see what a candidate has or hasn’t publicly said and how consistent those messages are.
       • lprent 2.1.1.1

         10 October 2010 at 2:05 pm

         As I said, we take privacy seriously on this site, and why we take action. Which is why I just deleted part of one of your previous comments.

         If people care to expose their identity, then I don’t care – it is their decision. But using a pseudonym as far as I’m concerned is an explicit act to protect their privacy. Quite simply a good pseudonym is another personality which is often a facet of the persons overall personality. It deserves protection in the interests of fostering debate. My various lprent roles (sysop, moderator, poster, and commentator) are quite different, and when I was using AncientGeek, it was different again.

         That being said, I do tend to monitor who is saying what. I’d expect that most candidates will do their commenting under disclosed identities – it tends to be silly to do otherwise. However that usually takes the form of us e-mailing them and warning them (which has happened a few times) or directly moderating them if they fall into the defamatory, self-promotional or troll behaviours.

         Frequently you find that people have a online personality long before they seek office. What do you do then? Blame them for something they wrote with an expectation of privacy 20 years ago?
         • smhead 2.1.1.1.1

           10 October 2010 at 2:15 pm

           I don’t know why you deleted that comment Lynn. The person named is widely published as the blogger concerned, you even included him in the list of “bloggers” who got elected.
           • lprent 2.1.1.1.1.1

             10 October 2010 at 2:23 pm

             It might be ‘widely known’. However I haven’t seen the person make that explicit disclosure in the media or on this site.

             Have you forgotten the ‘wide disclosure’ that that fool Whaleoil did saying that r0b was Rob Salmond? It was completely wrong, but still gets repeated by idiots even here. How can you know who it is if you don’t have access to the backend of the blog without a disclosure by a system operator? Quite simply you were making an unsubstantiated presumption and treating it as fact.

             Note that I didn’t link the pseudonyms of candidates except for Rocky (and Julie when I let comments go through congratulating her) who are explicit about who they are. Hell I never linked Whaleoil with Cameron Slater until after he went public about it himself.
             • smhead …

               10 October 2010 at 2:28 pm

               No I didn’t forget the wide disclorsure about rob lynne because I wasn’t commenting then and didn’t read either this blog or the other one then.

               No you didn’t link the pseudonym lynne but you did say that all three were bloggers. We know who Julie and Rocky are, so maybe you can give some evidence to your claim that the third person you named is a blogger by giving evidence of his blog output.
               • lprent …

                 10 October 2010 at 2:31 pm

                 Why would I do that? It’d be like revealing who you really are…

                 Should I do that as well? I could probably backtrack it if I cared to do so and have a fairly good chance of pinning some identity info down.

                 The rules that protect him are the same rules that protect you from my intrusive prying into your identity.
3. smhead 3

   10 October 2010 at 2:35 pm

   Yeah you are welcome to track me down if you like Lynne.

   For the record, above you have listed Greg Presland as a blogger. I have googled a blog under his name, and I haven’t found one. There are however various google references to him which is probably not surprising since he is a high profile labour activist.
   • lprent 3.1

     10 October 2010 at 2:44 pm

     I’m a high profile Labour activist as well and have been so since the early 90’s (if you’d been around in Labour operational circles)

     But if you look prior to starting this blog, you won’t find any crossover between my pseudonyms and my real identity either. You will find material that I wrote as myself on usenet, but that is about all. That was probably less than 5% of my writing across the net in various forums.

     The rule here is that we don’t allow peoples pseudonyms to ‘outed’ unless they do so themselves. Comment in the site and you follow our rules.
4. freedom 4

   10 October 2010 at 3:30 pm

   i am not a lawyer but in one way i would love to see the government stride ahead with the Waihopai case because in order to win they would have to produce an invoice for the said repairs. Also because it would be a PR disaster in a social and a judicial sense. The defendants do not have the resources to pay any eventual settlement anyway.

   Primarily though, the issue would pivot on the oft repeated statement that it cost $1million to repair the damage to the base. It is my understanding that they cannot produce anythng resembling a legitimate invoice as the U.S.A. (via the Echelon programme) paid for the repairs in order to avoid disclosure over responsibilities for the operation, management and maintenance of the base.

   Any invoice they do present will only be a rabbithole map to other issues that the past Goverments of this country have worked diligently on keeping out of the public arena
5. Julie 5

   10 October 2010 at 5:15 pm

   Thanks for the congrats :). Bit of a shock and a whirlwind so still catching up on everything. Should be a fun new adventure!!
   • r0b 5.1

     10 October 2010 at 5:26 pm

     Go for it! We need good people putting their hands up for these posts.
   • lprent 5.2

     11 October 2010 at 12:41 am

     It will be. Just have to get the council to define what you can do
6. Doug 6

   10 October 2010 at 7:56 pm

   Dear Lprent

   Not that I really care about what he thinks as my opinion of him could not be lower if I dug a trench, his name is actually Richard Treadgold.

   Cheers Doug
   • lprent 6.1

     10 October 2010 at 8:06 pm

     Thanks I will correct… I didn’t check this post well enough

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1. The Standard: posted on 9 October 2010 at 11:59 pm

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