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 16 Jul 2004 @ 00:02
In the side bar of these blogs, near the bottom, there is a list of recent comments, and this makes it easier to find out what has been added since the last time you have viewed the blog. Without this feature it would not be possible to tell when a comment has been added to articles that have been published in the past and scrolls off the bottom of the page. There is also a "more" link at the end of this comment list which takes you to a new page that not only lists the most recent comments, but also the article that they were added to, as well as the first couple of lines of the comment so that you can get an indication of what the comment is about. This is particularly nice, and especially if the attention grabbing aspect of your comment is placed right up front.
A major design flaw of the comments, imho, is that the owner of the blog is able to edit any comment in their blog. I have never seen this is another blog and it goes totally against the 'you own your own words' principle that originated many years ago on the Well. It opens up the potential for another person to put their words in your mouth so to speak, and to make it look like your signature is assigned to this. I can see the owner having the ability to delete any comment in their blog, primarily for troll control, but leaving yourself open to having your words changed by somebody else and make it look like you made the changes relies too much on the trust of the blog owner.
Although I haven't seen this feature abused here it does depend on the comment poster trusting the blog owner. This creates a crazy making situation where every encounter requires the element of trust, with people that you haven't known long enough or well enough to earn that trust. If there does arise a conflict in the blog community this introduces one more element of ambiguity for which the comment poster has no defense except for the opinion of the community. I can see no benifit from having this feature, and only opens up the potential for discord in the community
Being able to edit your own comments is a nice feature but even this can be abused and most software does not allow it, and in cases where it does it is usually accompanied with a software added notice that informs the reader when the comment was edited. Many communities do not even allow editable comments by the person that made the comment because it opens the possibility to insult a person then change the comment and play innocent, and the end result can be a flame war that disrupts the community. Again, opening the door for crazy making, and removing the right of the individual to have control over their own words.
Comments can also be deleted, either by the writer or the owner of the blog. I can see the benifit of the owner being able to delete another person's comment but even then the software should only delete the body and leave the header along with a date stamp of when and who deleted the comment. It can avoid a lot of community discord.
The policy in my blogs will be that I will not edit anybodies comments in my blog. If I delete any comment I will make a new comment leaving an audit trail of what comment I deleted, when and why.
In my opinion the comment structure of the software should be modified so that trust is not an element in the equation. More >
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9 Jul 2004 @ 02:41
The subject of intuition has cropped up in the blogosphere and I just discovered that our individual survival over the next few years could very well depend on developing this skill. For us men, this might be easier to accept if we thought of our intuition as that sports term of "Being In the Zone", that ability to remain cool, calm and collected, or at least functional, when under exreme pressure. With the exponentially increasing rate of change which we are experiencing we will be encountering extreme pressure, and it will only get more intense in the months and years to come. More >
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6 Jul 2004 @ 23:45
I've been getting a lot of pressure lately from a certain friend to "do something", it doesn't particularly matter what, or if it is relevant or significant, or if it is the right thing to do or the wrong thing, just as long as it is "doing something." I reply that I am doing something, I'm thinking, I'm reading, I'm analyzing, and once in awhile I write something and it goes out on the web. That doesn't seem to count, it's simply talking, he wants me to do something.
This seemed to be to be one of the central themes, or issues, in Hermann Hesse's "Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game", this differentiation between the world of mind and the world of action. Why is there such an animosity towards the intellectual? Why is it such a taboo to keep digging until you get to the root cause rather than running around trying to stomp out the symptoms? Why does something have to be empirical and destroyable before it is acknowledged as being an action?
Or we could talk about Hesse's book. I know that Ming already has a topic about a game that was inspired by this book, but we could talk about the main concepts of the book itself. More >
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4 Jul 2004 @ 17:59
The following is the Leo horoscope for the week of July 1st, from www.freewillastrology.com.
LEO: Astronomers recently discovered a planet-like world orbiting the sun beyond Pluto. They called it Sedna, a name they said was derived from the Inuit deity that created the Arctic's sea creatures. They didn't realize that the myth of Sedna is far more complicated. She is the Dark Goddess, embodiment of the wild female potencies that are feared yet sorely needed by cultures in which the masculine perspective dominates. Dwelling on the edge of life and death in her home at the bottom of the sea, Sedna is both a source of fertile abundance and a mysterious prodigy. Shamans from the world above swim down to sing her songs and comb her long black hair. If they win her favor, she gives them the magic necessary to heal their suffering patients. In the coming weeks, Leo, Sedna is your special ally. Call on her power as your work to cure the part of you that you've thought would always be wounded.
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Hhmmmm, verrryyy interesting. Read this in the www.westender.com, which I picked up on the way back from a CD release of my favorite Dark Goddess, Tanya Evanson More >
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20 Jun 2004 @ 18:16
Problems demand by their very definition to be solved because otherwise they would simply be interesting situations and not problems. This structure in itself becomes a problem because the solution is already hidden within the problem analysis and the problem then switches to one of finding a means of obtaining this solution, but this solution may not be the only solution, or even the best solution. It may not even be the desirable solution simply because it usually treats a symptom rather than a cause, since it was the symptom that identified that there was a problem.
Sometimes you have to go beyond procedure and get creative; have to look at things from one or more steps removed and accept that we don't have a clue what the solution is, let alone how to implement it. (But let's save that for another article or this will never get posted -- but somehow I suspect it involves getting to the root causes and tackling the taboo)
This was one of the insights that I picked up last week at a lecture by Bruce Elkin, who was promoting his book for Simplicity and Success. I had been getting his newsletter for awhile and I was thinking of hiring him for a coach but that's a different story. After reading through Ming's NCN collection I thought this point was more relevant.
It occurred to me that Ming's articles, and most of the comments, which were by men, were oriented around a formalized problem solving structure; the engineers and architects of the new civilization. The few females that commented were of a more artistic persuasion and it sounded to me like they didn't think their perspective was being heard, or appreciated. That maybe there are stories and visions that are very important even though they are not concrete enough for the engineer and architect. That maybe we have to birth this baby rather than build it.
Does this fire any neurons? More >
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