It was fun... [LWN.net]

It was fun...

Posted Apr 10, 2011 14:57 UTC (Sun) by tgall (subscriber, #217)
In reply to: Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious by FlorianMueller
Parent article: Groklaw shutting down in May

I agree with Florian.

The initial lauch of Growlaw was most welcome. What wasn't to like? It was a playful mix of legalinformation and a sort of "stick it to the man" attitude.

Over time however the hiding of PJ does seriously make me doubt "her" existence. To remain anonymous seems contrary to open source principles, at least if you consider transparency or open communication part of those principles.

In some ways it's like accepting code from Anonymous. PJ's "code" was great "code", it seemed to hit the mark, and there was quality there, but you have to wonder about who is behind the mask. There is no reason for PJ to remain anonymous. The SCO battle has been won, stand up, take your bow, accept your awards, good heavens do the open source world a favor and speak at a few conferences.

The patent war however is not over. Nor are the lawsuits which could have substantial affect on open source, consider the many cases surrounding Android. If anything the need for Groklaw is as great as when it started, at least the concept of supportive analysis involving open source legal matters.

But here's the thing, if the only motivation of Groklaw was to vet the circumstances around SCO, Microsoft and Novell it certainly did that. What if PJ was actually being paid to do so? Case over, no more pay, no more website. Does it devalue the work? No, no more than Kernel engineers going to work for a company. If anything it does define an altruistic work vs a sponsored one that might reflect the desires of the sponsor. Without the removal of the anonymous mask we are but left to wonder.

to post comments

It was fun...

Posted Apr 10, 2011 16:58 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (25 responses)

Over time however the hiding of PJ does seriously make me doubt "her" existence.

Yeah, perhaps she was a computer program, or a ghost, or a team of IBM lawyers.

(And so what if she was? Did it make what she said less accurate?)

It was fun...

Posted Apr 10, 2011 18:01 UTC (Sun) by foobarinator (guest, #74231) [Link] (24 responses)

The problem was that when opposing voices corrected PJ's narrative or pointed out inacurracies in the reporting, those voices were "sandboxed" to prevent different ideas or facts to reach the audience.

In this way, the censorship was not any different than what Sarah Palin's facebook moderators do. The only narrative allowed on the form is the one that agreed with the site's owner.

There is a simple experiment that anyone can try on their own, running some of the online statistical gender detectors on Groklaw's writings, this is one:

http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php

or:

http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

Some of the entries are definitely written by males, while some others are definitely written by females.

PJ liked to run hatchet jobs on anyone they saw as an enemy of their cause, digging personal information and trying to smear them charges of guilt by association. Yet, for someone that demanded that others be transparent, never disclosed its funding source.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 10, 2011 18:35 UTC (Sun) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I think you mean "appear by the statistical analyses of these sites to have probably been written by", not "are definitely written by". From one of the very sites you cite:

Many factors can impact the interpretation from any single person's writing. The content, knowledge of the material, age of the author, nationality, experience, occupation, and education level can all impact writing styles. For example, a woman who has spent 20 years working in a male-dominated field may write like her co-workers. Similarly, professional female writers (and experienced hobbyists) frequently use male writing styles. Gender Guesser does not take any of these factors into account.

The day we let computers tell us what gender someone is.. is the day skynet wins.

Posted Apr 10, 2011 23:59 UTC (Sun) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Plugging in my blog entries into these gender guessers and they tell me I am probably female. This is news to me.

Now I know we live in a facebook survey dominated era of information gathering and that survey's which porport to tell you which muppet your are or which Harry Potter character you are are highly accurate and scientificly proven mechanisms for divining essential truths about one's self. But wow, these gender analyzers don't seem to be up to that level of accuracy.

But if you will indulge me...
Following the logic.... If Jono Bacon says he's me....and these gender guessers says that I'm female....that means... Jono Bacon is a woman.
I even plugged in Jono's own blog entries into the guesser..the verdict is in...Jono is not a dude. That's probably news to Jono as well.

These gender analyzers are patently stupid. Ranking works like "with" and "we" a feminine while ranking "a" and "are" as masculine. Are you freakin kidding me? Basic English grammar constructions scored for gender. Moronic.

The people who create such scoring should be ashamed. What's next we are going to go in and start scoring the syntax of python scripts for gender? Clearly the itemize() call is feminine while the enumerate() call is masculine.

Anyone who holds these things up as a credible way to decipher gender in a writer deserve to be sentenced to a remedial refresher course in basic English grammar and syntax with their mental peer group of 8 year olds.

-jef"Apologizes to Ms. Bacon for dragging her into this in an effort to define the good name of Mr. Jones"spaleta

Digging personal information, not.

Posted Apr 11, 2011 5:31 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (1 responses)

PJ liked to run hatchet jobs on anyone they saw as an enemy of their cause, digging personal information and trying to smear them charges of guilt by association.

I have been following Groklaw since the beginning (admittedly less frequently lately, but daily or more often in the early years, when it seriouosly looked like SCO will bring Linux down), and I don't recall PJ ever having dug up actual personal information about anyone. She did try to find out about business connections, current and prior employers, and public comments, which is stuff that is very relevant in judging the expertise and biases of the characters in the drama. But I don't think those can be considered personal information in this context.

By contrast, to see the worst example of the kind of digging the opposite side did, look up the Maureen O'Gara case in Google. One link here. http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/infrastructure/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163104408.

Digging personal information, not.

Posted Apr 11, 2011 17:25 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

I don't recall PJ ever having dug up actual personal information about anyone.

PJ didn't just refuse to look up other people's personal information. She was very careful to redact personal information from the documents she was citing, even though in many cases the original document was available for anyone who really wanted to know. She bent over backward to protect other people's privacy, which is what you'd hope for- but sadly too rarely see- from somebody who wanted her own privacy respected.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 0:50 UTC (Thu) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link] (19 responses)

> Some of the entries are definitely written by males, while some others are definitely written by females.

1. I doubt much of those tools - I've seen too many errors.

2. Some of the entries were written by males, some by females. While PJ wrote most articles, there are numerous guest articles by experts explaining either technical issues or nuances of the law (by lawyers).

3. I saw many disagreements on Groklaw. While I can't guarantee some disagreements weren't removed, it clearly was not universal. Most of the stuff I saw being removed was not because of disagreements, but because they failed to follow the posting policy, to specifically include language.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 4:45 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (18 responses)

Obviously the proper way to use such tools is to apply it only to articles claimed to have been written by "PJ", not to guest posts. And it's also key to remove paragraphs that consist of third-party quotes.

Concerning censorship, yes, you'll actually find that totalitarian regimes like the former German Democratic Republic formally allowed opposition parties and often even give them seats in parliament, but it's hand-picked opposition. Same thing with disagreements that Groklaw didn't censor:

What Groklaw liked best was dissent expressed in ridiculous ways. Those comments weren't censored because they served Groklaw's purpose of fabricating consensus.

What got censored instead were reasonable, perfectly polite, on-topic comments, or links to such material.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 7:54 UTC (Thu) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (17 responses)

Mistakes, bad decisions, are not always errors of commission. PJ is willing to err on the side of commission. That takes guts because anyone knows it'll excite the real trolls. It draws a lot of attention, and there are really only two sources of information about the decisions she made: the people she banned and Groklaw itself; and Groklaw doesn't say much about it. She wrote at least one article on the general subject, I've been idly poking around for it and haven't turned it up yet, but all in all trolls do their damage by wasting good people's time with pointless characterization and innuendo and drama, and she and her team have better things to do.

It grew to encompass a lot of related things, but Groklaw got its start as an expression of personal affront at what she and many others saw as a blatant scam. But PJ didn't stop with simple perception, and she didn't speak from whatever she had on hand. PJ worked at it, argued in support of her viewpoint with every shred of evidence she could dig up, and then she started getting help.

It turns out that everyone who matters to the case (except, of course, SCO) agrees with her. That would be all the defendants, and the judge of course, and the jury. PJ's opinion itself never mattered any more than mine or yours or the Pope's. The facts she and her crew dug up wound up having an effect: they mattered. That Groklaw was a place to get stuff done mattered. Groklaw was a team, *her* team, and you were on it or you weren't.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 14:13 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (16 responses)

Groklaw was a team, *her* team, and you were on it or you weren't.

Not quite. AFAIR, the way the undesired-comment suppression on Groklaw worked was that from your point of view you were »on the team« – you did get to see your own comment, after all –, but from everyone else's point of view you didn't exist at all, since your comment would be suppressed in their version of the page. Clever ;^)

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 14:33 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (14 responses)

You are completely mistaken. I am a subscriber of Groklaw from the very beginning. Even so I did see comments dissapear (seldom, but that could just have been timing). And the few comments I did see deleted were because of blatant transgressions to the site policy (foul language, virulent ad hominem attacks, publishing private details about people), never because of contents (and if you look over the site, you will see many opinions that differ markedly from PJ's). Yes, there have been a few "subscriber only" articles, but mainly surveys on stuff like opinions on archiving the site at the Library of Congress, asks for help with voluminous transcriptions, and other internal(ish) stuff.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 15:11 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (12 responses)

This is not what I said. Of course some comments have been removed outright due to PJ's bad-language policy. What I am talking about is comments which, in a perfectly courteous manner, expressed opinions that went against the party line and then silently disappeared from view for everyone except the original commenter (who would then have to resort to looking at the site from another computer to even find out about this).

I used to be a regular Groklaw reader for a fairly long time but mostly stopped doing so after I had this happen to a comment of mine. I'm all for rational, polite discussion and I would have been perfectly able to handle a »You're not welcome, stay away« from PJ – at least then one knows where one stands! Considering that I have lots of uses for my time other than commenting on Groklaw, PJ leading me to believe that my comments have been properly posted while in fact I'm the only person who can actually see them is (in my opinion at least) a bit unfair. I'm aware that for many people PJ essentially walks on water, but it must be said in the interest of balance that the tricky comment suppression mechanism is something which sets Groklaw off from other blogs, and which I personally would not readily associate with the idea of civil, open-minded discourse.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 18:40 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (11 responses)

As I said, I followed Groklaw daily (at least) for years, and saw few comments deleted. And never one that "in a perfectly courteous manner, expressed opinions that went against the party line." I saw a lot of comments that went "against the party line," rarely "courteously," and said comments are presumably still to be found there. It should be easy enough to search for Florian Mueller's comments as relevant examples, there were others.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 18:53 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (10 responses)

You can find examples of polite, on-topic comments deleted by Groklaw in this PDF document on Scribd.com, which contains numerous screenshots and, toward the end, references to blog posts and forum comments in which others described similar observations.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 20:31 UTC (Thu) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (9 responses)

Not many dog poisoners have the chutzpah to defend their act by pointing out what good steak they use to deliver the payload, and still fewer offer a blatantly poisoned steak as evidence. I suppose that could be called "courage", the quality of having one's heart in it.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 21:32 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (8 responses)

This is what in the business we call an »ad hominem« attack. What happened in the cases cited by Florian also happened to various other people, some of which have spoken up in this discussion. It does not matter that it was Florian who actually went to the trouble of documenting PJ's suppression of undesired comments (»dog poisoner« or not), and he may even have had a personal axe to grind doing so; what does matter as far as I am concerned is that the suppression occurred at all, which is nothing to do with Florian personally.

Arguing that Groklaw is PJ's blog and she gets to do what she wants on it, including arranging for tricky and unusual methods of getting rid of comments she personally does not agree with, is fine by me. It's her privilege, and so far nobody is actually forced to read (or comment on) Groklaw. However, in my opinion, this alone disqualifies her as the candidate for immediate sainthood that many people apparently perceive her to be. It may be acceptable on a blog to completely remove comments which contain offensive language, but suppressing politely-worded comments whose content one does not like, in the manner that PJ demonstrably did in various cases, is not behaviour I personally would associate with the owner and operator of an award-winning blog extolling software freedom.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 2:34 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (7 responses)

Ad hominem is an attempt to reject or discredit what someone offers using something about the person offering it. An allegation may be accurate or inaccurate, flattering or insulting, relevant or pure idiotic noise. None of that will tell you whether it's ad hominem or not. My metaphor was accurate, insulting and relevant, but what makes an allegation ad hominem is the attempt to taint. If you're going to use strong language, please use it properly.

If you want to see the line between rebuke and ad hominem, step from my post to Mueller's link.

PJ deletes such attempts on sight as the work of trolls, and all your objections amount to is "sometimes she gets it wrong". Endlessly discussing whether any such decision is wrong would also achieve what the trolls were after.

So, therefore, what?

Also, please point out anyone angling to beatify PJ so we can properly mock them. She had a few years of genuine glory, not many people get that. But that's about all.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 6:49 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (6 responses)

PJ deletes such attempts on sight as the work of trolls, and all your objections amount to is "sometimes she gets it wrong". Endlessly discussing whether any such decision is wrong would also achieve what the trolls were after.

If the Groklaw definition of a troll is »somebody whose contributions PJ doesn't like«, you may even be right. However, if, for example, in the discussion of the Hercules virtual machine OS licensing/patent issue, the main developer of the actual software in question steps in and tries to present his side of what is factually being discussed, that is not what I would consider »trolling«. If anything, the Groklaw community should have been glad that Jay Maynard took time out of his undoubtedly busy schedule to contribute constructively (by correcting some apparent factual misconceptions on PJ's part) to the site. Instead he gets ejected, essentially because he disagrees with PJ on some things where to an outside observer it is painfully obvious that he is right and PJ is wrong. I wouldn't exactly describe this as »sometimes she gets it wrong«.

As far as »endless discussions« are concerned, I would much rather see a constructive discussion of the actual subject matter at hand than one about whether it was right or not to kick somebody off the site for purely personal reasons. In my opinion, the right thing for PJ to do after Jay Maynard corrected some of her factual errors would have been to apologise and thank him, then move the discussion along in the light of what she'd just learned. What Jay Maynard did was not »trolling«, and painting it as such just to bolster the notion that oh, PJ sometimes hits the wrong button, no big deal, please don't make a large issue of it since that would make PJ look bad, strikes me as disingenious. Kicking somebody off a site should be the very last thing one considers, and definitely not for constructive contributions to a factual discussion.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 11:00 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (5 responses)

IBM would have to be stark staring insane to license their OS for production use on an emulator -- particularly for use on an emulator being used as last-resort disaster backup. The sheer stupidity of what they were being asked to do is actually more ludicrous than the allegations made about their refusal to do it.

Mueller's /. post on the subject was my first contact with his work. I've learned to be suspicious of claims which, if true, would be outrageous, and this one (let alone his blog post, which reeks) had the smell of propaganda about it. So I read the letters. Yup. It's the tired old propagandist's recipe for leveraging confirmation bias: manufactured outrage and vile characterizations based on some more or less subtle misrepresentation, relying on the knowledge that most people when gulled into outrage stop thinking.

And this is just more of the same.

Did these forums get drained of legal knowledge when AllParadox & Marbux left or went silent so long ago? I'm really curious here. I feel like I'm in a dream where we're taking a test and everyone but me slept through all the classes.

Yeah. That's the closing paragraph of a post anent which Mueller devotes an entire section titled 'Baseless allegations of "personal attacks".' Right. Openly presuming a roomful of people are all ignorant posers is a constructive contribution, and following it immediately with "I'm really curious here" isn't going to set off anyone's "kick me, I'm a troll" alarm.

That's so brazen it's actually funny, in a "the other possible explanations are distinctly uncharitable, so I'll regard it as a first-rate sendup of people who've never seriously faced the question, who do you think you're fooling?" kind of way.

So anyway,

What Jay Maynard did was not »trolling«

So you say. The content of his reply on "Sunday, April 11 2010 @ 01:07 EDT" does not appear in Florian's link. In fact, I don't think there's anything of his in that document. Care to provide any evidence? No explanations, no characterization, no careful framing attempts. Just facts, thanks.

Because, as it stands, what been offered so far is most succinctly epitomized as a vast disparity between your public pronouncements and the actual evidence.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 19:17 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (4 responses)

IBM would have to be stark staring insane to license their OS for production use on an emulator -- particularly for use on an emulator being used as last-resort disaster backup. The sheer stupidity of what they were being asked to do is actually more ludicrous than the allegations made about their refusal to do it.

Whatever. I'm not opening that can of worms. Let me just state for the record that I believe (and have commented on LWN.net to that effect when the issue was ongoing) that as far as I am concerned IBM is perfectly free to license or not license their software to whoever they want. In my own personal opinion I don't think it would be any skin off IBM's nose for them to offer reasonably-priced no-support licenses to Hercules users (it's not as if people are queuing to replace their IBM z/OS mainframes with PCs) but that is neither here nor there.

Mueller's /. post on the subject was my first contact with his work […]

Please leave Florian Mueller out of this. My issue is with PJ's suppressing comments by and/or kicking out people she does not agree with, in general. It happened to me and various other people other than Florian Mueller. What Florian Mueller said or didn't say, on Groklaw, Slashdot, or anywhere else, is completely immaterial to the issue at hand.

Care to provide any evidence? [for Jay Maynard not »trolling« on Groklaw]

I just spent way too much time on Groklaw looking at comments on the original article dealing with the TurboHercules issue, and I have failed to see any comment of Jay Maynard's that could fairly be considered »trolling« In fact, given what various other participants in the discussion throw at him he comes across as unusually polite and level-headed (IMHO anyway). I would like to invite anybody who is interested enough in the issue to look at the same article and form their own opinion, lest I be accused of cherry-picking evidence. Ten minutes or so should be enough to get the gist of what is going on.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 21:12 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (3 responses)

kicking out people she does not agree with

Again with the gratuitous characterization, backed by nothing. Again.

Please leave Florian Mueller out of this.

You're the one cited his work as evidence. You get to live with the association.

comments on the original article

(1) that post is still there. (2) people there were treating him very gently. (3) I see him going on and on about "IBM's patent threats", as if IBM made any. They didn't, but he sure is determined to paint it that way.

If you kept on and on for days offering nothing but accusations on Groklaw as you're doing here, it's no wonder she started killfiling posts. It's just a matter of cleanliness.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 22:57 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

You're the one cited his work as evidence. You get to live with the association.

No I didn't. That was vonbrand. Go check. (Also I'm intrigued that you apparently expect me to point you to some comment of mine that PJ has canceled, as »evidence«. Duh. The whole point of PJ suppressing comments she doesn't agree with is so they're gone.)

Anyway, I'm out of this discussion. I gave up on Groklaw long ago and won't miss it at all; I don't need to waste even more of my life arguing with PJ's fan crew here on LWN.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 23:09 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (1 responses)

No I didn't.

Who do you think you're fooling?

it was Florian who actually went to the trouble of documenting

That's you, opening this conversation.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 16, 2011 9:18 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

That's you, opening this conversation.

Nope, that's me commenting on you commenting on Florian commenting on vonbrand, who pointed to Florian's comments. Hardly »opening this conversation«. You're also quoting me out of context.

And this is really the last you're going to hear from me in this discussion.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 15:21 UTC (Thu) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

Nope; the dissenting comments have been suppressed in exactly the way described (mine once was, when I pointed out, that some people aren't allowed as much liberty as the others when commenting and that comments inappropriate when addressed at PJ stopped to be so inappropriate when addressed at, let's say, Miguel de Icaza).

I wouldn't know that the comment has been disappeared if not for viewing the article without logging in. Clever indeed.

It's important to realise, that PJ is no saint, she can be indeed highly biased at times and she does have her pet peeves; most of that is visible in her comments, usually. (Bruce Byfield is quite right that the overall quality of Groklaw deteriorated after 2008.)

And it's equally important to understand, that all of the (valid) complaints are mostly of no consequence when it comes to the quality of her work (explaining legal issues, showing how the legal procedures work, etc. etc.)

And, frankly, the venerable Mr. Mueller here is much more venomous than PJ; his style is more similar to the Sam Varghese / Roy Schestowitz type of venom-spitting and hatred-inducing writings.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 19:48 UTC (Thu) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link]

Yes, I thought I remembered her describing that -- it's one of the reasons I've been hoping to stumble on that article I mentioned. It was long ago now, but as I recall it was very thorough examination of the situation as she saw it. Hers was the first description I recall of what are now called "concern trolls", for instance. What impressed me most at the time was her discussion of what she did before caging or banning people: in at least some cases, she did background investigation.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 11, 2011 0:28 UTC (Mon) by tridge (subscriber, #26906) [Link]

PJ is most definitely a real person. I've spoken to her on the phone, and
she is very much a genuine person.

I really admire the fantastic work she has done.

Cheers, Tridge

It was fun...

Posted Apr 11, 2011 9:41 UTC (Mon) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

I get that point of view, but, if you look at all the evidence, it's very clear why PJ is so protective of her anonymity: she's just a little bit paranoid. I don't mean to be mean to her -- she's awesome -- but she has a tendency paranoia and conspiracy theorizing, and incidences like O'Gara's shameful harassment of her only serve to exacerbate the situation. I think she honestly believes that if she revealed her identity, Darl McBride would send a hitman to her house/apartment to off her or kidnap her loved ones. Is this a reasonable fear, well no, not really, but many people are scared to fly, so irrational fear is part of the human condition. No one's perfect, including PJ. PJ is, however, awesome, and Groklaw will be sorely missed.

MOG took orders from Blake Stowell

Posted Apr 12, 2011 22:57 UTC (Tue) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]

Remember "I need you to send a jab PJ's way"? And then Ms. O'Gara replying, "I want battle pay"?

Sure, "just joking." That's easy enough to say after the damage is done.

Yes, there really was a conspiracy against Pamela Jones.