Wampum

Watching the wingnuts chase their tails....

In the past day, we've been linked to by many of the premier wingnuts on the Right, driving up our numbers to near Koufax levels. Why? Purportedly, because, rumor has it, we were the source of the code which a few renegades at Daily Kos used to game the Wizbang Awards. Not only were we the source, but that we actively orchestrated the events, and cheered them on over at Daily Kos.

I now understand how rumors take on a life of their own.

So, for the record, here is the actual train of events.

At 4:50pm EST Saturday, Eric saves his first draft of his post, which at the time was untitled. He calls me over, to ask some specifics on the right/center/left tilt of the blogs in the "Best Liberal Blog" category. Parenting intervenes, dinner, etc., and he finally posts it sometime after The Perfect Storm airs on NBC.

Just before 6pm, EST, while skimming through the diaries at Kos, I come upon one on the Wizbang Awards, published at 1pm that afternoon, and promoted to the recommended diaries at some point. Someone comments about the awards being held at a rightwing site, I counter that in a few weeks, the lefty Koufax Awards will be out. I also note that our awards cannot be easily gamed, as the votes are hand counted. In addition, I make a comment about how gaming the system is unethical.

A couple of hours later, while I'm contently watching my favorite subject, horrible, nasty weather wreaking havoc on small boats, I receive my first email from Kevin A. on the the subject, expressing disappointment. Into the evening and the next morning, I explain very carefully that I no, I was not cheering on the Kos thugs, and yes, in fact, I called such behavior unethical. I also asked Eric to pull his post, as I was concerned it would in fact be viewed inappropriately by some readers. He pulled it around 10pm EST. In fact, he deleted it.

The next morning, I awoke to more emails from Kevin. I patiently explained that Eric, was one of the early developers of the DarpaNet, has spent 30 years poking holes through the very guts of the internet, weeding out the flaws and weaknesses. His post on gaming was exactly that: It wasn't personal, it was business. I recognized that after a good night's sleep, had him fish it out of his Unix black hole and repost it. Pointing out a weakness is not license for others to exploit that weakness. The shame, however, is that the wingnuts believe that having intellectual curiosity, that seeking out flaws in the system is the crime. Not acting, but actually thinking.

They have in fact become the thought police.

At this point, half a dozen rigthwing blogs link to Wampum, claiming that Eric's post was the impetus for the unethical behavior at Kos. It's clear, however, that wingnuts seem to be time challenged; Eric is quite bright, but he hasn't yet perfected time-travel. The Kos diary and comments, including the Perl script, were posted hours before Eric uploaded his post.

But don't let a little thing like facts fool you. Facts. Curiousity. The pursuit of knowledge. Not if you're a wingnut chasing your tale over the latest rumor of liberal malfeasance.

Update: I went to bed last night wondering why simply pointing out flaws in a site's encoding would send conservatives into such a tizzy. When I awoke this morning, I realized that these are the same folks who claim that if you point out the problems in Iraq, you don't "support the troops" and obviously hate America.

Wampum is a group blog, and although it was originally mine, I try not to exercise editorial control over my cohosts. Eric's style is a bit more combative than mine, whereas Dwight is much less so. While I might not agree with everything they both write, I will defend their right to say it, even if it makes readers, current or those shipped in by irate trackbackers, uncomfortable.

There are those who assert that any criticism of the weaknesses of the polling model and coding should have been done privately. That might have been the case if Wampum had not been unwillingly drafted into the scheme. But you can't have it both ways; you can't force people to participate in a failed system, then balk when they publicly expose the flaws.

After re-reading Kevin's post on the subject, it's become clear to me that this is now a manufactured controversy, most likely to drive up traffic. If not, then I'm sure we'll be hearing a deafening cry emit from the Right over Tommy Thompson's announcement that there are huge holes in our nation's food production system, holes which (Al Qaeda, are you listening) could be exploited by terrorists.

Posted by MB Williams at December 5, 2004 09:26 PM | TrackBack