April 22, 2006

i'm supposed to be working

I have a shitload of work to do. For my Canadian friends, allow me to translate: It's a busy time, eh?

And it's not so much that I can't do the work, but that I seem to be unable to actually get the work done........ because I keep falling asleep.

It's not me, really. It's my bed. The problem is my bed. (she said.)

There's a certain point with this old king-sized mattress sandwich that I'm completely unable to resist. It's when the sheets are just about ready to be changed, and they're all crinkled and rumpled and askew, and I haven't made the bed in days, and the pillows are every which place, and my laptop and canvas SXSW bag that now contains too many items I need to address are at the foot of the bed, and what am I supposed to do? Ignore it?

The strange thing is that I have always adored a well made bed dressed in textures and layers, pressed cotton sheets with tight seamed corners. Oh!

But now? This is not my beautiful bed.

This new era Jeneane can't resist burrowing down into a mis-made, half-assed, crumpled-up, laundry-imminent, unmade bed. Taking an all-akimbo, acid-washed two-hour nap. Say my prayer of thanks for having a fine roof (even if it leaks) over my fine head (even if its roots are showing) in a fine room (even if it's a disaster) in my fine house (even if it's in disrepair) on this fine, fine, fine (low-end) king-size bed.

I find it ir-fucking-resistible.

So what am I supposed to do?

George says: "You know, you could work at your desk."

Sure, but where would I sleep?

[[Breaking News: Amyloo corrects my usage -- suggests the right word is "irre-fucking-sistible". I stand by my mashup: "ir-fucking-resistible" for two reasons--1) it uses a first-syllable break, and 2) sistible's not a word. We are writing ourselves into ex-fucking-istence over here. Let's get it right. You are welcome to weigh in on the matter in comments.]]


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That Guest Blogger Thing?

Don't do that. Okay?

Thanks.


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New Tools for the Working Mom

WORK YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

With the MomTop(TM), From IBM.

Think the night nurse is a working mom's best friend? Think again.

IBM's new MomTop(TM) Notebook handles 12 hours of labor and gives birth to fully-clothed, 10 lb. infants by ejecting them from the DVD R/W drive right into mom's ergonomically-supported, waiting arms.

That's right. Get your MomTop and never leave the office again. Baby due in the middle of a conference call? NO SWEAT! MomTop covers the baby's entire face with a winter cap so clients can't hear that pesky newborn's cry.

How DID your mother and grandmother do it?

With the MomTop, you really don't have to give a shit.

Available now for $3,499.00

USB-ready Breast Pump Add-On Only--$69.99!

Hurry...Time Limited Offer.


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image from dreamtimes.

I didn't realize...

...that Albert had eaten so well at Mix06. It looks like his usual diet of nutrition bars was momentarily interrupted.


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April 21, 2006

The old Top 100 They Ain't What They Used to Be...

Interesting post on the rapidly changing face of the t'rati top 100.


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Only 35 school days left in the South

HOLY SHIT!


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Clue for sale? Anyone?

I think I need to buy one, because I don't understand the purpose of GM's new FYI Blog, which Steve reports is allowing "all GM employees to contribute in one way or another."

I don't see all employees. I see Directors and VPs spinning so far

As someone with a brother who's put in 27 years and will soon be out of a job, I think an innovative move would be to bring the guys from simplyhired.com and other HR/Job sites over to the blog to give advice, resources, and info that could help steer the thousands of career GM employees who are going to need the help toward new opportunities.

Employee blogs are nice. Before anyone did them, they were cutting edge. It's time for some new cutting edge moves, and that edge has to be a lot more edgy than having your Brand and Communications people posting about how great thou art.


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Web 2.0 Office Fun

As you package your own Web2.0 tools together to replace those annoying old desktop apps, make sure you include a cool new invoicing tool like blinksale.  I'm going to try it out. The only thing I found a little too webtoo.cavalier was the answer to the data security question:


Is my data safe?

Our servers are housed in a secure, state-of-the-art colocation center in Dallas, Texas. You may export your data in a variety of formats, and though we hate to see you go, you are free to cancel Blinksale at any time.

That leaves some privacy questions unanswered, some what happens when you cancel questions unanswered, but hey, I'm not billing the White House (yet).

I think there should be an optional interface on invoicing/billing tools that make them fun. I HATE DOING THAT PART OF MY BUSINESS. Everyone does. I'd like a time sheet widget that pops up every couple of hours saying, "want to record anything?" and then I choose from a drop down of my clients (this is all while whatever I'm working on is uninterrupted), i choose from whatever projects i populated it with, and I toss in another hour or two. It keeps track for me. And, like, can it reward me? Like can I set it to say, "When I add my 70th billable hour, launch my amazon wish list and one-click me a $10-$20 gift for myself."

I'm an indie. So are a lot of us. I'd love new ways to incent MYSELF. Creative ways to add some boing-boing type fun inside of my everyday, lonely processes.

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50 Ways to Leave Your Notes, Yah.

SolutionWatch just blew me away by providing a handy list of 50 web 2.0 tools that help people who have to write shit down.

The fact that there are 50 Web 2.0 tools that help us take notes is, itself, indicative of our meta-fetish nature in the age of the interweb.

I would like to have seen Qumana included, because it's one of the fastest ways to keep notes and links together, then publish your thoughts to a blog (or several, across various blogging platforms). There is a difference, I suppose, between Web publishing tools and web-based word processors, but the quickest route from thought to publish for bloggers is bypassing Blogger's and Wordpress's interface and posting through Qumana.

Nonetheless, a useful list of helpful tools. Next week, SolutionWatch will provide a list of the top 50 Web 2.0 tools for double-clicking!


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while i'm out...

Anyone who knows anything about prosper.com, or has lent or borrowed there, I want to know about it.


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off to meetings...

keep your powder dry, gotta make a living. see ya lateron.


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Rollercoaster of Love, Say What?

Smartmobs says researchers are tracking bloggers' moods. Good Thing We're So Happy!

today, i'm feeling.... splenetic.


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what makes will be the boy

we all have them. at least he's honest:


...by request: My Favorite Compulsive Behaviors

Drinking coffee
Making up songs about chickens
Making lists
Chart making (this one is new)
Skee-ball
Alcohol related blackouts (this one is currently under control)
Eating things in even numbers (ie: 4 cookies, not 3)
Checking the locks
Gambling (this one is mostly under control)
Singing the names of street signs
Listening to this song by ’68 Comeback: Shotgun Saw
This song by Townes van Zandt: To Live is to Fly (live version)

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April 20, 2006

You Mean The World Doesn't End with The Valley?

Euan Semple tells it like it is, exploring the value of physical connections at conferences which -- unbeknownst to some U.S. UberMouths -- still matter in places other than the valley, boston, and new yawk. And they don't even need to be "un" to count!!


I was also very aware of the unconferencing meme going around at the moment but to be honest I am getting pretty tired of a small group of people who have attended mind-bloggling numbers of conferences, along with pretty much the same group of geeks, over the past four years in the US getting bored with themselves and declaring conferences dead. I know from experience that there still a lot of people for whom "real" conferences continue to have value - especially for people who are new to a subject and not one of the chosen few.

And anyway - people like Chris Corrigan, Jon Husband and Johnnie Moore have been applying open space principles to group working for years very effectively. Getting a bunch of people to self-organise round things they feel passionate about wasn't invented by Dave Winer.

Amen. As a soloist, I wish I could afford to go to more of them and get burned out too. More reasons for a nap!

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Dream a little dream with me...

Doc revealed the true world leader in his sleep last night.

That's funny, last night I dreamed that the links to my archive list, down there at the bottom right starting in 2001, were tattooed on my right arm.

I am not sure what would have happened if I clicked them.


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sick web 2.0 ad revenue models -- here's a gimme

so you start a blog now, you write a bunch of posts detailing future big-news events that are destined to happen, say for instance, a spoof release on the death of an ex-president, you watch the post rise to the top of google, tracking the random referrals you get on the search string. (Amazing how may folks THINK Gerald Ford is dead, you know?) Then, you sell ads based on potential traffic from specific event trigger, say, the actual death of said president hitting MSM sources, and the ads begin running only once your blog receives the first rush of hits for a given search string from google and other search engines. So, you put about 5,000 of these future news nuggets on a blog, seeding the future, and you charge advertisers an 'event price' for future ads that will run for, say, a week or month after the trigger is tipped.

Is it a spam blog? not if it's creative. More like the Onion, but SEO-ed.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying...


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oh. oh dear.

i think i just figured out what fastblogit is, which i never really 'got' when people would send me there. in light of this recent discovery, expect to not see me until i come back out of disneyland for dweebs!


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April 19, 2006

SHP Surpasses Huffing Glue As Leading Cause of Brain Damage

I keep finding beautiful dark coils of wonderful writing on the Shiny Happy People (SHP) topic that say what I wanted to say so much better than I said it.

And no, I'm not ready to shut up quite yet. There are times when I like beating dead horses. I've lost a couple of horses in my lifetime. It's hard to see a loyal equine friend dead--do you know how big a horse is? Do you know what it takes to bury one? It's not like a dead cat or hamster--it is pure enormity.

So if I decide to beat a dead horse, beat I will.

Let me turn it over, though, to the Head Lemur, who bought and paid for my smile tonight by getting -- perfectly -- the "it" that's wrong with SHP.



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Perfect!

The passive-aggressive wingnuts have arrived at the comment party from the wingnut vector himself to declare that liberals are unhappy because they're wrong -- keeping in the neocon style of planting catch-22 bait like land mines on Main Street.

It's enough to make a bi-polar rapid cycle!

How fascinating that Kathy's post has turned in on itself now to prove the very thing most of us were critiquing it for to begin with: happy people are always good for you right? Uh, wrong.

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This Just In...Scoble Goes Kenya-Only

Upon returning from his blog break, Robert Scoble will now be blocking comments from Romania and allowing only Kenyan bloggers to contribute to the discussion on Scobleizer.

This decision comes on the heels of intensive study that shows Scoble's U.S. blog commenters hardly rate in a 2003 study of who's the happiest.

"Well no wonder everyone's a bastard on my blog," Scoble said. "I've been writing to the wrong audience!"

Scoble plans to open his blog to comments from Mexico, which is ranked the second happiest place, once he becomes fluent in Spanish. Upon hearing the news, Tech Memeorandum pledged to launch a Spanish-language only version of the site sometime in 2008, if the bubble doesn't burst before then.


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Go Golby

Mike I've been missing too long. Reading you is remembering, in this time and this space, it's like going home.


Bar the homeless, the tramps, the whores, and the usual detritus flowing like effluent from suburbia's drain, there are few refugees in Kenilworth. I guess the crows, like the Buccaneer pilots, don't care. They prey on other birds or, like the seagulls blown in on the high sea winds, scavenge whatever they can find, their harsh, throaty cries broadcasting success.

In 1976, we sailed into Las Palmas, an island belonging to a Spanish enclave off Morocco. Drifting in to the quayside, I saw — through one of the dining-hall scuttles — curio sellers and hawkers lining the harbour wall. Alongside me, a leathery, taciturn petty officer remarked dryly: "Fucking crows."

I was only eighteen then. I had no idea we were supposed to hate the Spanish. It took me years to learn that white people in general, be they South African or not, tend to despise other nationalities, races, and cultures. It took me only a short while longer to learn that their suspicion, bigotry, and loathing are underpinned by an unhealthy dose of fear.

Sorry to be so long quiet. I'm back home.

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What Is Beautiful.

I didn't realize that Stowe Boyd had another-nother blog called Ambivalence, which I arrived at today by clicking a sidebar link from /Message. There I came across a wonderful, touching post about Stowe's life as a solo, traveling man in the age of the Web, a consultant with an office in the wild, at a time when the connections that arise from connectivity are creating home-bases out there, no where in particular, between this place and the next place, with long-time friends and net-neighbors whose faces we are only now coming upon, one after the next.

In a period of a handful of days, this week, I will have as many as a dozen meetings, with savants and seekers, entrepreneurs and engineers, and companies large and small. I will see a never-seen-before product, learn about a company's recent formation, and hear some juicy bit of gossip that would have passed me by at home. I will walk many miles, ride trains, cabs, and planes, and flit around within an unforgiving schedule like a nightingale in a silver cage. I will stay out late with new friends and old, laughing and learning, and I will work alone in coffeeshops, here, there, and everywhere.

I am a modern nomad, carrying the minimum of possessions in service to the maximum of obsessions. And it's different sort of strength that comes from this wandering, from staying in different hotels instead of the same old bed, from seeing the sun rise from different windows, through different branches, reaching for the light.

They say that migrating birds can sense the magnetic fields of the Earth, and calibrate their flight with the arcs of the stars, swirling through the skies. What forces am I skating along, as I swing westward, like some 21st century hobo? I feel a humming in the blood, a deep murmuring in my meat: a call, some nearly intangible sensation of being pulled, going, like the birds stroking the air, like the stars sweeping westward.


A fascinating, honest, and beautiful read.

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April 18, 2006

Virgin Birth Reported--Universe Nears Collapse!

In the Shiny Happy People (SHP) department, the most positive guy in America, Tom Cruise, just became a daddy.

No one's saying if Katie was allowed to scream, or if Tom was able to shut the fuck up, during the birth, which the tenets of Scientology advise should take place in total silence.

The baby's name is Suri, which means either "red rose," "princess," or "save me, i'm the baby of freak hollywood cultists," depending on your native language.

Doctors and nurses were not allowed to talk during the birth, and had to learn sign-language to participate in the birth (AKA: get paid large sums of dianetics-inspired cashola).

It's reported that Collin Powell sent well his well wishes during Holmes' labor as he said, "nanu nanu" under his breath...



As fate, hollywood, and cults from outer space would have it, Tom "Psychiatry isn't a sicence" Cruise's nemesis Brooke Shields also had a baby today! Word has it she won't be sharing any of her magic Prozac pills with Katie if the post-partum blues come a callin'.

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Love and Light, Y'all!


Original image courtesy of dreamstime.

Positive Psychology Is All You Need....

click the picture bucko.

courtesy...
the artist formerly known as...rageboy


The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and then by night
A child is black, a child is white
Together they grow to see the light,
to see the light

And now at last we plainly see
We'll have a dance of Liberty,
Liberty!


(lyrics by David Arkin
)


Is everybody happy now?

Good, we can go home early.

"Drive-Bys Are Conversations"


Cover art courtesy of RageBoy.
Limited Edition, exclusively available on allied.

consulting rates vary - inquire within.

He's so smart and nice...

that it's hard to tell sometimes, but i think AKMA may be pissed. ;-)


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words

the ruins by river bank, his house is in shambles, mama gambles with the cash, it's last, just a preamble, she's dressed in linen, flowers and confection, just what she's got to be seen in, around it goes, no affection, just shots fired in every direction, insurrection, blessed are the peacemakers and department of corrections, you know what help means? seems useless, a friend is anyone who hasn't abused us, but what moves us is the bass drum, the shit where we came from, groove hard, dig down down to sound, don't you think she's been around? watch her ass shake, legs like a snake, makes his thing ache, it's like that, teeth like a rat, nails like a cat, she slice his back til he comes to, no place to go home to, next lie down anyplace he can roam to, maybe the bank of the river, the sun's already a sliver, in the sky, the day is past, kick away the trash, take aim and watch the cans splash.

words

even grass is fluent, in what she asks, you know, telling stories of the hooves and feet, how many, how long, touching and bending and brushing through on the way to somewhere or to sit on my favorite patch, where everything stretches out, a world map in a small town, but to get there you climb, scramble up the steep gravel path, you fall and the skin rips off your knees in sheets, I still have the brown pebbles inside, thick scar on my right leg, using safety pins to dig them out never enough, up up, pushing one thigh at a time, clumps of clay reach forward, say, hold onto me, and so it goes the whole way up up, scramble-fall-catch-pull-claw-up. Until. At the top nothing but green and the still-bare patches that mark the graves of the palamino and thoroughbred, turned under two summers before, in deep graves the back-hoe dug, and the best two farm dogs I ever knew.

April 17, 2006

I should have been reading Tony

Holy big bad shit. I should have been reading Tony. I knew it was a mistake to get involved in this meta blog bullcrap, because you know, people can say they know who's an asshole and who's happy and nice in blogland, and people can blog all day and put up nice pix that show they are so white and harmless and freckled and breadbaseket-americana, and then they:

rape
torture
kill
decapitate
rape again
cut up
and plan to eat
ten-year-old little girls

even if they only get to the torture, kill, decapitate, rape(2), and cut-up parts. it can happen. you might like them, who knows, they may have you on their blogroll, and they might dig what you write a lot, they might come around your place and comment, and even quote your posts on their blogs, and all the while you don't know that they have a dead freckle-faced kid in the cooler whom they have finished murdering but haven't eaten yet, and ...

when they confess, you find out that this pretty average blog guy who looks weird in retrospect but described himself as "single, bored, and lonely, but other than that, pretty happy," seemed like any joeblowblogger at the time, this guy who has swapped blog spit with you, is the killer, and you see a trail to other blogs where he wrote some way fucked up stuff, and did you know? no--that's not the part he showed you, hell you even threw him a link once.

And you feel like you are going to puke and you feel like the world has opened up and showed you the belly of the devil on Good Friday.

Just ask tony pierce how that feels.

Tony points to a roundup of news stories here.

jesus.


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Once more with feeling.



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He Took the Words Right Outta My...

yep, that's for sure.


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Actually it's ScienTOLogy that cause problems for mother and child after birth, not "talking."

More from the land of cults and the upcoming birth of the soon-to-be-abused child of Tomboy and Katie.



In his book Dianetics, the religion's founder L. Ron Hubbard instructs: "maintain silence in the presence of birth to save the sanity of mother and child."

According to the tenets of Scientology, words spoken during birth and other painful times are recorded by the "reactive mind," or subconscious.

Those memories, Scientologists believe, can eventually lead to problems for mother and child.



Actually, it's scientology, not memories, that can eventually lead to problems for mother and child. Did I say can? I meant will.

Loonwads.

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Essential Reading on Tax Day in the Blog World

From January of 2004, this post will provide you with KEY new information on how to save on your TAXES than any other post you've read.

In fact, I guarantee if you read this post, your tax return will be quadrupled--ASTRONOMICALLY IMPORTANT, perhaps LIFE SAVING advice developed for bloggers only -- all outlined in OPML here Go, now. Go.


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Everybody Must Get Stowed

New addition to the valleyspeak phrasebook.

"Getting Stowed": Your web 2.0 logo is worn on Stowe Boyd's chest as many times as he can launder (and intersperse with other logoed t-shirts he receives) between May and December.

The new line of 2006 Stowewear fashions will also be displayed on /Message in return for saving Stowe on his annual clothing budget.

The ROI of blogging goes on and on!


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Did We Know Amazon Had Product Wikis?

When Werner Vogels talks about performance and scalability, one look around Amazon these days will tell you why. From a 'conversation-enabling' standpoint, I'm not sure what they are not doing. And IM-coming-soon may be more than an April Fool's joke.

Which leads me to note, I have no idea when product wikis were launched on Amazon, but a look at the most edited wikis makes me think maybe February or March?

Uber-amazonian-spendthrift, new age decipherer, and Cluetrain co-author Chris Locke pointed them out to me this morning, and naturally I went to the Cluetrain product page and started one.

The 'wiki toolbar' mentioned on the "Learn More" help page doesn't exist--at least not however I'm using firefox to add/edit/view the wiki I can't seem to find it. I wanted to add a definition, but I don't see the "editor toolbar" to do so.

That's also how you add new pages, apparently.

Anyway, another day, another feature to play with. wee!

[[p.s., earliest mention on technorati I see is from Ross Mayfield.]]


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April 16, 2006

The Four Agreements and Comment Moderation in the 21st Century

Posted this comment at Shelley's about Robert's recent comment moderation and Four Agreement/Happy People discussion:


...There is usually something else going on with people who grab on to new age nonsense about "unhappy people" being the cause of their angst, and doing away with whatever isn't "positive", and other contrived cultish answers to what is the INHERENT COMPLEXITY OF REALITY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION. It's bullshit. It's actually worse than bullshit--it's dangerous. And incidentally, it's the opposite of naked conversations.

If you want to moderate comments to get rid of anonymous trolls and folks posting as different people (who cares, they out themselves), then delete them. Or allow us to register--I'd much rather register once and see the comments keep flowing than watch them sit in moderation limbo.

Or if you really feel like you have to, then fine, moderate them. It is your blog. Whatever.

BUT please decide whether you're moderating comments to get rid of anonymous and false posters OR to get rid of whatever doesn't "ADD VALUE TO YOUR LIFE OR THE LIVES OF YOUR READERS."

You don't know what adds value to my life. What the fuck does ADDED VALUE TO YOUR LIFE look like in a comment? Is it strokes and ego kisses? Is it really Kewl New Information? Is it a couple screwing while they type in the comment? Is it a nun joke? WTF?

All I'm saying is, you're mixing something benign (moderated comments) with something malignant (filling my life with happy people) here. Make sure at least YOU know the difference.

You said you look at blogging more like talk radio. I look at it more as the antidote to talk radio. And I guess that's just that.

ADDED EDITOR'S NOTE: Remedial Study of Mystic Bourgeoisie is in order.

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Scoble Morphs into Tom Peters?

Okay first I said this about that. Tonight I read that Scoble is going to have a guest blogger for a week in a move most often attributed to Tom!  Then dropped by Tom and frequently implemented by Joi.

So does that mean that Bubba will be moderating too while at Scoble's? I mean, is it the blogger or the blog who decides? Do we know? And do we care? Is Scoble begging us not to care anymore?

And where do naked conversations come into this, because it's feeling more and more clothed by the minute.

No comments over at scoble's at this hour. Guess they're awaiting moderation. 


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Moderation isn't good enough.

Robert Scoble has decided to start moderating comments the wordpress way, which is of course his prerogative. I like what Toby at Diva Marketing says on her blog about the importance of honest feedback and fluid discussion between business and marketplace and why not moderating comments enables that process.

But then there's the reality: Robert is a sitting duck, a visible target for competitors and detractors with saddlebags full of ammunition. That has to get tiring. I get it. Still, he is also a hardhead sometimes. I can say that because I'm one too. Most bloggers are. It comes with having opinions.

That's why the current comment moderation systems won't work for someone like Robert who is 1)Triple-A-List and 2)Sitting Duck and 3)A vector for conversation within a CorpoGiant. We need more options for comment systems as blog conversations and roles become more complex.

Maybe the fact that Robert's a technology evangelist will spur some innovation on comment solutions--an under-served blog tool area for sure. We need an alternative to the Either-Or current structure of moderation. Either you're executed and buried, or your set free to speak. That doesn't work.

I'd like to see some kind of system where I have the say, but readers can overrule me if I'm being hardheaded. Maybe I could tag a comment as "troll" or "flaming asshole" but Shelley might come along and tag it as "valid point" or "shut up and listen for once." At which point I could tag her comment as "point taken," or "i'm right i'm right i'm right!"

Better alternatives for managing comments would help both blogger and reader -- we might all learn something -- and the conversation wouldn't suffer from the black hole of moderation.

AND as I said in comments on Toby's blog, I'm more worried about Robert's newfound interest in "The Four Agreements" and getting "unhappy people" out of his life. Nice try, but life doesn't wrap up that neatly. If I need to be continuously happy to be in someone's life, I'll bow out now, thanks.

Originally posted at BlogHer.

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