Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

“Squeaker” McCarthy

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

House Speaker candidate unfamiliar with how to win non-gerrymandered election.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

The new temporary speaker of the house is a spiteful little shit.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Israel, don’t be dumb like we were in the US after 9/11!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Front Pager behaving badly

Front Pager behaving badly

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Well, I fucked up.  No two ways about it.  I could try to explain what I was doing, what I was thinking, what I believed to be the case, but none of that sounds like anything other than petty blame shifting when I write it out in the face of what I actually did.

I check the mod filters every couple of hours or so, and I found something that looked like behavior that is typically frowned upon on the internet.  I then posted in that information, including some identifying information in a comment in that thread, and deleted the posts from the moderation queue.  I did not in this case, nor have I ever, in this forum or any other ever censor someone for the content of their comment.  I have never advocated such action either.

Publishing personally identifiable information is wrong, regardless of the motivation.  No matter what I thought I was doing, I didn’t have any right to do what I did, and certainly not on John’s blog.  My response was way over the line and absolutely inappropriate.  I can only offer a heartfelt apology to the commenter involved, to John, and to the entire community.

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  2. 2.

    DougJ

    Meh, don’t worry, ABL gets crazy comments and it’s a problem for the blog. If you screwed up, you screwed up trying to deal with a legitimate problem.

  6. 6.

    Jane2

    I must have missed the personally identifiable information in your post. I thought your comment was rather straightforward and rather appropriate if the commenter was in fact posting under two different names.

  9. 9.

    Mojotron

    You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds.

    -Dag “Nasty” Hammarskjöld

  10. 10.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    Soonergrunt, I sentence you to the corner count 1 to 10 then you are released. Plus Five Hail Marys, singing the Oklahoma State Fight Song, self flaggelation (sp), One month of posting on (not so)Free Republic.

  19. 19.

    General Stuck

    And I see our long lost sockpuppet sleuth corner stone has surfaced in the original thread. Lucky us.

  20. 20.

    Rathskeller

    I commented elsewhere at length — looks like it went into moderation.

    tl;dr = I am fully in favor of banning sockpuppets. If someone changes nyms, that’s one thing. People pretending to be a horde to push a point of view, nuke ’em all. (After checking for proxy servers).

    However, it’s obvious bad form to publish IP addresses. I hope that never happens again.

  24. 24.

    cynn

    You are one obsessive compulsive, passive aggressive, overwrought dude. Lighten up; the internets can get dicey, but the water level evens itself. And thank God for that.

  31. 31.

    L. Ron Obama

    I could give a crap less about whatever happened with mod filters, IP addresses and whatnot, I just thought it was silly to meta-post on the front page about it and then close comments of all things.

    Welcome!

  35. 35.

    Soonergrunt

    @Punchy:
    @L. Ron Obama:
    I closed comments on the original post for no other reason than I didn’t want to take the steam out of the excellent threads that the others had put up, especially the one Kay did.
    I can see that you can’t always anticipate what people will think on here, and I’ll have to be smarter in the future. In which case I might be fucked.

  36. 36.

    Garbo

    Growing pains, best intentions, bygones.

    When I run the universe, fucking up in the service of doing the right thing will always be forgiven.

  37. 37.

    eco2geek

    This professional contrarian sez:

    – What the heck is any one of us civilians going to do with someone’s IP address, anyway?

    – Isn’t “censor[ing] someone for the content of their comment” sort of a moderator’s job? You know, like how you’d take care of someone making blatantly racist comments?

    – Oh come on, don’t take someone to task for doing something wrong, and then go on and make a front page post apologising to them later! (Not that it hasn’t happened here before, with two different front-pagers involved.)

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I didn’t see any personal information, and my comment in a previous thread was based on that.

    Sockpuppetry SUCKS. Big time. Only spamming is worse, as far as Intertubes taboos go, as far as I’m concerned.

  44. 44.

    panicbean

    I ate a second piece of my MIL’s stupendously delicious carrot cake. My thighs didn’t even notice. It’s a miracle I tellz ya.

    Cheers to you, Soonergrunt. You’re fine.

  45. 45.

    Violet

    I didn’t see any personal info. Guess it was in the comments thread I didn’t read. I thought the post was fine. All water under the bridge.

  46. 46.

    eemom

    Dude, please. Give yourself a break. It was just an itty bitty little fuck up. I mean this is the blog of a man who voted for GWB twice.

  47. 47.

    MikeJ

    I love the fact that soonergrunt didn’t apologize “if I offended anybody”. A real apology, and real class.

  48. 48.

    Yutsano

    Meh. Learning curve. This blogging thing is hard sometimes. A few stumbles along the way are bound to occur.

  49. 49.

    JGabriel

    @suzanne:

    Where’s our damned ombudsman?

    I’m not the ombudsman, but I know exactly what a Balloon Juice ombudsman would say in every situation: FOADIAF.

    (No, not you, suzanne. I’m just quoting what would be the general BJ ombud response.)

    .

  50. 50.

    Mark S.

    This is a bunch of bullshit.

    Oh wait, I have no idea what any of this is about. I’ve been MIA the last couple of days.

  52. 52.

    licensed to kill time

    Gah, missed the whole kerfuffle, as usual. All I can say is ‘learning curve’ … you’ll figure out how to deal with the truly obnoxious/only-want-to-stir-shit-up-trolls in your own inimitable fashion, I suppose, whilst conforming to the established (hahahahaha!) BJ traditions.

    Me, I was helping to string lights in the grandkids’ room and when we ran out of places to put them we did a big blob of them in one corner and called it a ‘fun cluster’. This made us fall to pieces with laughter, and ‘fun cluster’ has now entered the family lexicon.

    This was my moment of fun cluster zen for the day.

  54. 54.

    JGabriel

    Cont’d From #53: And if the Ombudsman mailbox gets a second e-mail from the same address, it could auto-respond: “Apparently you are too fucking stupid to figure out what FOADIAF means, jackass. So, Fuck Off And Die In A Fire.”

    Calling someone a “jackass” at the end of the sentence gives it that inimitable John Cole touche de grace.

    .

  55. 55.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Eh, three Hail Mary’s and it’s back on the street with Father Rivera… ;)

    Shit happens, life goes on and stuff and things.

  58. 58.

    clayton

    Did Corner Stone get to you as well?

    Anne Laurie fell on that pike.

    I had hoped you would have not had the same soft spot.

    Haters gonna hate.

  59. 59.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    Fortunately, if balloonbaggers consider you part of the “in group,” you literally can do no wrong.

    Haters gonna hate.  
    Grifters gonna grift.  
    Killers gonna kill.  
    .
    .

  60. 60.

    moops

    I don’t know what to make of it all. I read everything but comment rarely.

    There is a vortex of bad behavior that follows ABL postings. The prime conflict seems to be from a reasonable place. ABL is asking everyone to try passing things through a racial filter. It is not typical for most of us to do this. Usually most of us pass things through a dozen filters and end up with a diluted and nuanced impression. We are being asked to not do this, but instead take on one specific viewpoint for a short period of time. That is the usual struggle we have in these posts.

    The Naomi Wolf thread was something different. Naomi’s article was sloppy and inflammatory. Everything ABL said was correct, the story is a bundling of preliminary journalism. The start of a real story, but not done properly. A blog post, not a Guardian story.

    People are often in a state of conflict in ABL posts. I’ve been on both sides.

    I originally was of the opinion that her input was a net negative on our discourse. I’m now thinking it is time I suck it up and try to engage on the themes more honestly.

    I might end up back where I started, but I’m no better than our front pagers and some re-evaluation is in order.

  63. 63.

    SectarianSofa

    Well, I was hoping for some exciting shenanigans, but this is just the regular kind. Next time there’s a mea culpa around here, I expect there to have been some actual shit hitting an actual fucking fan. Geez. Step up your game, front-pagers.

  66. 66.

    licensed to kill time

    Why are you such a sad and angry person, Sam_u_Iz?

    My gramma would say life is too short to go around being so bittah. Try a little tenderness.

  67. 67.

    Pat In Massachusetts

    Hey John insulted me on his front page once about a comment I made. It was a stupid comment when I look back on it. My thinking was not stupid, as I’m not the only one dissatisfied with the Obama presidency, but my comment was stupid, and seeing this is John’s blog he did have every right to call me out on it, although I can’t remember what I said or what he said!

    I’m back here writing comments so I must have gotten over it.

    It’s all good.

    Enjoy your Sunday.

  68. 68.

    Rihilism

    Damn, I haven’t finished my first 10,000 email/screed to Cole applauding/decrying your selection to the FP. My need for an adequate supply of vicious insults with which to slime Cole’s character has just increased exponentially. Where’s my thesaurus?

    Mea culpa accepted. Fifty lashes with a wet noodle…

    Oh, and to all FPers, please don’t close the comments section. Where else am I to irritate people having serious discussions with gratuitous videos of adorable kittens…

  70. 70.

    Carbon Dated

    What is so wrong with sock puppetry in the comments anyway?

    I can understand why it’s wrong if sprezzatura is pimping Lee Siegel or Scott Adams is going all schizophrenic because he doesn’t have any real friends, but what difference does it make if anonymous commenters on a thread post under more than one anonymous name ?

    It’s a serious question; please don’t flame me, either of you.

  71. 71.

    Douglas

    What is so wrong with sock puppetry in the comments anyway?

    (three threads later)
    Mr. President, we most not allow… a sock puppet gap!

  72. 72.

    debit

    @Carbon Dated: Why should anyone resort to sock puppetry? I mean, how sad and pathetic would you have to be to invent someone to agree with you? Or to stir up shit?

  73. 73.

    agrippa

    No apology is needed. No offense was given.

    People like to play games and posting anonymous poison pen letters on the internet is a way for some people to amuse themselves. Sock puppet just adds to the fun.

  74. 74.

    Amir Khalid

    Just wondering: if I were to start posting comments under the nym Amir Khalid’s Sock Puppet #1, would that be acceptable?

  76. 76.

    Kirk Spencer

    One minor point for future consideration:

    Two usernames and email addresses from one IP is not always a sock puppet.

    I use a router to NAT the household, and my wife and my daughter get on the internet. From the outside, however, we’re all one IP — the one given us by Comcast. There are at least two places where two or even all three of us post. They’re not BJ, but it’s a point worth making nonetheless.

  80. 80.

    different-church-lady

    @MikeJ:

    I love the fact that soonergrunt didn’t apologize “if I offended anybody”. A real apology, and real class.

    Point of order: “If I offended anybody” is a genuine apology, because it takes responsibility for the action — I offended someone.

    The non-apology, non-responsibility construction people take to task is, “I apologize if anyone was offended.” In that version I didn’t say anything offensive, no, it’s just that others might have taken it as offensive, and well gosh I guess I have to be sorry on their behalf in order to get you all off my back.

  82. 82.

    Carbon Dated

    @debit:

    I don’t know why, but my question is, what’s wrong with it? Shite-stirring and manufacturing assent (awesome pun, don’t you think?) aren’t the only motivations for donning the sock, but even if they were, my question stands: what’s wrong with that ?

  83. 83.

    different-church-lady

    @Soonergrunt: Right: we got two different offenses here:

    1) Misidentifying explicable behavior as sock puppetry. “John” later explained why he made the same post under a different name (he was trying to deal with WordPress’s infamous ‘comment moderation’ purgatory). Misdemeanor, newbie mistake, it gets cleared up and we all move on as friends. (Friends who eye each other suspiciously…)

    2) Making public e-mail addresses. HUGE FREAKIN’ NO-NO, no matter what the circumstances. Throw yourself on the mercy of the court, which is what you’ve done.

  84. 84.

    harlana

    i have no idea what this was about

    what did you do? click the Lieberman Terrorist Activity button on somebody or somethin?

  86. 86.

    BruceFromOhio

    People are often in a state of conflict in ABL posts. I’ve been on both sides.

    I *love* these. Nothing is as engaging as a writer who challenges the reader in the reader’s own comfort zone(s). Agreement or disagreement isn’t the point, it’s the journey that matters.

    Soonergrunt, no fears: thought you were doing the right thing, ‘fessed up when you determined otherwise. That’s a good standard to abide by.

    @Kirk Spencer: This. Same here, and there are *four* of us.

  87. 87.

    Singular

    Who could ever, ever have thought that giving Soonergrunt a soapbox and a smidgeon of power… would result in this.

    So fast too. It boggles the mind.

  88. 88.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Carbon Dated:

    … but what difference does it make if anonymous commenters on a thread post under more than one anonymous name ?

    Because its mean, and mean people suck.

    No, seriously, though, from my humble little corner its the spirit of the thing that gets degraded quickly. If it’s a snark-swarm using cutesy names to make snarky one-liners, then it can be hilarious (a la Atrios). In contrast, if you have to invent someone to agree with you and rely on this to communicate and comment, then it just cheapens any given thread. That’s one difference that I see, at least.

  89. 89.

    ABL

    Don’t feel too guilty. That particular pest has posted under two names at my blog as well, and ironically, posted the real name of a Twitter friend of mine in a failed attempt to out him.

    Point is, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it!

    Just say three hail Marys and have a shot of Jameson.

  90. 90.

    Arm The Homeless

    Well, if nothing else this thread did out a new pie-filter recipient. Thanks, Cleek. You’re a God Particle among electrons.

  91. 91.

    Joey Giraud

    @Singular

    Who could ever, ever have thought that giving Soonergrunt a soapbox and a smidgeon of power… would result in this.

    Huh. Soonergrunt is an actual “Demigod.” A man of power, a man of action. He just seemed like another blast-first, think-later commenter.

    This is what happens when people wallow in delicious outrage. They see red and misidentify all sorts of things. They even do really, really stupid things.

    And ABL sez some prayer and booze are the cure. Sure.

  93. 93.

    Brian

    Seems like a nice and comprehensive apology, even if it doesn’t give enough details to know what actually went on. I appreciate frontpagers (and, in general, anybody who has access to raw logs or PII) not outing people. (And of course I find it troubling that another frontpager is in this thread dismissing these concerns; it’s not a surprise who that frontpager is. *sigh*).

  95. 95.

    Corner Stone

    @Brian:

    And of course I find it troubling that another frontpager is in this thread dismissing these concerns; it’s not a surprise who that frontpager is

    Three other FP’ers are on this thread dismissing these concerns.

  98. 98.

    Brian

    I don’t want to let that passive aggressiveness derail anything; I started it, and it wasn’t a good thing. I think it’s a very nice property that blog owners don’t go around posting identifying information like email addresses (when it says “will not be published”) or IP addresses (as that’s not usually public to the public-at-large). Even if it’s somebody “bad” who’s getting “outed”.

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