Board Business, April 7 2011

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in this weekend's This week in The Slacktiverse. The three sections of the weekend post are:

The Blogaround
Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website during since the previous weekend post is invited to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to TBAT. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosters by other members.

In Case You Missed This
Readers of The Slacktiverse can send short summaries of, and permalinks to, articles that they feel might be of interest to other readers.

Things You Can Do
Anyone who knows of a worthy cause or important petition should send a short description of the petition/cause along with its url to TBAT.

Please email all submissions to slackmods at gmail dot com. The deadline this week will be 2000 GMT on Saturday.

An update on Fred Clark's archive.

TBAT has been working with the people from the Patheos domain in order to make sure that all of Fred's postings (from 2003 to the date he handed over administration of this site to TBAT) were preserved with the correct authorial attribution.

As of this past Monday all of Fred Clark's materials had been backed up and converted into a form more "friendly" to the blogging platform used for the Patheos domain. Yesterday the people who run the technical aspects of the Patheos site were given "the keys" to the site which now holds copies of all of Fred's Slacktivist materials including all of the comments made to his posts.

The editors/administrators at the Patheos domain plan to construct their own archive of Fred's materials. They have generously agreed to allow us to continue to host and link to any of Fred's articles not yet available through the Patheos archive.

TBAT asks fellow denizens of The Slacktiverse to be patient with the time it may take to complete of all these transfers and with the mistakes that will no doubt be made by the people (here and there) who are undertaking them. Our interactions with representatives of Patheos have been characterized by good humour and a genuine desire on both parts to protect Fred's interest and to be responsive to the desires of his many fans.

Time Sensitive News

radiant_enigma posted a comment that has special significance to American readers/denizens of The Slacktiverse.

As most [Americans] likely know, the United States government is on the verge of a (quite likely lengthy) shutdown. As this article points out, one of the biggest groups that will suffer from this shutdown is nonprofit organizations (especially small, local organizations) and the people that they serve. They will be losing government funding at the worst possible time - just when thousands of government employees will be losing their income and finding themselves in sudden, likely desperate, need of help. What's more, the government is looking to drastically slash the budget, especially social services, which means that many of these organizations, already in danger of going under, will be unable to survive.

None of the above will likely be a surprise to most of you, but it bears repeating to emphasize just how dire the situation is. I realize that many, possibly most, people simply don't have any extra income right now, but for those of you who do, I beg you to donate whatever you can afford to local charitable organizations. As Fred has pointed out many times before, the people who are suffering the most right now are the people who can least afford it...and that is only going to get worse.

Ongoing Board Business

TBAT would like to thank all the people who have submitted articles and encourages posters who are interesting in contributing regularly or irregularly to send in  material. Having a number of articles that are ready for publication allows TBAT to maximize the variety of opinions as well as be responsive to "real-world" events and concerns.

TBAT have been contacting individuals who have expressed an interest in submitting materials but stress that people should not feel that they need wait to be invited to do so before sending in articles.

 

About the sidebar.

TBAT continues working quietly to rearrange and "clean up" the sidebar by moving items around. In order to make this site more useful to its current readers TBAT began on April 4 2011 to remove old sidebar links.

After April 10 2011 TBAT will begin to add to the sidebar links to the websites of Slacktiverse readers and posters. We remind readers who wish to have their website included on the new blogroll to indicate their desire to be included by posting the address of their website as a comment in response to The Geography of The Slacktiverse, part 1 post on FAQ website.

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Comments

[guest-again]

For a place which can be quite sensitive about copyright at times, it should be noted that the comments are not the property of Fred, Patheos, or TBAT.

I don't really care, but a case could be made that any copy of any comment requires the explicit permission of the person that wrote the comment, as to the best of my knowledge, there was never any notice saying that by posting, a commenter had granted Fred (or anyone else) a right to make further copies of that text.

This goes further to the idea (again, not referring to myself) that some past commenters just might prefer their comments not being used for profit, especially for Patheos, or would prefer their comments to fade into the past (not very realistic in the age of archive.org - though of course, archive.org does respect any request to remove material, at least at the level of the site owner).

Of course, in the U.S., in terms of Righthaven and its attempt to extract maximum profit in a digital age, a judge has found that copying complete articles from newspapers is fair use, so this is not exactly a cut and dried area of the law.

Actually respecting the copyright of the likely thousands of individual posters would not be practical - which is why, yet again, the needs of the digital world (and I would assume the profit motive on the part of Patheos - three letters may dominate the U.S.'s interest in the Middle East, but the three magic letters for making money on the web are 'SEO,' though some prefer the more polite term 'content') means that the people with the data will simply ignore the old fashioned framework of copyright as being inconvenient.

(copyright 2011, all rights reserved, etc, etc, etc)

[hapax]

For a place which can be quite sensitive about copyright at times, it should be noted that the comments are not the property of Fred, Patheos, or TBAT.

Posting as myself, not with the ModHat on, because this particular issue is actually under rather fierce discussion among the TBAT right now.

All three members have had considerable practical experience dealing with copyright issues in their professional lives, and some have made it an issue of theoretical study as well.

The issue of who owns copyright on comments on a blog post hasn't been addressed by any legal authority that we've been able to find. The closest comparable rulings have been on "letters to the editor" published in various print media, and those are... inconclusive.

But rulings on digital copyright issues often directly contradict rulings on other, more traditional, media.

And it doesn't simplify matters that the Slacktiverse has an international commentariat, and copyright laws (and their interpretations) vary hugely across venues.

tl; dr... it's a bit more complicated than that.

[Deird, who is getting sick of this]

a case could be made that any copy of any comment requires the explicit permission of the person that wrote the comment

A case could also be made that it doesn't.

At any rate, guest-again, I haven't once seen you comment here with anything other than reasons why this site is clearly being run by evil mean people who suck. Could you either come up with something other than complaints, or else take your complaints off to a location you like better?

[Kit Whitfield]

Guest-again, if you don't really care, why are you bothering to post?

And would you please stop announcing what we're going to do based on no evidence? We're happy to answer questions, address concerns and take feedback into consideration; there's no need to state that we're doing X or Y over the heads of people.

If you have a concern, raise it. If you merely have a guess as to what we're going to do, please stop presenting it as a fact.

[Raj]

Isn't guest-again the same Voice in the Wilderness who was crying out recently against the rising tide of censorship and banning?

[Raj]

For the new posters and lurkers we keep getting, my previous comment was, in fact, 100% FDA-approved sarcasm.

[Mmy]

Guest-again: Since you are not aware of all the facts of the situation it would be best if you didn't theorize in advance of obtaining them.

Relevant facts:

1) Fred had the right to continue to publish (here) his previous articles with the comments still attached.

2) Fred left some of his materials behind here when he moved to Patheos (much as a homeowner might leave behind some books during a move from house to house.)

3) TBAT has arranged to return Fred's books (articles) to him.

4) Fred has the copyright to his articles.

5) It is up to Fred what he chooses to do with the comments attached to his articles. By this I do not mean that there are no legal/moral limitations on what Fred can do -- rather that it is Fred's decision to make not yours or TBATs.

6) The issue as to who holds copyright on the comments is extremely complicated. Some American jurists hold that Fred (the owner of the article) holds the copyright, some hold that the commenters hold the copryight and yet others hold that the copyright is held jointly.

7) The person to appeal to in this matter is Fred. Not TBAT or anyone else on The Slacktiverse -- it is Fred. TBAT is returning to Fred material which belongs to Fred.

8) If, as you noted, Patheos is a profit-making organization, then they either have lawyers (who specialize in copyright law) on staff or can afford to hire them. The first thing those lawyers would tell (have told) them is that contrary to your first statement it should be noted that the comments are not the property of Fred, Patheos, or TBAT the copyright status of comments made to public boards is not simple and clearcut.

The only requests any former commenters have made to the official slackmods address was that they hoped that whoever continued to maintain Fred's archive would keep the comments. TBAT has no power over that decision but did pass on that information to Fred/Patheos. I suggest that if you wish the comments to be removed you direct that request to the only person who has clear and indisputable legal standing in the argument -- Fred Clark.

Finally, the eagle eyed may note that all the members of TBAT have posted in response to guest-again but none have done so using the modhat icon. That is because TBAT is made up of individuals living in different countries (each of which has different copyright laws) and each member of TBAT has had different training and experience in copyright matters. This diversity of background and training highlights how murky/complex issues of copyright can be in the digital world. TBAT has had several long and (to them at least) interesting discussions about the copyright status of the comments.

What we all agreed on was this: the articles belonged to Fred. They have now been returned to Fred.

[Dav]

Can I just share my utter frustration that a recount in my state turned up somewhere between 7,000 and 14,000 uncounted votes, probably meaning that the new Supreme Court Justice is going to be a buddy of Our Beloved Governor? The one who, with a few notable exceptions (eg. 2011), has dealt in an open and reasonable manner with unions and public employees?

Also, deeply troubling that no one noticed the missing ballot count, which included an entire district (or precinct, or some division - I've read about six different reports, and they're all different).

[Ross]

Anyone have a countdown until someone prominent implies that women are being unreasonable in holding up the budget deal over little trivial women's issues like planned parenthood and wic?

[sarah]

Half of my friends work at non-profits. I work at a college, which is technically a non-profit. My dad works at a non-profit, and my mom works at a college.

This could be very bad.

[Ross]

If the government shuts down, I will be out of work for some amount of time. That is bad for me. If the government shuts down, people who need the services the government provides will be without those services for some amount of time. This is worse. If the government stays open and Planned Parenthood shuts down, women are going to suffer and women are going to die. Not for a week, not for a month, but indefinately.

I can't presume ot speak for anyone else who will be hurt by a shutdown, I can't throw FHA borrowers or medicare recipients or social security recipients or those people who are relying on their tax refunds under the bus.

But if it's Planned Parenthood and WIC that are the sticking points in passing the budget, I'm happy to take leave without pay.

[radiant_enigma]

The really disgusting thing is that many people (including news outlets that should know better) are framing the debate over Planned Parenthood funding as being about abortion. It's not*.

Despite Arizona Senator John Kyl's claim that abortion is "about 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does," it's actually only about 3%. And none of that 3% is funded from government money. Given that a large portion of the remaining 97% involves providing women with contraceptives, it is likely that Planned Parenthood prevents far more abortions than they perform.

Oh, and Ross - about that countdown? This morning (according to the Huffington Post) Sen. Kyl said: “Planned Parenthood is not the only entity that can provide medical care in this country. It gets a subsidy of something like 300 million a year. To shut down the government over that would be absolutely unthinkable.”

*If it were, I would actually have *some* sympathy for the Republicans. If you truly believe that unborn babies are every bit as alive and human as the rest of us, I can understand why you wouldn't exactly want your tax dollars to fund killing them. Of course, as long as I have to keep funding Guantanamo Bay, the death penalty, and an ever-increasing number of wars and "military actions" with *my* tax dollars, I can't say I feel too terribly sorry for them, even for those who sincerely equate abortion with murder.

[radiant_enigma]

{{{Sarah}}} If you find out anything that can be done to help, please pass it on.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I'm sure I made a post here hours ago, but I can't see it, so I'll try again.

(a) Will the archive be maintained both here and at Patheos?
(b) If the archive will be at Patheos only, will there at least be links from here? I worry about linkrot.
(c) What about the few posts which were made on both boards at the time of the changeover? Merging the comment threads would be weird, and result in a comment thread which was all but unreadable.

TRiG.

[Mmy]

Timothy (btw, did you get the slackmod email?)

Posting as myself --

first -- some other people are having trouble posting right now--so it may be a platform-wide issue. Email the slackmods if the problem happens again.

Okay, now to answer your questions.

(a) As I understand from conversations with our counterparts at Patheos they want us to take down articles as they become available "there."

(b) Definitely yes. There will be a link on the sidebar (probably the 4 or 5th item down.)

c) It don't think Fred every put a complete post up at both sites. I don't think Patheos will mind if we keep posts which consist of just a link to their site will a plethora of comments attached.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

A link on the sidebar is not good enough to prevent linkrot. All over the Internet, there are links not just to Slacktivist in general, but to specific posts. If those posts are deleted, all those links die. And that will diminish the richness of the debates and discussions in which those links were posted. (It also wrecks havoc with your Google rankings.)

Those posts must be retained, at the original URLs. If the text of the post has to go, a shell post should be put in place, linking to the new location. That way, incoming links retain their relevance. This would be a lot of work to do by hand, but I assume some form of scripting is available.

(The word must above is an expression of strength of feeling, not an attempt to issue some sort of order. Perhaps think I should be a librarian. I seem to think a lot about archival problems. And I like reading ancient Internet debates.)

So if "Sex & Money, Part 1", for example, has to go, it should be replaced with this:

Slacktivist has moved. Follow this link to continue reading "Sex & Money, Part 1".

The link to the new location of the post (not to Patheos!Slacktivist front page, but to that specific post) is also a repeat of the name of the post. That's because the link words help with Google rankings.

TRiG.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

And I remembered that there were several posts on both sites, but I've checked and found only one: "TF: Proof and madness"

TRiG.

[Nick Kiddle]

I just want to say thanks to TBAT for all the hard work they're putting in getting this all arranged. If the decision turns out to be that the comments will be lost, will there be sufficient warning to copy comments we particularly want to record? I can think of several discussions that helped me crystallise my thinking, and it would be a huge shame if they disappeared beyond my power to search them.

[Mmy]

@Timothy: Those posts must be retained, at the original URLs. If the text of the post has to go, a shell post should be put in place, linking to the new location. That way, incoming links retain their relevance. This would be a lot of work to do by hand, but I assume some form of scripting is available.

Honestly my immediate gut response to this statement is to throw my hands up in the air and walk away weeping.

Timothy -- we are trying to make things good for Fred's fans -- but it isn't our responsibility to find a way to fix all those posts. There has been an enormous amount of work done both here and at Patheos in an attempt to keep the articles intact. I would presume that Fred and Patheos have specific desires as to how articles should be made available. We have no say in that process, we don't know what the new link address may be, we have no way of knowing whether they will change at sometime in the future.

Linkrot simply happens. If someone wants to find the article they are free to use a search engine and track it down. I have done so in the past in order to find articles that were originally posted on boards that have long since moved.

If you are really interesting in archiving specific posts -- they are still available on the internet and you are free to archive them on your system at home.

As for your concern about our Google ranking -- it is not one presently shared by me. I care about Fred's work being preserved at the same time as his copyright is protected.

[The Board Administration Team]

@Nick Kiddle: If the decision turns out to be that the comments will be lost, will there be sufficient warning to copy comments we particularly want to record?

Thank you for your kind words.

The agreement with Patheos is basically that we take down posts as they make them available. We could post a warning that the posts were being removed giving commenters enough time to look at the comments.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Meh. I'm a geek. And I'm also the sort of person who reads backlog of Internet arguments from years ago. So I care about these things (not so much the Google rankings, as the linkrot). I know that Wordpress has all sorts of tools and plugins. It can import data from other blogs and do similar stuff. I don't know what's available on Typepad.

If it's impractical, it's impractical. Linkrot distresses me, but if it's unavoidable .... It just seems such a pity. It'll lead to broken links even within the posts and comments, where they link to other posts and comments. Moving the data over to Patheos will simply not be seamless. It'll be a messy operation. C'est la vie.

TRiG.

[Mmy]

Meh. I'm a geek

Well, I'm the geek who made sure that Fred's material didn't get accidentally deleted.

It isn't just "impractical" to insert links to a new location at Patheos -- it is pointless. If I did it today they could move the posts to a new location tomorrow.

Linkrot is no different that the challenge facing a researcher who finds that the footnote of a book they are reading refers to a specific page of a specific edition of a book. Sometimes that edition is no longer available. If the researcher really cares -- they make the effort to track it down. Or (as usually happens in real life) they go running to the nearest librarian to do it for them.

[MercuryBlue]

Is it possible to take down posts without taking down comments?

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: Is it possible to take down posts without taking down comments

Technically or legally? Seriously those are two different issues.

Technically it is far easier to post the articles without the comments than the comments without the articles.

Knowing "why" you were asking would help. Are you worried that Patheos will ditch the comments? If so I would wait to see what they actually do. (We lobbied but we don't have 'insider' access to the answer.)

If Patheos _does_ ditch the comments then I don't think they would mind us keeping the articles up for a short time in order to allow people to retrieve particular comments.

Now, if you are think that we could keep just the titles of the articles with the comments attached there are two quite separate issues.

1) Technical. Not as easy as one might think. The WordPress platform TBAT has access to will not do a bulk content edit of articles -- in other words one cannot simply export a TypePad archive file, import it into WordPress and bulk delete the body of the articles while keeping the comments intact.*

2) Legal. As was discussed earlier copyright on comments is an "interesting" issue. Either Fred owns the copyright to all the comments (in which case we shouldn't be doing anything with them) or the individual commenters own the copyright (in which case we shouldn't be doing anything with them) or Fred and the commenters jointly hold the copyright (in which case, as before, we can't do anything with them.) As long as they are attached to articles written by Fred -- and those articles are in Fred's possession then the issue of copyright (unless Fred attempts to publish them in another form) is rather moot.

Since a number of obsessive-compulsive people are involved in this process the one thing you can be sure of is that everything is backed up -- in more than one place. Nothing important will be lost due to a processing error.

*To expand on the technical issues. Fred started posting in 2003. TBAT has access to no intermediate archives between that date and March 2011. The archive file of all the articles and comments over that period of time is massive. I mean massive. I mean that you cannot simply export it and import it onto a different platform. It has to be massaged with programs that are specially designed to deal with massive files. The people at Patheos have dealt with similar issues before and they know of no easier way of handling things than we did.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

If you want your own personal archive, I'd suggest downloading a local copy of the entire site using HTTrack. Questions about the legality are nice (technically, you could just browse the site yourself, with a browser set to cache for longer than usual, and that would be perfectly legal, and there's no great technical difference between using that and using HTTrack), but as long as you don't publish it anywhere else no one will mind. Or know.

It would take up a fair bit of harddrive space, mind you. But it would be fairly amenable to compression. Stick it in .tgz or .7z format and it won't take up nearly as much room. Still a lot, though, probably. When Mmy says massive, I don't think she's joking.

TRiG.

[Mmy]

@Timothy (TRig): When Mmy says massive, I don't think she's joking.

Oh definitely not joking.

Long-time readers may remember that we have had discussions that went on for more than 40 pages of comments. Not only do we have long discussions but many of us (myself included) post long comments.

I just went back and looks at a few pages of one of our medium length heated discussions earlier this year. I picked one poster and added up the number of words zie posted to that one thread. I ignored any post that looked to be under 400 words and just added up the longer looking ones. At least 7500 words by that one poster. I picked a single page (without checking for length ahead of time) of that particular discussion and did a word count. Exclusive of the original article the comments on one single page of a 15 page discussion totalled over 11,000 words.

To get a sense of scale. On a couple of websites I checked out I found the following basic metrics:

YA novel 20,000 to 40,000 words
Mainstream (adult) novella -- 15,000 to 40,000 (depending on the publishing house)
A mainstream genre book -- 60,000 to 90,000. Unless you are writing a doorstop book.

In other words, if you printed off some of the discussions on the Slacktivist the result would be longer than a mainstream novel.

Now, much of that is repetition (people quoting other people) but it takes up space on the harddrive nevertheless.

[Raj]

Long-time readers may remember that we have had discussions that went on for more than 40 pages of comments

I remember The Great Flame War, which I sometimes call the Durian War; not because durians were the point of contention, but because the subject of durians somehow sneaked in (in the aftermath of the actual flame war, IIRC). And these new whippersnappers who need to get off my lawn think they know what a flame war is? Hah!

------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps I should clarify that in all seriousness, I understand that the significance of a flame war is not measured by the number of pages it takes up. I say that because I don't want to come across as implying that the issues behind many recent flame wars are less important than the issues behind longer flame wars that have occurred.

[Ross]

That link at the end of each post labled "permalink" is called that for a reason. It's meant to be permanent. "Link rot just happens" and "They could just move it again" are, far as I'm concerned, the same kind of excuse as "The internet is the wild west and there's no such thing as a safe space now stop your bitching." If the post moves somewhere else, the proper response is to maintain the old link as a redirect.

Does TBAT have the ability to use an .htaccess file for the site? I could probably generate one that would send anyone using one of the old links to their new locations given a little time and a complete list of URLs.

[Mmy]

@Ross: That link at the end of each post labled "permalink" is called that for a reason

You may not intend so, but this sentence comes across as sarcastic.

A permalink is not a promise that, for perpetuity, the article can be accessed at that address (or that there will always be a redirect.) Sites get shut down. People who own the sites take down articles. People who own the sites decide that they are no longer willing to pay the costs of maintaining them.

If the post moves somewhere else, the proper response is to maintain the old link as a redirect.

Isn't the passive voice a wonderful thing!

Ross -- Fred/Patheos wanted to move the archive to the new site. Not only is it totally within Fred's right to do so I personally thought it was important that it be done for reasons of clearly maintaining his copyright. Fred could, if he had wanted to, taken down all the his postings when he left to go to Patheos. Deleted them forever. He could have decided to import them to Patheos in a form that made it impossible for anyone to access them without first going through the Patheos portal. He has (and we thank him for this) chosen not to do any of those things.

TBAT have already written and scheduled a post which includes fairly easy instructions as to how to translate the old link addresses to the addresses for the same articles in the Patheos archive.

However, Patheos/Fred could decide tomorrow to move all those articles again. And then the day after that they could move yet again. And.......

"Link rot just happens" and "They could just move it again" are, far as I'm concerned, the same kind of excuse as "The internet is the wild west and there's no such thing as a safe space now stop your bitching." If the post moves somewhere else, the proper response is to maintain the old link as a redirect.

Ross -- I speak to you as someone who is an active researcher. This is not a internet phenomenon this is a problem with archiving and cataloging all of the output of the human race. Writers change their names, books go into and out of copyright, the same novel will be published in different countries with different titles. It isn't the job of the first publishing house that issued the book to endlessly update every reference source so that someone in the years to come can find the book.

Seriously -- do you expect TBAT to take vows to spend the rest of their lives monitoring Patheos in case the link addresses change again?

@Ross: I could probably generate one that would send anyone using one of the old links to their new locations given a little time and a complete list of URLs.

I don't think you could (easily write that script in a little time) given what I know about the way the TypePad archive is designed. And I don't plan to spend my time in the near future generating lists of URLs so that I can spend the rest of my life watching Patheos with an eagle eye in case the links need to be changed again.

One of the wonderful things about modern search engines is that they make it much easier to find things. If people really truly want to find an article they can usually do so. (Unless of course, the person who holds copyright on that article doesn't want it found -- or the article simply isn't available on the internet any longer.)

I just did a google search using nothing but the name of a Left Behind article Fred wrote in 2003. (It is one of the articles that Patheos has already integrated into their archive.) I didn't even google it as a phrase just put the title into google without quotes.

The Patheos link for that article came up #4 on the list of search results.

I took old slacktivist permlink for that same article -- threw it into google (without slactivist at the beginning) and without quotes -- and again it came up number 4.

[kisekileia]

I hope that regardless of whether the links to Fred's articles on this site end up ceasing to work or not, the archive is backed up fully in case Patheos ever goes under. Given Patheos' failure to achieve their stated goals for the site when it's already been up for two years, it's entirely possible that the site will go under at some point, and I would hate to see Fred's entire archive of posts and comments lost due to that.

[Mmy]

@kisekileia: I hope that regardless of whether the links to Fred's articles on this site end up ceasing to work or not, the archive is backed up fully in case Patheos ever goes under

That was a concern that we had right from the beginning -- that Fred not lose access to his own material.

Everything has been backup up. In more than one form. Importable to more than one platform.

In fact, that was the first thing that was done before any transfer from one site to another was even attempted.

[kisekileia]

Oh, good!