Day: September 18, 2003

Why Is Wesley Clark Running, Again?

Apparently Wesley Clark doesn’t realize that before he can become president he first has to win the Democratic Party nomination. Does Clark really think he’s going to have much chance winning Democratic primaries with stuff like this,

Clark, relaxed and chatty, portrayed himself as a different kind of Democrat, one without strong partisan impulses. He said he “probably” voted for Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and backed Ronald Reagan. He did not start considering himself a Democrat until 1992, when he backed fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. “He moved me,” Clark said. “I didn’t consider it party, I considered I was voting for the man.”

Hmmmm… Dean’s ahead of Kerry by 10 points in Iowa on an anti-war theme, so it’s hard to see the Democrats-for-Reagan movement really pulling one out there. On the other hand, most of his statements about Iraq are still a bit out there like this one,

“We are trapped in a jobless economy and an endless occupation” of Iraq, Clark told the crowd.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is just a few months old and it’s already being characterized as “endless”? Sheesh. (How long before he backpedals and says a mysterious Middle East think tank made him say that?) Finally, Clark echoes another theme about the war that Joe Lieberman and others have also agreed with that I find perplexing,

Clark said his views on the war resemble those of Democratic Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.), both of whom voted for the war but now question President Bush’s stewardship of the Iraqi occupation. “That having been said, I was against the war as it emerged because there was no reason to start it when we did. We could have waited,” Clark said during a 75-minute session with four reporters.

Okay, then when exactly would Clark, Lieberman, et al have gone to war? Would it have been better to wait four more years, for example, and risk the sanctions falling apart enabling Hussiein to better equip and arm his armed forces? I’d like to see a timetable from these folks on when the ideal time to have conducted this particular war would have been (other than the obvious answer which is when they were president rather than Bush). Given how ridiculously quick Iraq fell to American forces and the extremely low American casualty rate, this appears to have been the perfect time to have invaded Iraq. Source: Clark ‘Probably’ Would Have Backed War. Jim VandeHei, Washington Post, September 18, 2003.

To Offer Discussion Groups Or Not

One of my favorite weblogs, Boing! Boing! was rendered significantly less useful recently when the powers-that-be removed the discussion group feature which used QuickTopic.

There was no announcement that the discussion system would disappear, nor any explanation as to why, though there is a thread over at CoolTool.Com that speculates two of the problems that plague most discussion systems finally became too much to deal with for the Boing! Boing! folks — identity impersonators and idiot flamers.

When it comes to the identity impersonators, QuickTopic would put a star graphic next to administrators, so someone theoretically couldn’t post as Cory Doctorow — if it didn’t have the star next to his name, then it wasn’t Cory. But apparently someone figured out a way to spoof the star and posted some entries posting as Xeni Jardin. Establishing identity is still a major problem in most discussion systems.

As far as flaming goes, much of that was directed at Jardin, especially after the over-the-top coverage of SARS-related art. I though the SARS-related stuff was stupid, but hey, it’s their blog. But some posters acted as if Xeni’s stuff was the advent of the apocalypse.

The key to flamers, of course, is to simply ignore them. Life’s too short to waste time trying to moderate an active discussion system (except for the truly vile stuff). A distributed Slashdot-style moderation system with trusted users (rather than wide open as in Slashdot) might work, but when you’re stuck with something like QuickTopic, best to develop a thick skin and move on.

But the real problem is that even with the flames and the impersonators, the QuickTopic discussions were often as interesting and valuable as the weblog posts were. The site before and after the discussion group is like the difference between sitting through a lecture and participating in a small group discussion.