Normally I don’t write about the few conflicts I have with animal rights activists here, but Jeff Nelson and VegSource.Com offer such a case study of animal rights group think that this time I’m making an exception.
Back on July 12 I posted an article about on ongoing debate over at an Animal Rights 2002 Memory board hosted by VegSource.Com (see http://www.animalrights.net/articles/2002/000244.html for the details of that).
Anytime animal rights activists disagree in public, somebody chimes in that this is just helping their enemies, and at least one person pointed out my article. On July 14, Adam Weissman posted the entire text of the article in a post called “An Article About this Discussion Board by an Animal Rights Foe.”
Another activist responded to that by attacking my web site. In order to prove a point, I posted a reply noting that the main difference between AnimalRights.Net and VegSource.Com is I don’t spend most of my day banning people who disagree with me. In fact I give free reign to animal rights activists who want to come to the site and criticize me. I’ve always felt that allowing such unfettered communication, regardless of how uncomfortable or heated it may get, is the best way to ensure that my claims are as strong and accurate as possible.
Of course within an hour or two, Nelson deleted my post and banned the computer I was using from even accessing his site. This is what VegSource.Com’s tagline that “All Are Welcome” really means.
Nelson followed that up with “Note regarding banning and post removals from this board in which he writes,
VegSource provides this board to FARM for their use. VegSource moderators do not remove posts from this board and don’t have the password to do so, nor do I remove posts from this board (with one exception having to do with a disreputable anti-animal rights site attempting to get traffic from us, a site which is supposed to be blocked from our full site).
That is as hilarious as it is pathetic. Apparently some VegSource.Com visitors actually fall for this lame explanation that I am “attempting to get traffic from” VegSource.Com. Yeah, that’s right, Adam Weissman and I are such buddies that he’s now doing my marketing for me by posting my articles to VegSource.Com.
The reality is that Jeff Nelson doesn’t want anyone linking to or discussing any of the articles I’ve written pointing out that he is just as factually challenged as his current nemesis Robert Cohen (see http://www.animalrights.net/faq/people/pro_ar/jeff_nelson.html for a rundown). VegSource.Com promotes the worst sort of groupthink by not only banning its critics but even animal rights activists who disagree in some way with VegSource.Com’s agenda.
The funny thing is that I rarely visit VegSource.Com — there are too many ads and it is impossible to find anything there with the convoluted web design. Still, it’s gratifying to know that little old me is apparently public enemy number one in Nelson’s book.
And just a note to people who do post to VegSource.Com. Do you really think it is just a good idea to let Nelson publicly display your IP addresses? I have run across some boneheaded practices at web sites before, but this takes the cake. I’ve seen posts, for example, where people clearly posted from work or at universities where the IP address and the name would make it extremely easy to track down the people posting.
This sort of information is collected by every web server — only Nelson is stupid enough to make it publicly available to anyone who happens across his site.