This afternoon, the blog passed 12,000,000 all-time hits. While still smaller than some of other sites in the top ten legal blogs, we just passed 11,000,000 not long ago and we have continued to grow. I am very proud of our community and our attempt to offer a place for civil and responsible conversation. I encourage our regulars and visitors to continue to avoid the personal attacks and name calling common elsewhere on the Internet.
The continued growth of the site shows that our approach to blogging resonates with a good number of people. I continue to be concerned in reading comments that take personal shots and use insulting language. I hope that the recent debate over civility in legal blogging will reaffirm the need of our regulars to avoid insults and personal jabs. If you do not like a person’s take on a story, there is no need to characterize the writer or the writer’s motivations. Let’s deal with the ideas and leave the ad hominem attacks to other sites.
Thanks again for making the site such a great success.
Here are the list of countries represented by viewers and commentators on the blog with the first being obviously the most prevalent:
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Jonathan Turley
“Strangely enough, the person expressing the most persistent interest in who anonymous posters are is an anonymous poster themselves with a very distinctive agenda.
Interesting.”
That’s not true at all Gene.
In this thread, Muppet came here as complained about you, and you went off and erroneously accused Muppet of being me.
I politely corrected you, and I pointed out you could check IP addresses because you are a known malefactor that checks IP addresses.
That comment seems to have been deleted.
Regardless you continued to insist I was Muppet, which was defamatory, and I largely didn’t care.
Later, Mike came in and made an honest mistake and people were worried a bit that Professor Turley was hacked.
Dr. Kevin Kesseler showed back up to derp some herp and I welcomed him back. I mentioned when last I saw him here, he was busy sockpuppeting the blog and that was a salient point Gene since you were accusing Muppet of being me.
Dr. Kesseler then determined, apparently, he needed to defend his (and yours?) bogus behavior once more, and well, here we are.
I forget Gene, were you involved with Kesseler’s mining activities?
I actually don’t care about the names, preferring like Rafflaw to concentrate on the argument.
It’s often Mike Spindell who becomes upset that I represent myself as “anon”, though no one complains that Otteray Scribe, the forensic psychologist that defends Computer Aided Automatic Screen Identification (CAASI) is also an equivalent pseudonym.
It’s really weird.
anon and rafflaw aren’t legal identities, but they are not identities that are used for deception.
They are points on a spectrum of handles and pseudonymous names allowing for a mapping of author to author’s comments while offering a variety of conveniences from easy typing to protecting real world identities from online scammers and other privacy invasions.
The deception comes not from one author disguising her legal name but from one author trying to confuse the mapping by introducing multiple authors to disguise the true author.
I agree that the content of the comment should be more salient the author’s name, but as social people, we are often persuaded not by the content itself, but by various proxies we use to interpret that content.
So when in a conversation online, you find yourself arguing with three different people, and you don’t realize they are the same person, you are liable to be persuaded more by the volume than by the content.
Same with outsiders.
Compare Dr. Kevin Kesseler’s June 1 2012 sockpuppeting behavior in this thread, and witness the deception:
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/01/super-sized-ego-bloomberg-wants-to-ban-large-size-sugary-sodas/#comment-377948
Here he represents himself as a new nym, “???????” and innocently asks questions of me, trying somehow to entrap me.
I actually spent quite a bit of time, giving “???????” a complete and accurate picture.
Later here, http://jonathanturley.org/corrections/#comment-378229 Slartibartfast, Dr. Kevin Kesseler, admits it was a deception of his and he was abusing my goodwill and time to try to deceive me and somehow trap me.
It’s funny, because Dr. Kevin Kesseler uses sockpuppets when his excuse for violating everyone’s privacy was to stamp out the scourge of sockpuppetry.
Got to admit that’s funny.
So that’s sockpuppetry as decepticon as opposed to pseudonyms used to protect legal real world identies.
Strangely enough, the person expressing the most persistent interest in who anonymous posters are is an anonymous poster themselves with a very distinctive agenda.
Interesting.
anon,
isn’t anon a false identity? Isn’t rafflaw a false identity? Aren’t we all sock puppets under the definition that you provided? I, for one am more concerned about what the poster is saying and what his/her evidence is than who he/she really is.
I’m not sure what you mean.
I’d say there’s the authentic online persona, and then various sockpuppets.
You’re AY, I’m anon, Dr. Kevin Kesseler is Slartibartfast, Buddha is Laughing, Crohn’s Face, and who knows how many others.
So what do you call the other?
Thanks. think I get it ((*_*))
“Not all sockpuppets are bad….. And some commenters/gbloggers have been known to come off as sockpuppets even while using the online screen identy that they normally post under…..”
I think it’s mostly sockpuppetry if:
a) the “real” online persona and a sockpuppet show up in the same thread
or
b) the “real” online persona and a sockpuppet show up often enough in different threads that others are led to believe they are two separate people.
or
c) a sockpuppet shows up and represents itself as not the “real” persona in an attempt to somehow trap others.
In these cases, it’s hard for me, at the moment, to think of situations when sockpuppetry is acceptable.
Just representing yourself with a different online handle is not necessarily sockpuppeting. It becomes sockpuppeting when the element of trying to misdirect people that the sockpuppet is not the “real” persona occurs.
Anon,
Not all sockpuppets are bad….. And some commenters/gbloggers have been known to come off as sockpuppets even while using the online screen identy that they normally post under…..
Then again LJC, there are malicious ones too…. that come off in support of bone heads because they need them to satisfy the ego…..
Hate to show mu computer language illiteracy but what is a sockpuppet (just a different name)?
A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term—a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock—originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an internet community who spoke to, or about himself while pretending to be another person.[1] The term now includes other uses of misleading online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a third party or organization.[2] A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym[3] and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer.
Dr. Kesseler likes to come to the board under different names, never identifying himself, often somehow trying to either trap other people, or just misdirect them.
One day he might be, “Buddha is Laughing”, another day, “Slartibartfast”, somedays “Kevin Kesseler”, and even another one he used to use was “Crohn’s Face”.
That’s mostly using pseudonyms and is mostly harmless.
True sockpuppetry might be if you would see “Buddha is Laughing” arguing with “Slartibartfast” but all agreeing that Dr. Kevin Kesseler’s new argument about the dinosaur was dead on the money.
So you as a commenter might find yourself having a conversation with three people and not just one, and find that all three or some combination were agreeing with each other and disagreeing with you and that might be persuasive to you or to third party readers.
Strangely Kesseler and some of the guest bloggers here were so upset with sockpuppetry by others here, that Kesseler developed a program (using about 20 lines of Python) to exploit a WordPress privacy leak and identify who many of the users here were along with their sockpuppets.
It was fun to see how many of the Turley Street guest bloggers and regular commenters had sockpuppets.
But Kesseler did this on an unauthorized basis, aided and abetted by a couple of the guest bloggers, and none of them have been repentant.
When it came out, they mostly tried to cover it up (cover up is always worse), and then deny it was actually a real problem.
It was pretty shocking. I’ve never heard of such acts being countenanced at any other blog and to find this was going on at this particular blog, led by an ardent free speech defender, but somehow rationalized by his guest bloggers, well, it’s pretty disappointing.
Since then, I’ve been trying to explain to Dr. Kesseler all of the social and perhaps even legal boundaries he crossed, and suggested ways that the tech community usually has for exploring these issues and bringing them to light.
Instead for reasons unknown to me, he still seems to insist he did nothing wrong and actually acted as an agent for the public good.
Well, to each his own. I mainly ignore Dr. Kesseler, he’s just a bad penny, but it’s good to try to keep bad pennies from circulating, because the bad drives out the good.
Just remember though, that if someone pops up here that seems new and perhaps a bit mental, that might fit Dr. Kesseler’s pattern.
AY, but what is it? ((*_*))
Leejcaroll,
I did not know what a sockpuppet was until Empire Cookie showed me the ropes…..Now….well…..I know…..
Hate to show mu computer language illiteracy but what is a sockpuppet (just a different name)?
mr. turley…my comments on Vance. v. Rumsfeld are being erase…why??
Woody,
Interesting question…… Prof, or other qualified folks…. what is your opinion…
why are my posts being erased is the FBI monitoring this site and erasing some posts
Every time i try to post comment on the case of Vance. v. Rumsfeld the comment is erased…Mr. Turley give us your assessment of this case…this is a bigger scandal than Fast and Furious…i know the FBI has an illegal wiretap on this computer and is erasing some of my posts
anon said:
Unwhat?