Geek Austin Censorship
Submitted by chip on Wed, 05-Mar-2003 - 11:45 am
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EFF-Austin is sponsoring a party on March 10, during SXSW week. This news certainly would be of interest to Austin geeks, so it seemed natural to post it to the Geek Austin web site.
Unfortunately, the editor of that web site is sponsoring another party at the same time, so he killed our announcement (without explanation or notice) and published his own announcement.
Geek Austin is a private web site and the editor certainly has the right to run it in whatever fashion he wants. People should be aware, however, it is a censored forum, which raises significant concerns of credibility and fairness.
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re: Geek Austin Censorship
Chip. Try to think a little more diplomatically. JonL and I have already talked about the parties. These sort of things happen. I don't see a blurb on eff austin for the GeekAustin party, but you don't see me bitching about JonL -- who's been a friend of mine for 11 years. I don't see an ad for the GeekAustin party on the Actlab site, but you don't see me calling Sandy Stone, who's been a friend of mine for 9 years, names. I don't see an ad for the Geek Austin party on Boingboing, but you don't see me calling Cory a censor. I thought you were more mature than this.
re: Geek Austin Censorship
Lynn, I thank you for graciously and proactively blurbing my SXSW panel on your site, but I have to disagree with a couple of the assumptions behind your post above.
Chip isn't saying that he expected to see an ad for our party on your site. He's saying that, when he submitted a post about the party, he didn't expect you to kill it.
I think the analogous situation would be you sending an email about the GeeKAustin party to the EFF-Austin list, or sending a request that we post something on the EFF-Austin site, and our refusal to pass the mail through moderation or post something at the site. In fact that hasn't come up, but I can assure you that we would have been happy to blurb your party at effaustin.org, so hopefully you'll rethink your position. There'll be no scarcity of revelers, and considering that the world is going to hell, possibly literally, possibly this very weekend, we should probably give the Dionysian spirit whatever boost we can.
I don't think Chip is being immature at all - I think he reasonably expected that you would accommodate his notice about the party, and was a bit shocked when you didn't. I understand where your perspective, though, and we're still friends regardless! So ONWARD....
re: Geek Austin Censorship
Jon, I disagree. Chip is being immature. I just read his email to me. I got over 700 emails yesterday. Takes a while. He assumed, and you did as well, that I 'killed' the story. I was actually writing a Monday review describing Monday events -- including Nuclear Tacos, Parties, et al -- and I usually don't post those events until a few days before - for maximum coverage and so it's fresh in people's mind. I was also waiting for some details from you -- which you said you would be sending, yes? Finally, unlike Chip, I am employed and have to squeeze all this in between paying obligations.
I don't profess GA to be some tower of unbiased journalism. It's just my website, and a poorly-designed one at that. I delete lots of posts. You should see some of the crap I get. If Chip feels that my failure to post everything that comes my way justifies his jumping up and down calling me "censor" all over town, so be it.
Truth is, the nastier things people say, the more our traffic goes up. I prefer not to cater to that need.
re: Geek Austin Censorship
For the record, Lynn has been incredibly gracious at letting through quite a few of my CATF/community service announcements... I've put GeekAustin near the top of my list for harvesting service-minded geeks because I've had such a great response to my postings. So THANK YOU, Lynn, it's been a great help and I hope I can continue turning to that community for support.
As for the parties: there are going to be more than enough partiers for ALL of the many events going on that night.. I imagine there will be plenty of hopping around between events, also, so we'll all get a turn...
However, perhaps we (EFF-A and GeekAustin) could make a public "informal show of support" of each others events, then maybe we can start pulling together instead of driving a wedge between communities of which I'm sure there is plenty of overlap, anyway?
Dunno... I say let's all go have lots of beer Monday and let the chips fall where they may, eh?
re: Geek Austin Censorship
"chips fall where they may, eh"
No pun intended, I SWEAR!
re: Geek Austin Censorship
Lynn - Thank you for finally responding. I guess calling you out was the right thing to do. A couple of comments:
The issue at this point isn't the announcment. Thanks to your actions, it's probably now gotten more attention than it would have otherwise. Funny how censorship works that way.
I acknowledge your graciousness in allowing my critical comment to stand on the Geek Austin web site. I appreciate that.
I also wish you the best of luck with your event. I'm sorry you perceive ours as a threat.
I think the fact of the matter is that the broader the spectrum of events, the more exciting it is for everybody. I'm really groovin' on the extent of the community participation I see happening for this year's SXSW Interactive. If you wish to have an announcement of your event distributed to the EFF-Austin membership, please forward it to me and I'll approach the board about including it in a mailing.