alternative hippopotamus

What Exactly is the Confluence?

13 Responses to “What Exactly is the Confluence?”

1. yetanotherfreakingbrit Says:
   January 1st, 2009 at 4:19 pm

   Well said, Mr. AltHippo.

   This is admittedly a storm in a teacup since the weblog awards are sponsored by an individual who is himself classified as a “conservative blogger” and the nomination process is in no way transparent. I smell a degree of mischievous bullshit in nominating The Confluence in this particular category.

   It’s amusing to me that the challenge to their “liberalism” has obviously rattled the collective cages of the Confluence’s inmates. Witness this challenge from one who has not passed their litmus test of conformity and has had the gall to call them out on it, then look at the reception it receives:

   ———————————————
   Mountainaires, on January 1st, 2009 at 2:28 pm Said:
   To Riverdaughter and myiq2xu who responded to my comment previously.
   myiq2xu: if you are the “moderator” who went in and edited the quotes from Richard Falk, then you deserve to be insulted for doing it. Before you start changing quotes, you ought to know what you’re talking about, which you clearly did not. There were no food or medical supplies being transported into Gaza at the point of my comment, and your insertions were inaccurate. You could have posted your own comment responding to mine, and posted your inaccuracies under your own name. Instead, you hid like a coward behind a power title of “moderator” and altered my comments. Shame on you.
   Next time please post your own comment in reply to mine if you don’t like my opinion. Stop going in and altering a comment which has my name on it.
   To Riverdaughter:
   My comment did not contain any racism, or any words related to racism, any insults to anyone on this blog, or any thing like that. There was simply no reason for editing or altering my comment, except that the “moderator” didn’t like the content of my comment.
   My comment contained quotes from the UN Special Rapporteur, which were edited and altered. Quotes from the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine which the “moderator” didn’t like are perfectly legitimate reasons for disagreement. But altering quotes is not a legitimate act of “moderation.”
   Again, the edited portion was a quote from Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur. My comment was then edited with facts about supplies being transported into Israel, which were later proven to be inaccurate, because no supplies at the time that I stated such, were being transported into Israel. So, basically, the “moderator” who didn’t like what I said about no supplies coming in to Gaza, was transformed into the “moderator’s” own personal propaganda crusade in my comment.
   When I complained to Shtuey about it, Shtuey said: “Get Over It.” So, I reminded Shtuey that I’ve heard that somewhere else before. And, now, I’m invited to leave by Riverdaughter because I have refused to “sit down and shut up.”

   Oh, the irony. If it were not so pathetic, I’d be moved to derisive laughter.

   http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/thursday-is-the-confluence-a-liberal-blog/
   ———————————————

   I’d add to this that it’s a very strange “liberal” blog that sets its filters to censor the words “racist” and “racism” in comments. Riverdaughter’s typically facetious bluster can’t overcome that fact.

2. AltHippo Says:
   January 1st, 2009 at 7:55 pm

   YetAnotherBrit,
   It had crossed my mind that it might be conservative mischief. Then, I saw the defense at the blog awards site, and it sounded sincere. So, it’s hard to say. I can definitely imagine a bunch of netcons sitting around saying: “wouldn’t it be funny if we nominated those wack job PUMAs for a web award? That would annoy the lefty blogs.”

   I can’t imagine a worse habit than editing someone’s comments. It’s childish, and insulting to the nature of discourse on the internet. My!q may think he’s clever, but that kind of stuff makes me wonder if he’s got a problem with his wiring.

3. yetanotherfreakingbrit Says:
   January 1st, 2009 at 8:11 pm

   “It had crossed my mind that it might be conservative mischief. Then, I saw the defense at the blog awards site, and it sounded sincere. So, it’s hard to say.”

   You’re quite right, of course, and I have no way of proving my suspicions.

   But I think my possibly biased opinion may be colored by the nomination of No Quarter in the “Best Political Coverage” category!

   It reminds me of when Tom Lehrer greeted Henry Kissinger’s 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with the declaration that political satire was obsolete.

   Happy New Year, by the way.

4. Kevin Aylward Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 am

   and the nomination process is in no way transparent.

   Nice try. The nomination process couldn’t be more transparent. Nominations are made via public comment to individual category nomination blog posts. You can go see for yourself here: htt://2008.weblogawards.org/nomination

   If you do you’ll find that the sites you are talking about were nominated - repeatedly. Mostly that multiple nomination stuff annoys us as we look at ever site nominated, whether one time or several.

   You can even go see the referrer logs for the site on SiteMeter and see where people are coming from. At the time I’m sure the sites in question linked to the nominating posts which explains the number of nominations.

   Now you can quibble about the transparency of the finalist selection process (which we’ve documented to the extent possible), but to call into question the nomination process is just disingenuous.

5. AltHippo Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm

   Kevin,

   You may have made an effort in transparency. I find the weblog awards site a bit confusing, though. For instance, I went to the nomination page for 2008, and I’m not seeing who nominated the confluence:

   http://2008.weblogawards.org/nominations/best-liberal-blog/

   Second, it may be clear to you how the nominations get turned into finalists, but I’m not getting it.

   I’ve been thinking more about the practice of modifying someone’s comments to mock and deride them. This is a practice the confluence regularly engages in. Your website, by offering them an award, is encouraging that practice. You really want to go there?

6. yetanotherfreakingbrit Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm

   Hi Kevin.

   “Now you can quibble about the transparency of the finalist selection process …”

   That was indeed what I was intending to quibble about. If you want to quibble about my lumping together the two processes that led to the ultimate nomination of the finalists, then go ahead, but I think that in itself is disingenuous.

   You’ve stated: “The goal is to get the most representative slate of 10 finalists per category.”

   I and many others fail to grasp how The Confluence is at all representative of anthing to do with “liberalism.”

   To me, liberalism doesn’t include the promotion of racism and hate speech and the censorship and alteration of dissenting comments. I guess we’ll just have to see how the voting goes and whether the PUMAs decide to make it one of their prowls. I can confidently promise you that if The Confluence wins, that category at least will be discredited and a web-wide laughing stock.

   As for No Quarter’s nomination in the “Best Political Coverage” category, given the extreme focus on propagating a steady stream of unfounded politically motivated smears there during the election period - and again the censorhip and banning of dissenters - I have to assume you are joking, and suggest you need to set up a new category of “Best Disinformation Blog”. If they run true to form over the coming twelvemonth, I can suggest to you a few more candidates for next year’s awards.

7. Mrs. Polly Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 11:14 pm

   RD certainly got her organic cotton underthings in a bunch over the Con’s liberality or lack thereof! I loved the thread where she defended her use of censorship by saying if she does it, it isn’t censorship; the American Heritage dictionary has anyone “vested with authority” to eliminate opposing views as practicing censorship, not governmental authority specifically, but that’s just the first definition. The third definition is anyone at all who does this. So, RD practices censorship.

   She practised this bit of circular logic just warming up this morning:
   “I’ve spend more than a decade running from the label “liberal”. I’ve tried on “progressive” and “moderate” and “centrist”. I prefer to say that I am a Rational Democrat. And for most of us rationalists, that means we are liberals.”

   Mr. Aylsward, if you are still out there, doesn’t this censorship demonstrate lack of liberality of even the generic kind? It is hardly open-minded.

   Hello Althippo, now this is a really good blog!

8. AltHippo Says:
   January 3rd, 2009 at 2:12 am

   Thanks, Mrs. Polly.

   By coincidence, I’m watching a video as we speak on the history of martial arts. One of the ideas the practitioners talk about is the connection of the martial arts forms with truth. So, you can’t be good at kung fu, as one master just said, and run away from truth at the same time.

   I thought that described the PUMAs well. They’re running away from truth. Or, to take your examples of RD’s quotes, you might say this is a description of someone running away from themself.

   Now I’m hungry. Martial arts videos always put me in the mood for sushi.

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