The Ed Forum is having a total Meltdown and chicken bones!

[Michael Clark]

Nobody is scolding you.

You've turned this into some other argument, nobody said you didn't quote the words.
It was my mistake about which forum, I'm new here.

I'm asking you why you wouldn't just take something down if the author requested it?
The fact that are calling all CTs hypocrites and scumbags, makes no difference to me if you posted it before or after.
It's just a dumb thing to say.

Do you add commentary to postings you take off other websites?
If so, do you give the author the opportunity to know it's there, as well as the chance to respond? how?
Do you let the author know it's there even without commentary?
If the author requests a take down, do you oblige?

This whole episode is really interesting. And Peter gets to the heart of the matter. I am truly surprised at David’s choice here. I really though that David valued being part of the debate. He chose his desire to archive his debates over the continued participation in the debates at the EF. I did not think he would make that choice. One could argue that it was a matter of principle but no one does; if David has made that argument, I have missed it. That argument would carry no weight with me, however. How could you argue having the right to take material from one context, a malleable dynamic context, and carry it off, frozen in time for the self adulation of a member of that forum, especially when they don’t like it?

It’s just plain wrong, and even David doesn’t have the gall to say that it is ethical; for that I give him credit. His only argument is (parody alert) “well, I’ve been doing it for so long now, I just can’t stop”.

[Michael Clark]

And, regardless of what LNers say, I think most of us see it as a loss. I don’t thing we like an echo chamber. I think we like having our thoughts and arguments challenged. Everyone is at risk of believing his own BS at times and acceps  a check on that, even if they are too small to admit it.

[Steve Howsley]

The EF is an evidence free zone. BS is allowed to take wing and evidence is buried deep underground. Whatever useful purpose it once served it is now redundant. DVP was pretty much told, several times, by several prominent posters at EF to piss off and there wasn't a single voice of rebuke from a moderator or administrator. It became obvious months ago that there was a plan forming to create a situation that would result in his expulsion. Nothing anyone says will convince me otherwise. That place (EF) is an echo chamber or just as bad it becomes a silent place where even the most outrageous theory is presented without even a murmur of a challenge referencing evidence.

[David Von Pein]

Nobody is scolding you.

It sure sounded like it to me.

You've turned this into some other argument. Nobody said you didn't quote the words. It was my mistake about which forum, I'm new here.

I'm asking you why you wouldn't just take something down if the author requested it?

Because, to get down to the brass tacks of the matter, I truly don't think for one minute that the quotes/excerpts that I have archived at my site really bother the CTers enough for them to start insisting I remove their quotes from my site. And to see the virtual proof that what I just said is the truth, just look at the first three pages of this EF thread. That thread was started in February of 2016, and it took a resurrection of the discussion in 2019 for anyone to even begin to demand that their posts be removed from my site (plus to demand I be kicked off of the EF forum, to boot).

That three-year delay that it took for a single CTer to give a damn is telling me something right there.

The fact that [you] are calling all CTs hypocrites and scumbags, makes no difference to me if you posted it before or after. It's just a dumb thing to say.

Many (many!) conspiracy theorists that I have encountered are hypocrites. (Without a doubt.)

And some CTers are scumbags. (Such as "Boris" at acj, plus a few others I won't mention here.)

I guess sometimes the truth can hurt.

But, like you said, you're new here. It takes a few years of regularly dealing with Internet conspiracy theorists for the true nature of them to finally sink in.

Do you add commentary to postings you take off other websites? If so, do you give the author the opportunity to know it's there, as well as the chance to respond? How?

Yes, I certainly have added my commentary to things I've grabbed off "non-forum" websites. And CTers do the exact same thing. (Go HERE and HERE and HERE to read some examples of CTers doing it.)

Conspiracists have quoted me (and many others) on their own websites, which are non-forum websites that I cannot respond to. But I couldn't care less about the fact that they have done that. I've always thought of it as a compliment if someone wants to quote me on their site. I never once felt the urge to gripe about it in even the slightest way --- even though I do think I've been quoted "out of context" on occasion. But I still never felt compelled to throw a hissy fit about the mere fact that I have been quoted on somebody else's website without my express "permission" being given. I've never expected someone to ask for permission to quote something I have already written on a public webpage.

And I sure don't recall ever getting a heads-up from the CTer who was quoting me to inform me that they have just quoted me on their site. Why would that ever happen anyway? In my experience, it never does. And I'd never expect such a "heads-up" to be written either.

So maybe CTers should get the idea out of their heads that a guy named DVP is the only person in the world who has ever copied the public words written by another person to use on his own personal website. Because, let's face reality, such a thing is happening thousands of times every day. And the only people I've ever heard complaining about it are a few outer-fringe JFK conspiracy theorists.

[Bill Brown]

Rick. the relevant comment in your post  is " so long as it isn't taken out of context."  DVP take note.

Ray, maybe you can help me repair any "out of context" quotes that I have transferred to my website from the JFK forums. Would you be so kind as to provide a few examples of where you think I have quoted conspiracy theorists "out of context" on my website/blog.

After I take a good look at your examples, we'll see if I agree with you or not regarding the "out of context" matter.

In the event that I do agree with you on any of the quotes you cite, I will do my best to add more CTer "context" back into the quote(s) by checking out the complete original discussion(s) and putting in additional CTer quotes as warranted in order to enhance the "context" that almost all CTers at The Education Forum seem to think I have left completely out of virtually every single CTer quote I have ever transferred from the EF to my own site.*

* And that's how I can tell that this persistent "out of context" refrain has been blown up to ludicrous proportions by the CTers. Because to think that I have actually quoted the CTers "out of context" every single time I've quoted a conspiracist in the last 10+ years is, to put it bluntly, just plain crazy. A few CTer excerpts I've quoted on my site could possibly use a little more "context", I'll readily admit that possibility. But to hear the EF CTers tell it, I have never once quoted a CTer properly in my whole life. And that overboard notion is flat-out silly.

Crickets.

[Colin Crow]

Let me preface this by saying as with all things in life there are good and bad. I have never posted at the EF, as with this forum, the noise to signal ratio there seems to have increased over recent years. Also the material that David's website provides is an amazing resource for anyone interested in the topic and for that alone we should be grateful.

As  someone who occasionally found a quote of mine on his pages, (usually from a discussion I had long forgotten about), my thoughts were "big deal". Generally they appeared to be cherry-picked, without attribution (or link) to the original source to provide anyone interested with some way of balancing context, a modus operandi seemingly fashioned for maximum LN effect from my perspective. But then what more would one expect from a known, "dyed in the wool", WC die-hard?

I would prefer any publisher to use robust accreditation and to remove quotes if requested by the owner. I don't give much credence to the "but others do it too" type defence. Yet I would defend David's rights to operate his website as he sees fit. As with anything in life, surely "caveat emptor" applies after all.

PS Since the last crash of this forum it would be impossible to provide working links to the original discussion. Therefore posting the original quote from David's site into Google etc would not enable someone interested in discovering the original discussion.


 

[David Von Pein]

Since the last crash of this forum it would be impossible to provide working links to the original discussion. Therefore posting the original quote from David's site into Google etc would not enable someone interested in discovering the original discussion.

Yes, that's correct. And that is very disappointing to me too, because even though CTers evidently feel that I am making a deliberate attempt to quote them "out of context" (which I will vehemently deny until Hell freezes over), I am always displeased whenever I don't have a "Source" link to the original forum discussion to provide on my webpages. And, unfortunately, many of my archived links to Duncan's forum that previously worked before January 2018 are now dead and unavailable due to the crash/hacking.

I have many times searched the Wayback Machine to try and find a working "source" link for a thread that has died. And that technique has worked several times (mostly for deleted EF forum threads), but it often does not work and thusly I'm not able to always provide a link to the source conversation. Which, of course, means that in those instances, my webpages are likely the ONLY location on the Web where one can view ANY portion of the original forum discussion, which is kind of a GOOD thing---is it not? I think it is anyway.

[Bill Brown]

Let me preface this by saying as with all things in life there are good and bad. I have never posted at the EF, as with this forum, the noise to signal ratio there seems to have increased over recent years. Also the material that David's website provides is an amazing resource for anyone interested in the topic and for that alone we should be grateful.

As  someone who occasionally found a quote of mine on his pages, (usually from a discussion I had long forgotten about), my thoughts were "big deal". Generally they appeared to be cherry-picked, without attribution (or link) to the original source to provide anyone interested with some way of balancing context, a modus operandi seemingly fashioned for maximum LN effect from my perspective. But then what more would one expect from a known, "dyed in the wool", WC die-hard?

I would prefer any publisher to use robust accreditation and to remove quotes if requested by the owner. I don't give much credence to the "but others do it too" type defence. Yet I would defend David's rights to operate his website as he sees fit. As with anything in life, surely "caveat emptor" applies after all.

PS Since the last crash of this forum it would be impossible to provide working links to the original discussion. Therefore posting the original quote from David's site into Google etc would not enable someone interested in discovering the original discussion.

I have never posted at the EF, as with this forum, the noise to signal ratio there seems to have increased over recent years.

Indeed.

(Bold emphasis mine, not Colin's)