Eternal September refers to when the Internet became open to everyone to participate on (1993). Our communications capability has grown at an amazing rate since then. I marvel daily at all the things that are possible, just 20 years later, thanks to the Internet. At the same time, I cringe at the ugliness that the Internet has created in humans that was not previously possible. There was a study, the link escapes me, that shows that the Internet allows like minded people to essentially isol...
Some of you may recall that I was going on an extended sabbatical after War of Magic shipped. I still remain active online but as I detailed on Freakonomics , the long hours over many years had taken their toll and I was going to diversify what I spent my days doing. What started out as a sabbatical after War of Magic evolved for the reasons I outlined on the podcast into a semi-retirement. My libertarian friends have called it "Going Galt". But that's really not an accurate w...
…but don’t take pride in it. For Tireless Rebutter there is no such thing as a trivial dispute. He regards all challenges as barbarians at the gates. His unflagging tenacity in making his points numbs and eventually wears down the opposition. Confident that his arguments are sound, Tireless Rebutter can't understand why he is universally loathed. Source: http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/tirelessrebutter.htm -- It’s a bad habit that I need to break. One ...
All this has happened before. All this will happen again. I first started moderating “online communities”back in the mid 80s. Back then, they were called BBSes and the title “Sub-Op”. Without moderation, Internet communities ultimately die off for the same reason: They become toxic. What causes them to become toxic is predictable and preventable. Identify and remove people who are toxic before toxic cliques form. It’s easier said than done because every ...
Tom Chick, owner of QuarterToThree.com just finished a controlled clean up of his forums where several prominent users were shown the door. Moderation is a very delicate and thankless art. A community can easily be taken over by cliques of griefers without careful moderation. I think JoeUser.com users can remember a certain user by the acronym of LW who was a very prolific and interesting poster but yet couldn’t keep herself from griefing those she disliked. Over on Neowin.n...
I've been online since I was 15. That was 25 years ago. Back then, it was BBSes using C-net 10.0. You could say that I've grown up entirely living online. Before people used twitter for facebook to express their every inappropriate thought, I was mouthing off on things that I really shouldn't be mouthing off on (or at least, things that shouldn't be held up to scrutiny). This year I started to live life in "the real world". And to give you just an idea of how out of touch with...
By day I’m the happy CEO of Stardock. At night, I’m either the sugar daddy or scurge of Neowin.net depending on who you talk to. I’ve been an administrator on the site for some years and its amazingly talented founder and President, Steven Parker (Neobond) has led the Neowin development team to create the latest incarnation of the site code-named Ignition. I must say, I’m incredibly impressed with the work they’ve done. If you’re not familiar with Neowin, check it out. It’s a great ...
Last week I had my first really bad experience with the power of JoeUser's automated category syndication. You see, when you write an article on JoeUser.com, the system will look at what category you filed it under and then syndicate it out to other sites on the Stardock.net system. So if I write a blog on politics, it will show up on JoeUser.com. Write a blog on skinning and it shows up on WinCustomize.com. The system does work both ways where those sites feed into JoeUs...
Running an Internet based business is vastly different than running a traditional bricks and mortar based company. This is particularly true if you are running and Internet based business that deals with end users since, at that point, you are running the Internet equivalent of a retail store. The first reason it is different has to do with a term we call "conversion rate". The conversion rate of a traditional store varies but is typically around 5%. That is, if 20 people visit yo...
If you are curious to see how popular different sites are on the net, the tool I use is the Alexa toolbar. I know some programs list it as "spyware" but it really isn't, not in the bad sense anyway. Very often websites will claim to be incredibly popular but one check with Alexa will show just how popular they are. See link below.
I offend people. Often. Daily. It's not that I'm a jerk. Well, I might be a jerk but I don't think of myself as a jerk. Not a big jerk anyway. The problem is within my fingers. They move fast. Very fast. You see, I type 120 words per minute. Busy hands. And I have a lot of opinions on a lot of things. Many things I don't worry too much about but I like writing about them anyway. I care. I just don't care care. A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Dashboard vs. Konfabulator . It's not ...
If you go onto a website, or more specifically an Internet community and you find the admins to be evil and obnoxious or whatever, your best bet is to turn around and go away. Believe me, I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years. I've been on websites where the admins were just incredibly obnoxious and were in constant power trip mode. I am sure I must seem that way to some people too. Though I would describe myself more as apathetic than anything else. Which gets to my poin...
The Flame Warriors website is an awesome tool. It's not just funny and amusing. It's really quite on the spot. Lots of people try to say that we're all different. But are we really? In reality, we all tend to conform to a very finite number of basic personality traits. And to that end, The Flame Warriors page provides a service. I've been in on-line communities now for 17 years. I was the Sysop (admin) on a whole set of BBSes back when I was a teenager. And from then on up, I've come to reali...
If you're a business operating on-line, who has more power over you? Microsoft...or Google? Increasingly, I think the answer is Google. Google has been a benevolent giant. To my knowledge, they've done nothing menacing or intimidating. But then again, if they had, who would know? For example, what if your company did something that made it competitive with Google in some way or made Google feel you were a threat. What is to stop them from tweaking their algorithms so that your site suddenl...