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Moderation For ‘Em

Published 9th January 2010

Internet

Of all the things that I like to pretend I’m knowledgeable about, there is at least one thing I can claim I have direct experience of – forum moderation. I’ve been dealing with occasionally hair-rasing moderation on NOTBBC since 2003, and moderating Ganymede & Titan’s forum since 2007. (There’s also been a fair amount of comment moderation, but that can be a slightly different art, depending on the site – when comments are attached to an article, I think it’s reasonable to have a slightly firmer hand.)

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What is the vilest piece of emotional blackmail on the Internet?

Published 4th January 2010

Internet

I have no idea, but this must come close.

Recently I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Not because of worries over privacy – although maybe I should be more worried about that – but due to the weird joint problem of using it too much, and not enough. Too much, as in spending every waking hour when I should be working playing Scrabble… and not enough, in that I did precisely nothing else with it.

So, I decide to deactivate my account. (You should, of course, be able to directly delete it without waiting, but that’s a rant for another day – and I probably would have chosen a simple deactivation this time round anyway.) And what greets me?

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Cartoon Network UK in 2003

Published 1st January 2010

Children's TV

I’d hoped to make this video rather longer, but today I have learnt one important thing: it’s hard to scrape images off a dodgy VHS without a Time Base Corrector. Nonetheless, it gives a good idea of the kind of presentation Cartoon Network had back in 2003. (It’s very easy to date a video when there are 10th anniversary trails on there…)

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Happy New Year. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Published 1st January 2010

Meta

Hey. I’m John. This is my new hangout, innit. If you know me from my writing on Ganymede & Titan or Noise to Signal, then hello. If you don’t, then you may be in for a nasty surprise.

Got a few plans for this place, but I’ll fill you in as we go along. Let’s get started, shall we?

Oh, and if anybody wants to complain about me using -ize instead of -ise, then I point you towards the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s definitely not because I rather pathetically think -ize looks cooler and more technological. No.