Bloggers respond to threats: Follow-up
Thu 29 Mar 07 20:55 | Tags: Blogging
This is a follow-up to an earlier post entitled "Bloggers respond to threats." Please read that post first in order to make sense of the following.
Both Kathy Sierra and Robert Scoble have yet to make any new posts.
However, Ms Sierra closed off comments on her now infamous blog post yesterday evening, after someone apparently posted personal data about her, such as her address. She says that "had I known the firestorm that would be created, I probably would have stayed silent." Does that mean she would have suddenly stopped blogging and skipped the conference with absolutely no explanation at all?
Scanning through the comments on the post (all 1165 of them), I see many people echoing my own sentiments; that for her (and Mr Scoble) to go silent about this is giving her misogynistic harassers exactly what they want. Also, I noticed something strange from my site stats yesterday… I found this in the "Referrers" section:
That's the address to Ms Sierra's post. That means that someone posted a link to RGR on that post, and that seventeen people followed that link to come to RGR. However, when I search through the source code for the page, I can't find the link. Ms Sierra stated that she did delete one comment that had her personal information, but no others (even though there are several spam and prank comments); was a link to RGR in that post? If anyone out there can shed light on exactly how or why folks are getting from there to here, please enlighten me. Not that I'm upset about any new readers, of course; merely curious.
UPDATE: LaMa has pointed out in the comments that Ms Sierra's blog supports trackbacks. She seems to have deleted all of the trackbacks from that one article, but trackbacks show up clearly in other articles on her blog. So for a time being, I must have had a trackback on that article which led people to RGR. Good thinking, LaMa.
The Beeb picked up on the story.
A blogger from PBS proposes tomorrow (Friday) should be "Stop Cyberbullying Day."
What does ["Stop Cyberbullying Day"] mean? I leave that up to you. Generally, though, I think we should all set aside some time that day to address cyberbullying. Write a blog post pointing to online resources about cyberbullying. Post a podcast about personal experiences. Create your own public service announcement about the dangers of cyberbullying and post it on YouTube. Then tag it with the phrase stopcyberbullying.… The more people we can get blogging about it, the better, because that will catch the attention of search tools and social media websites, spreading awareness further. It will also allow us to aggregate everyone’s posts so we can see who’s participating.
I don't know… Be forewarned that the blogs you read may take a turn for the emo tomorrow.
Finally, Michelle Malkin has chimed in on the issue. A divisive, bombthrowing conservative writer and blogger, she has written a book arguing in defense of Japanese internment during World War II, and often writes newspaper columns and blog articles about illegal immigration, the War on Terror, partisan slant in the press… I'm sure you get the idea. Needless to say, she's no stranger to misogynistic threats of death and rape herself, and she shares a few in her post (NSFW language!). She also pleads with Ms Sierra and Mr Scoble to not silence themselves in the face of such threats. She's also has a poll in the sidebar of her blog about the issue.
Ms Sierra, you may not agree with Michelle Malkin's politics, but she has a point; the worst way to deal with bullies is to give them what they want. Stick it to the "cyberbullies" and start posting and speaking again as soon as possible.
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On certain blog software, when you link to a specific blog post (or the permalink) it will create a pseudo comment or trackback in their comments section. It shows who is blogging about your article. It may hay shown a snippit of your article. I hope that's the right way of explaining it and answers your question. You cant find the link now, because she turned off the comments or whatever.
When I linked to the specific blog post about Google Themes, it added me to a list at the bottom of who links here. I've received a bit of blog traffic from there.
Tried out Kontera for 22 days and gave up after I found out that I had earned less than $2. You were right, most of my friends complained that the pop-up add that appear when they went over a link, were downright annoying, like all pop-ups are.
#4 | Garrett Albright | 30 Mar 07 09:49
Adam, I think you meant to post your comment to this entry. :)
#2 | Garrett Albright | 29 Mar 07 23:04
Good thinking. That would explain why I couldn't find the link when I was looking for it. Thanks. I've updated the article.