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Jeremy Cherfas

@Phoneboy I see you had to delete spam Webmentions. It would be great if you could document some of the details on the wiki. Or at more length on one of your sites. There have been concerns about the spamming potential but few (none?) seen in the wild, so that would be really valuable.

Jeremy Cherfas

You're doing it right, @frenchtart The "horror" of flies on the meat is more than offset by the fact that it'll be cooked and delicious in about an hour. The invisible horror of a power outage at the supermarket doesn't bear thinking about.

Jeremy Cherfas

@AgroBioDiverse You can have your 15 minutes ...

Jeremy Cherfas

@marieprice2 Fun and all, but to whom do I complain about question 6? The idea that Svalbard is more famous than VIR is preposterous.

Jeremy Cherfas

And hello to you too.

Jeremy Cherfas

Thanks for the wayback link Kevin. I failed to find it first time around. There are so many interesting points in that post and in the comments, and also a faint whiff of déja vu. The sidebar shows exactly what went wrong with pingbacks and trackbacks, and I suspect there is still no way to bridge the gap between the "commenting is broken" and the "technology will fix commenting" crowds.

In the end, we both know, it depends absolutely on the people involved. Maintaining a website that you regard as your own does require maintenance. Like a garden, you may choose to let a few weeds flourish, for the wildlife, and you may also seek to encourage volunteers, for the aesthetics. A garden without wildlife is dull, a garden without aesthetics is pointless.

Jeremy Cherfas

> the default assumption that everyone should read every comment on a forum is an idea that fails at scale too, as one troll or disruptive person can spoil everyone's reading - the Tragedy of the Comments.

A shame that the link to Tragedy of the Comments is dead, it sounded interesting and prescient.

Jeremy Cherfas

@jessfanzo You've very welcome. And there's more to come.

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

That study of how people from rice- and wheat-growing areas of China differ in social situations is interesting, and part of a long history of trying to make use of the collectivism needed to grow rice well to explain other things. I'm not totally convinced.