DISQUS

Hey John, thanks for the writeup for our presentation. I just wanted to get more feedback about what you were looking for from Chris and I on stage -- I think less than 5 minutes of the hour or so we were up there were specifically about our products. In all honesty, our main mission was to lay out a vision for where blogging is going and how social publishing is going to help it evolve.

If you or your friends want to help continue that conversation, I'd love to connect with you all and get more feedback about better ways to illustrate that to a larger community. The most important part is really that larger vision, and that's where we spent 90% of our time, so hopefully that was of value. And glad you'll give Blog It a try!

I can't believe people don't know their web history! Ate my balls is a venerable part of internet lore, just as Fail Whale will be someday, and they belong together.

Hey Charity, good news -- I work with the MT team, and there are definitely lots of web hosts you can choose from to use Movable Type. The new version 4.2 that's about to be released is faster than ever and should work on any web host, and you can get it for free at http://www.movabletype.org/ . It even imports your WordPress posts if you want to try migrating your site. Let me know if you give it a try; You can even take a look at a demo install at http://www.movabledemo.com/ if you want to just see how it works.

Nick, have you looked at Action Streams for Movable Type, which supports 75 social networks, and is both free/open source as well as being decentralized? It seems like we don't have to wait forever for the frameworks to be created -- the tools are there, just waiting for more people to get educated about them.

My sense is that this very primitive implementation that I've done is probably *not* the most useful thing to do with this technique. I'm just hoping to inspire someone more creative to come up with a good reason to do this. :)

I should point out -- LJ is far from perfect here, sinceit's still early days for this kind of filtering. But I've had the chance to see the thinking that our team's put into this, as well as the great results they've gotten out of it, and I think it's going to be another great tool in the arsenal of anti-spam tech.

Good news, I just got an email saying the new copyright policy pages, with working email links, are now live on Rojo ( http://www.rojo.com/corporate/policies/rojos-co... )
and NooZ ( http://www.nooz.com/about/policies/copyright-po... )


So you’re saying because I’m the only one with a problem, it’s not really a problem that deserves notice, or you couldn’t imagine that someone would want to opt out of a scraping service you didn’t even know you had?

Nope, I was just trying to explain how it broke and I wasn't aware of it. Hope that helps.

Sounds good. I'm also going to be back in New Orleans (can't wait!) for the Word of Mouth conference in about a week and a half, and if schedules work out, we could meet in person, too.

Hey JB, thanks for being patient with us -- you caught a few folks in transit or on the road. We've just got a chance to sit down and figure out all the issues, and when I get back from PodCamp, I'm hoping to comment with more details.

Here's what I *do* know: We definitely messed up by having the opt-out/takedown emails get messed up. We're working on fixing them (they may be fixed as I type this) and I apologize on behalf of all of us for those being broken. For what it's worth, we didn't notice the problem right away because almost nobody every emails any requests in, despite millions of people using our various services.

Second, we definitely take copyright and IP law seriously. We're a company started by, for, and of bloggers, and our senior management is chock full of people who've worked in publishing, founded magazines and websites like Red Herring and HotWired, and a lot of us have earned our keep as writers along the way, too. I only want to point that out to highlight that our intention, any mistakes aside, is to do the right thing and be as open as possible.

On a personal level, I think the reason the LiveJournal syndication works the way it does was a simple technical limitation at the time Brad and his team implemented RSS reading years ago. Put simply, it was easier to duplicate a feed in that context in order to display on people's Friends pages. (That's LJ's equivalent of an aggregator.)

Part of the delay on getting a reply on Rojo, and especially on Nooz, is that honestly not all of us who were on the 6A team first were as familiar with those apps. As much as we've welcomed the new team members, they've been so busy at their new jobs that we've maybe been a bit behind in checking in on the apps they'd built before they joined us. :)

What I do know is the intent of the Rojo and Nooz applications, which is to offer a feed-reading and content discovery service for people that makes it convenient for readers, but also adds value to the reading and sharing experience. Basically, something similar to Technorati's tag discovery pages or even the RSS reading features of a My Yahoo or Google Reader. Aside from the bug in requesting content takedowns, which is absolutely our fault and we're working to fix, the overall intent is simply to be another great way to read and discover interesting writers, and the consensus we hear from most users and bloggers is that this is the case.

I'll check back in with more info, but I hope that helps clear up the initial questions, and I'll be following the conversation if you've got suggestions or feedback about what we should be doing.

Oh, there was one part of your assertions that *was* factually incorrect... "Though Movable Type has largely been replaced by newer blogging applications, including Wordpress". Despite the perceptions in some parts of the blogosphere, that just ain't true. They've got a successful product, and that's great, and we're innovating in a lot of areas (like enterprise blogging) where nobody else even comes close to what we've achieved. MT hasn't been replaced by anything, and is still the most powerful blogging tool around. :)

And one minor point. You say, "I sense that there is a bureaucracy problem taking place here though." And I think it may actually be the opposite -- despite the perceptions, we're still a relatively small company, and the Rojo team is an even smaller subset of our company. If one or two people are traveling, out sick, or just have pre-scheduled meetings that keep them busy, it can be hard to be as responsive as we ought to be. I would guess the big giant companies have entire departments to deal with this kind of bureaucracy, but for the most part, it's just us trying to catch up with following the entire blogosphere.

Anyway, thanks for the passionate and detailed feedback on all of this -- you're helping us get closer to what we want to be doing. It's heartening to see you assume that we're *trying* to do the right thing, because that's definitely our goal, and I'm looking forward to checking back in to see how we're doing. If you need to get in touch, feel free to email, IM me at anildash, or you can text/call me on my mobile at 646-541-5843. I'll post more info as I know it.

It's absolutely like high school, and it's annoying. What I was trying to do was politely point out how foolish that made the whole conversation seem, when there's literally tens of millions of other blogs that people could be reading which wouldn't be full of drama.

So, FWIW, I agree with you. And believe me, it's even worse being in the middle of an industry where this kind of thing is considered normal.

There's actually a lot of Oracle blogs powered by Movable Type, especially now that our japanese team is partnering with Oracle Japan to deploy Movable Type on the Oracle database and middleware platforms. It may just be that we all see different subsets of any particular blogging community. I think what the list above shows is that most personal bloggers who only want a single blog will choose a free tool, which is why we offer a free version of MT. Most enterprises that want a number of blogs probably would use a different set of criteria and would choose a platform that supports multiple blogs and has more of a focus on management.

Dave, can you shoot me an email with more information about your question? Our suppor team is excellent, and I'm very surprised that there's been a problem in getting you an answer for your problem. I'll make sure we get your issue handled.

Thanks for the polite and thoughtful feedback. My point was that I want people to be more considered and reasonable in what they write in their blogs, to keep blogs from being branded as extremist and marginalized media.



I don't know how to make it clearer than I did, but I'm *not* pissed at right-wing bloggers. I'm disappointed in all bloggers who want the medium to be known as another casualty to the incessant demand for personal attacks. That you're proud to be associated with an effort that you yourself describe as a "lynching" is part of the problem. Don't you see how that makes you just like the mainstream media?



You couldn't be held accountable to the same standards you want these media executives held to, and neither could I, and we'll all regret if we push the discussion so far that this sort of scalp-taking becomes the rule rather than the exception. Would your employer defend your enthusiasm for lynchings if this post were taken out of the context of your blog? I suspect not.



You have a quote on your homepage from Einstein, saying "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." What do you think he meant by that?

You raise a good point here at the end, and I should mention that anybody who joins our developer network gets a free commercial license, so we're defintely interested in rewarding people who develop plugins, extensions, or customizations to MT.

And yeah, we're giving away a lot of really nice prizes to developers, too. :)

Hmm, I figured I should respond to a few of these items to see if I can help clarify what your'e looking for.

1. Well, there's new stuff from 2.64 to 3.0, and we'll have a bunch more new features in the general release that's a free upgrade for 3.0 users. So new stuff is definitely something you can still have on MT, particularly if you play with some of the plugins at mt-plugins.org.

2. Eh, don't worry, not all of us at Six Apart like cute. I'm curious what specifically you mean (this is basically a company full of people who *weren't* popular in high school) but I'll let you give me more info on that.

3. I've been to Austin a few times and it seems like a fairly reasonably priced town. (Certainly compared to New York City or San Francisco) so I'm curious about what you pay for the other applications you use, like your operating system, word processor, email client, or graphics apps. If you could contrast how the other apps you use every day are priced, and how many users they allow per license, that'd be helpful for me to see if we're giving you what oyu need.

3. I think we're doing exactly what you're saying. We've got a free version of MT that even lets you have Google AdSense ads or Amazon affiliate links, even if you *don't* pay. That sounds even better than what you asked for. And then, yep, we ask commercial users to pay. And in the meantime we're building out TypePad.

But a lot of our MT users said they wanted to be able to just file a simple help ticket when they have a problem or question, and get a quick answer, and the new paid licenses for MT let us do that.

As far as I know, there aren't any serious bugs in the 2.661 version of MT. And users who are on 2.661 that are eligible for the free license can upgrade to MT3 for free if they want the new features.

4. If you're concerned about limitations in the software, WordPress does have an open license, but doesn't let you have multiple blogs without installing the app multiple times. It seemes like one's a legal restriction and one's a code restriction, and I can only speak for Movable Type, but we've got a way for you to lift the legal restrictions just by buying a license.


I hope this helps answer some of the issues you've raised, and feel free to shoot me an email if you have any other questions.

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comments and for explaining your thinking (and feeling!) behind them. We really appreciate that your gut tells you we're trying to do the right thing. :)

I commented about this on Kathy's site.

And often the ones who are most likely to complain about First Amendment rights being infringed upon (though that doesn't really apply to private websites) are those who are least responsible with the use of them. Lessig seems to tolerate dissent and not tolerate disrespect, and that seems a perfectly reasonable line to draw.

I am, as we speak, in extensive weight and cardio training for my Final Showdown with Joi. Stay tuned!

I find it astonishing that adults can get their panties in a wad over an award that was made up by a high school kid. Who freaking cares?

Richard, we give each other a lot of grief on various topics, I'm glad to see one that we agree 100% on.

I'm unclear about a point you're trying to make... do you think that the discussion around wi-fi is a bubble created by people trying to promote it? My impression is that it's a very from-the-ground-up phenomenon that's succeeding despite the efforts of (for example) 3G telcos and cable companies to stymie its growth...

Eh, I think it's possible that Marshall, Reynolds, Sullivan, and Postrel all thought for themselves and made their own decisions based on what their consciences tell them. But if you want to condescend to see them as patsies, I guess that's your call. Seems awful patronizing, though.

"All the posts I see on your blog before and after your LGF post have comments enabled, Anil, so let's not be coy."

Have you seen how people behave on those threads, Richard? I don't have the time or interest to sit around deleting pointless or off-topic comments.

And who's puffing or growing furious? Seems you more than me... perhaps my tone doesn't accurately indicate that I take this all pretty lightly. It's just talk on the web.

"A majority of men don't commit violent crimes, Anil, so let's try and avoid logical fallacies."

Yes, let's. A majority of arab and/or muslim people don't commit violent crime against Americans.

Richard, I don't enable comments on about 80% of the posts I've put up over the years. The fact that most people can't debate in a civil manner on these points where there are clearly legitimate areas of disagreement (I'm excepting people like Steven Den Beste, for example, who's always been civil though adamant in his disagreement.) is one reason why you don't see a comment link.

Regarding your statement that "Dash admitted that he'd got his minority and majority transposed", I conceded that there are countries in the mideast where that's true. The reality is, there are millions of muslims who don't live in the mideast. Do you think it's important to distinguish between the negative members of a group and its entirety? Or should we use the fact that the majority of violent crimes are committed by men to just use the word "men" to refer to rapists and murderers, and assume that people know we mean the minority of men who commit such crimes?

Why do I have a high opinion of myself? Why shouldn't I? I should think less of myself for being consistent and forthright in stating my opinions, even in the face of disagreement? Don't you think the free market of ideas will decide which parts of our respective beliefs are correct?

Perhaps you can explain now why you've got such a high opinion of yourself.

And LGF has improved by recognizing that it is a community, inreasing tolerance of dissenting views and questions, and by broadening its subject matter (even within its main topic of focus) from purely brooding rumination to an embrace of other elements of life.

Overall, I think I've written 3, maybe 4 posts on LGF. That's hardly an obsession. You've written about, say, Eminem (name picked at random) twice as often. Are you obsessed?