Month: September 2003

Here’s three pieces of advice that apply as much to moderators and administrators of message boards as much as to the people who are unfortunate enough to have you as unduly elected presidents for life. The first piece of advice I have been reminded of again recently. It’s nice and simple and is profoundly important: Don’t post angry. The second piece of advice is about the content of your posts: Argue the issue, not the person. And the third and final piece of advice is about how you argue your point: The art of winning arguments is all about seeming to be the more reasonable party.

Anyone who has passed by Broadcasting House in recent months will have noticed that it has been carefully gift-wrapped in white sheeting and scaffolding. Underneath the chrysalis it’s hard to guess what’s going on, but from the otherside – from inside the Portland Place part of the structure – you can see a lot more… This view is looking southwards toward Oxford Circus. Check out the little tiny diggers at the bottom of the picture. They’re on the third or fourth story! Neat, huh?

What follows is an enterprise that only the most anal and beard-stroking of smoking-jacketted social software enthusiasts could possibly enjoy. While I was writing it I could almost feel myself rocking backwards and forwards in my leatherette chair with quiet but insistent mirth while muttering to myself, “Quite so! Quite so!”. I’m indulging in that particular depth of humour that has analogues in all the trades and professions. I am gaining pleasure from the equivalent of jokes about double-entry book-keeping.

For some reason best known to myself, I’ve been digging around for quotes about ‘moderation’ (in the sense of being a moderate drinker). More particularly I’ve been looking for quotes that take on an entertaining or strangely pertinent double-meanings when you pretend that they’re actually about the moderation of online community spaces. Ho ho ho! Do you see what I did there? Two meanings, with one word! Oh the decadent ecstasy of language! I may die!

Anyway – I’ve found the whole enterprise highly entertaining, which is almost certainly an indication that I should be upstairs at my neighbour’s late-night party rather than down here quietly bitching about the noise they’re making while tapping frantically at my little laptop… But given that I’m not likely to be leaving my flat any time soon (or sleeping, for that matter) here are a few of my favourites:

“The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.” Aristotle

“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Oscar Wilder

“To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.” Blaise Pascal

“The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity.” Seneca

“Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.” Charles Caleb Colton

“Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.” Francois F⁄Nelon†

“If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.” Georg C. Lichtenberg†

“Only action gives life strength, only moderation gives it charm.” Jean Paul

“Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe†

“Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.” W. Somerset Maugham

“Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.” Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

I could go on all day… But I won’t because if I did so, none of you would ever come back. I hope you’ve found it at least a little illuminating and enjoyable. God knows you could all do with a little culture every now and then… Anyway, I’ll end with my favourite quote of the lot – to be delivered with a rueful complicity smile and a bit of an eye-roll towards its author, Saint Augustine, who (clearly after looking after barbelith for more than a couple of hours – was heard to remark (with a sigh?):

“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”

This won’t mean a lot to a lot of people, but I just thought I’d report (with a certain amount of glee) that I just wrote a template for a friend’s website and ran it through a validator and it validated immediately! Admittedly it was written in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and not anything strict or terribly difficult, but frankly, I’m astonished. It’s a far cry from the normal validation horror I experience, where I find myself many hundreds of errors away from web guru nirvana. I’m quite proud of myself. Having said that – I would of course be more proud of myself if I could sort out the validation issues around plasticbag.org…

I got quite a shock on the bus yesterday. As we passed Selfridges I glanced at the new window displays only to be startled by the awesome presences of Blode, a Giant Bee, a Frightened Boy and many other smiling, brightly-coloured creatures. That’s right! Joel Veitch, insane kitten manipulator of rathergood.com has now ascended to the status of a cultural icon. It really brings back those days colouring in crabs on Exmouth Market with only custard tarts for pay…

Another year rolls by, and with it comes (and passes) another ETCon Proposal Deadline. The afternoon of the deadline seems to be becoming nothing more than a pan-world panic proposal-writing session – with about half the people on my buddy list (many of whom I met at last year’s event) frantically trying to knock their thoughts into some vaguely coherent order before the O’Reilly Geek Gong sounds. I’d love to mention everyone’s names, but I guess it could be seen to be pretty tactless if I were to reveal just how random and unprofessional we all appear to be.

I’ve put a proposal in this year – which unfortunately isn’t about the work that Matt and I have been doing at BBC Radio and Music Interactive. In the end, although we’ve got a fair amount we’d like to say, we haven’t really been working in the area long enough to be able to feel confident in our proposals. Maybe we’ll do that next year. As to this year, we hear whether or not our papers have been accepted around the beginning of next month… Successful or not, I’ll be attending whatever happens (particularly after winning a free ticket at last year’s event). You try and keep me away.

So without denying for one moment that I am very lucky to have the job I have and that it’s extraordinary, it does have one drawback. Working in a team that only has the function of thinking up new things for an organisation means (obviously) that you get to think up ideas for a living, but it also means (obviously) that they are first and foremost for that organisation. So I can see really interesting posts like this one at kottke.org on ways of registering the popularity of songs broadcast on the radio and get quite excited and want to explode with thoughts and comments around it and I’m just not sure if I can. And if in principle I could, I’m not sure how to do it in an ethical, business-friendly way. And because thinking-up things professionally is different from building something (which allows a reasonably clear distinction to be drawn between what you’re there to accomplish and what you do that’s your own), almost everything we think around is – to a greater or lesser extent – kind of work-related. It’s a bit of a quandary…