Bonum Certa Men Certa

Quote of the Day: Why Not Slashdot

Teveral people refused to understood why we had given up on Slashdot. I found the following new comment from Pamela Jones very quote-worthy. Perhaps so will you.

MS shill blogs--- Groklaw unfair

Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, April 01 2008 @ 03:59 AM EDT boo hoo

I don't do that. It's not well known. It's SCO that used to claim that, if you remember. I loved the moment when Darl said he liked Slashdot, because it was really free discussions. Hahahaha. Doug said that not because it is true but because Microsoft can't compete with decency, so they have to slime the other side. He did the same thing to Yoon-Kit, if you recall. Slime, slime, slime. It's what they do.

I saw what Microsoft did to Slashdot. Any time you have moderation by the community, you open yourself up to hordes of Microsoft shills showing up and eventually taking over. Microsoft has too much money, and they can throw more and more troops into battle. That's the impression I formed, anyway.

I don't want Groklaw ruined, so when I find what I believe are astroturfers and shills pretending to be FOSS people, I do throw their fannies over the fence. I give them every chance to cut it out and stay, but if they persist, they are outahere. It's in our comments policy, so it shouldn't be a surprise.

I didn't know Doug was one of them, until now.

That doesn't mean they can't read and comment but they can't do it as members, because Groklaw is for group work, and I really don't want people who are only here to disrupt to be members.

I could tell you some stories. We even had a lawyer who had done work for Microsoft show up, pretending to be a community person.

He didn't say he was a lawyer or that he was connected to Microsoft in any way, but I knew his name. So we had a private little discussion. I told him that he could express himself freely but only if he told all of you who he was here representing.

Not one comment after that. I didn't expel him, but I was disgusted.

We had a guy from CompTIA also. He pretended he was just expressing his personal views, not the company. So I mentioned that I doubted that, since he was posting from CompTIA. Again, no further comments were ever posted. With him too I didn't expel him or remove his comments, but I let him know that I expected him to be honest. That's what Groklaw is about. I don't think anyone has the right to come to someone's web site and play underhanded games.

We have other Microsoft names you'd know who are members. I doubt they are here to participate in what we do. I don't out them, of course, as long as they stay within the guidelines for behavior here.


We don't censor comments here, but the frequency of abusive comments has fortunately remained low. For our views on Slashdot see:



There are several more items which are cited there. One of our readers also ran a somewhat scientific experiment to demonstrate bias. You can find it all in our previous postings

For recent examples of Microsoft AstroTurfing, start here. it's real, and this tradition is very much alive. It includes [cref 2564 smears for OOXML] and anonymous voices, sometimes from Microsoft employees.

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