Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism

http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

Good online communities die primarily by refusing to defend themselves.

Somewhere in the vastness of the Internet, it is happening even now. It was once a well-kept garden of intelligent discussion, where knowledgeable and interested folk came, attracted by the high quality of speech they saw ongoing. But into this garden comes a fool, and the level of discussion drops a little - or more than a little, if the fool is very prolific in their posting. (It is worse if the fool is just articulate enough that the former inhabitants of the garden feel obliged to respond, and correct misapprehensions - for then the fool dominates conversations.)

So the garden is tainted now, and it is less fun to play in; the old inhabitants, already invested there, will stay, but they are that much less likely to attract new blood. Or if there are new members, their quality also has gone down.

Eliezer_Yudkowsky21 April 2009 

Seeds of Change

http://www.seedsofchange.com//

Preserving Biodiversity Supporting Sustainable Organic Agriculture In 1989, Seeds of Change began with a simple mission: to preserve biodiversity and promote sustainable, organic agriculture. By cultivating and disseminating an extensive range of organically grown vegetable, flower, herb and cover crop seeds, we have honored that mission for 20 years. In 1989, Seeds of Change began with a simple mission: to preserve biodiversity and promote sustainable, organic agriculture. By cultivating and disseminating an extensive range of organically grown vegetable, flower, herb and cover crop seeds, we have honored that mission for 20 years.

Northern Light (on Washington Cabernet Sauvignon)

http://www.chow.com/food-news/53915/northern-light/

Friday, April 6, 2007, by Jordan Mackay

A classic Washington Cabernet is different. It can have the same generous fruit of a California wine, but it will also have the acidity and structure of an old-world wine. And more often than not the tannins are sweet and smooth. Cabernet needs prolonged sun exposure to ripen its surfeit of tannins. In Washington, which is at the same latitude as Burgundy and Bordeaux, the grapes get longer, slightly cooler sunlight—two to three more hours per day during the prime growing season than they would get farther south in California.

Just 100 users responsible for two-thirds of illegal file sharing

http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/53728-just-100-users-responsible-for...

A team at Carlos III University of Madrid examined the behavior of users who published over 55,000 files on the two main portals of BitTorrent, Mininova and The Pirate Bay. They collected the names, ISPs and IP numbers of publishers, and the IP numbers of downloaders. They found that just 100-odd users were responsible for 66 percent of content published and 75 percent of downloads.

TNH on AW re: Comment moderation

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3582777&postcount=18

Comments posted with obvious bad intent? You delete them as soon as possible. Letting them stand damages the conversation, and makes your site seem less worthwhile to the sort of commenters you want to attract. Next, you check their IP address to see whether they’ve made other comments on your site. If they have, consider deleting or disemvowelling those as well. Useful, substantive comments can be let stand, but if they’re just throwaways, zap them too. If you think your other commenters will be confused by this, leave a note explaining what you did.

Layout Cookbook: An Illustrated Reference of Website Layouts for Web Designers

http://www.layoutcookbook.com/

The web layouts on this site serve 2 purposes: 1) A visual reference of website layouts for the web designer. As a reference for the designer, this website provides over 500 layouts to use in planning and designing websites. Various elements such as buttons, sidepanels, or headers can be taken from the layouts and combined with each other to create new custom website layouts. It is up to the website designer to decide what to place within the layouts. A circle can be a photo, text, or a gradient fill. The choice is up to the designer’s imagination.

TNH on Scalzi's Whatever about Comment Moderation

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/09/30/my-comment-deletions-policy/#comment-16...

I was surprised by how surprised they were when I said no. As I fruitlessly explained to them over and over again, “You own your own words. You don’t own the conversation they’re a part of, and you don’t have the right to deprive it of its sense and context by removing them later.” (The point of owning their own words was that we wouldn’t alter or re-use their comments for some other purpose. We might disemvowel them, but the disemvowelled comments were left in situ, with all their consonants intact.)