ID advocates are prone to brag about their self-professed expertise, which all too often relies on some respectable knowledge of engineering or other fields irrelevant to biology. DaveScot, the raving mad anti-scientist at Uncommon Descent, is a perfect example…but even in their own domains of knowledge they too often prove to be incompetent. Case in point: their blog has somehow become delisted from Google, and now DaveScot is flailing about, trying to find someone to blame. His answer? Wesley Elsberry did it. It’s all because other sites mirror their content, which he thinks Google finds offensive.
Now it may be that Google thought UD was maintaining a link farm to boost their rank, but it’s not illegal, and if that’s the case, a letter with the explanation ought to eventually correct it—it’s obvious that UD is a stupid site, but it’s not a spam site.
Wesley’s mirroring is perfectly reasonable and neither illegal nor unethical. There are a few sites (for instance, this one; need I mention a certain troll who has a pzmyers hate site, and not only parrots my words, but distorts them?) out there that take Pharyngula’s RSS feed and put it on their own website. It’s not a problem, especially not if they acknowledge the source with a link (and note that every post on Wesley’s mirror points right back to UD: it’s a source of traffic and attention for them!) This is going on everywhere, so it’s ridiculously ignorant and naive to complain about a common property of the web.
Here’s the most amusing part of DaveScot’s complaint, though:
Several websites not under our control have mirrored our content without our permission. We are a blog with strictly enforced moderation rules for commenters. These other websites are mirroring our content so that they may comment on it without moderation.
Get that? You are commenting on their publicly posted articles in places outside their control. Better not mention that idiot, DaveScot, or that bumbling, pretentious incompetent, William Dembski, around the water cooler, or DaveScot will come around with a bladder on a stick and whack you on the head.
They simply do not understand the net. Much as they don’t understand biology.
(Uh-oh. I’m commenting on their words on my site, outside their control! Send in the lawyers! What I write on the web is also a much milder version of the commentary going on inside my head. Where’s the thought police when you need ’em?)
If DaveScot is serious about objecting to people discussing the matters brought up at UD, there are a couple of steps he should take: remove the RSS feed altogether, and put the content behind a password-protected wall, and restrict access. They either have a publicly accessible site which allows outsiders to discuss it, or they don’t—they don’t get to hang out buck naked for the world to see and then ask Google and other web entities to police readers so that they don’t mention the pimple pattern on their scrawny, mottled butt.
Why do I get password requests when I try to click on the links to Wes’ sites?
I get a password request as well.
I suppose they took PZ’s suggestion of restricted access to heart.
DaveScot’s mental retardation seems to be progressing. Time for the creationists to pray for a cure!
Oops, I forgot: prayer doesn’t work.
You’re screwed, DaveTard. By the way, DaveTard, have those patents of yours been valued lately? You know — the ones that don’t cite any non-patent prior art? LOL, dipshxt!
Hey, don’t knock that site too much. It’s one of the most entertaining things on the net, topped only by davison’s site. I suspect most of their traffic comes from PT or from here, anyway.
I don’t get it: I thought they wanted this. Why can’t they make up their minds?
Minds?
No, it’s Wes’ mirror sites I can’t get to. They sounded cool, and I wanna see damnit!
I though davescott got kicked off of UD
Sheesh. I just love getting to say this: what a bunch of jackasses.
According to this post at AtBC, Elsberry has taken BUUD down until this gets worked out:
I screwed the pooch wrt the link, I guess. Try this one.
Okay, I’m bumping up against the ceiling of my techno knowledge here but there is no way in my wildest dreams that I thought DaveScot would ever make such assertions, that Google forbids mirroring, and that mirroring empties Google’s cache…completely absurd. Besides, even if mirroring were illegal, it’s better than being quote mined! Huh? Whaddayasay, Disco Boys?
Hey, don’t knock that site too much.
No kidding. I hate soaps, love UD’s crap. It’s more theatrical.
Minds?
[Snarky laugh.] I don’t love UD’s himbos for their minds, that’s for sure.
Copyright law crosses my eyes, and I’m pretty sure some of the more recent stuff is poorly executed. That said:
Might UD have some case here? At what point is mirroring portions of a site against their wishes illegal? Surely it can’t be illegal to quote passages with citation (?), but one also probably can’t reprint an entire book?
I also wonder why UD isn’t just harassing Google. It sounds like Google has totally misinterpreted/misread other sites’ citations of UD, and punished UD unjustifiably. Seems to me they’re lashing out at Elsberry from reflex when this is pretty much entirely Google’s fault. Of course…I suppose it’s also Google’s right (?) to list/delist anyone they choose.
Google looks for certain types of behavior as an indication that a site owner is trying to “game” their ranking algorithm, and if they catch you doing so, they stop indexing your site.
Dave’s claim is that Wes’s site looks like a mirror farm to Google (one of the techniques Google looks out for).
You know, if mirroring got you kicked out of google searches, I really think wikipedia would have noticed; as it doesn’t appear to do anything of the sort, we’re going to have to wait until the powers at Google decide to say what happened.
This is one step up from saying “the internet is a series of tubes”.
PZ – I think that Bill and DaveTard are much more likely to have boils on their butts, rather than pimples.
As observation into this area is one area that science does NOT want to delve into, I am afraid we will have to take it on faith alone.
I do agree that Dembski is down for scrawny buttitus, however, I am thinking DaveTard is much more likely to be a “wide-load”, and probably a clone to the Dennis Nedry character in the first Jurasic Park movie.
But, but, but… I thought they were for “teaching the controversy”?? What’s wrong with a little controversy?
Wes is a classy guy. He didn’t have to shut down the mirror: he could have just let UD and Google hash it out. But instead, he makes every effort to make sure that he isn’t unduly silencing the UD folk’s ability to make complete asses of themselves in as publically available a way possible.
Several websites not under our control have mirrored our content without our permission. We are a blog with strictly enforced moderation rules for commenters. These other websites are mirroring our content so that they may comment on it without moderation.
Not a complete mystery, considering how DaveTard has banned people for making reasonable comments, telling his lies about such people without allowing a response at UD.
But he’s distorting the purpose of much of the mirroring, demonstrating his usual dishonesty. Wesley, in particular, archives some of UD because of the penchant that the dolts have for covering up their mistakes by editing and deleting their especially stupid comments. Of course I’m not revealing anything new here, but I thought it worth repeating how the Tard has once again gotten it wrong, whether deliberately or via his gross incompetence.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
Dave’s claim is that Wes’s site looks like a mirror farm to Google
Ah, I get it now! Thanks, Don Baccus.
Still, I’m pretty doubtful that they even have a copyright case, either. Wes’s use is fair use to me (but I’m no expert).
Out of curiosity I did some poking around on the Web, and found that apparently the intersection of blogging and copyright law is not boring. See, e.g., http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2005/08/blog_content_ag_1.htm#comments
So the latest warning to Wesley (and implicitly to others) at UD may actually have some legal effect.
This of course doesn’t make DaveScot any smarter. My favorite was his explanation, when arguing that gravity is the strongest force in the universe (did you have a link to that a while ago, PZ?), that he was referring to “high mass regimes.” Uh-huh. So if gravity is the strongest force in “high mass regimes,” does that mean light (OK, electromagnetism) is the strongest force in “high brightness regimes”?
There is not enough conspiracy stories around.
What about Google being part of the proscience plot against Dembskiism? Maybe they are using their Spider crawler sense to listen in on Dave Tard? Perhaps Google, as a World Wide Web interest company, has joined forces with Hugo Chavez to rig US voting machines for the upcoming election? Maybe Google are sending dynamites through the series of tubes to blow all of creationism up?
“Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.”
(Hmm… Perhaps I shouldn’t have read that Terry Pratchett quote first. He is so imaginative.)
My favorite was the part where DaveScot put Wesley “on notice”. I was waiting for him to pull out a Stephen Colbert-esque list with entries like ‘Darwin’ and ‘The Fossil Record’ and dramatically add Wesley’s name.
Thank you, Mr. Larsson. That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.
There’s this thing called “fair use”.
If the material is posted for editorial or educational purposes and is properly attributed then it’s pure-as-the-driven-snow-legal.
If this turns out to be the case, then my understand is that probably all Wesley will need to do is redo his site using Google’s special rel=”nofollow” metatagging. If I understand nofollow correctly– and mind you, I might not– when applied to a link it causes Google to voluntarily not index that link or use it in pagerank calculations, thus (I assume) also removing the risk it will trigger the spam alarms. Depending on what the cause of UD’s delisting turns out to be, perhaps this should be looked into.
Come now, Jud, you’re completely misrepresenting his comments on gravity. He said that gravity is stronger than all other forces when there is a lot of it, and not as much of the other forces. Don’t you see? Such insight! The man is brilliant!
Kadin, you got me chuckling all over again.
Graculus, re fair use: It just ain’t that simple. Really. This is, after all (Sylvester Stallone voice) “Da Law,” and that’s hardly ever simple.
I used to be much more into web-technology, but I think I stopped around time RSS got popular. Ironically, I did couple years back start looking into distributing modular web-based content (instructions) at work, but of course never had time to develop that through. Plus I couldn’t figure out a good combination of software for content creation.
The background for DaveScot’s chosen target may possibly be found here: Languedoc Diary.
It’s a discussion between ‘Carlos’ and ‘Crandaddy’ begun at UD, but discontinued there (see A Reply to Mark Frank).
In one of the comments on the thread you’ll find this:
That link is to Wesley’s “mirror”.
I blogged that three-butt booting and remember it well; it had to do with UD’s totally misogynist “Darwinists need to recruit Paris Hilton to sell their product” post:
Dembski blasted: As I indicated a long time ago, this blog is my playground. When I have a moment, I’ll be booting all three of you.
Got that, everyone? He repeated that “great unwashed” statement as well, which refers to the group of average joes and janes (like me) that he thinks he belongs to (oh yeah, father an evolutionary biology professor, mother an art dealer–real blue collar). Here’s what the three offending commentors said:
valkhorn
What does this [video of Paris] have to do with Evolution or ID?
Tiggy
Here we get another piece of positive evidence for ID. Thanks Dr.Dembski for your continuing high quality technical output. What would ID do without you?
EJ Klone
We con’t need marketing, we need research. What’s the deal here…But wait, the article seems to suggest that the parody clip was a huge success, because it spread virally. I’ve seen several marketing campaigns do well because of that. So are you instead suggesting that they are doing a good job spreading their drivel around?
Oh. I reproduced UD’s “copyrighted content” here and at my site. Am I going to be sued, now? So be it.
Maybe I jotted some notes, too. Put the cuffs on me.
For a while, it looked like UD management had managed to scrape up enough courage to deal with real debate, but it looks like they found the experience too upsetting and have reverted to heavy-handed censorship. In a rather extreme case, DaveScot actually created an entire topic devoted to rebutting a couple of my comments on another thread. He gives the impression that I failed to respond to his rebuttal, neglecting to mention that he has censored my responses. Serious disagreement with UD official doctrine seems to have pretty much vanished of late, so I assume that they are applying a similar level of censorship across the board.
He gives the impression that I failed to respond to his rebuttal, neglecting to mention that he has censored my responses
Yes, they really like that one. When I was last banned at ARN, they had a me-bashing fest afterward in which several posters may idiotically false claims about me. These people are like the nerdy weaselly kids in gradeschool – call you names then run to hide behind teacher when you get mad.