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Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

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Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#91

Post by KirinDave »

grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

I see no real correlation between "great political ideas" and their source. You're just as likely to get terrible totalitarian, unworkable, incoherent, or simply misinformed ideas as good ones from any one source (e.g, Ayn Rand & co for an example of a series of well-formulated but relatively baseless ideas).

Is it possible that there is no way to predict the quality of these sorts of systems (assuming non-triviality) without actually carrying out an experiment?

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#92

Post by lurkinggrue »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #47
xenophanes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've made a troll quality insult against Republicans ("Republicans sound like trolls" without any argument, details, quote, etc). Hmm. Trolling about trolling. Meta irony, I hope?

"We should not allow Muslims to enter the country." Is this statement a troll, or what someone actually believes? There's enough wrong with it that I could believe it's a troll, and yet I've honestly met people who would be completely sincere in saying it. Browse around a little more, and you'll find many other statements like it. Part of me hopes it's just idiotic trolls ruining what could have been constructive dia…

We need to stop Muslin from getting into this country! That damn loosely-woven cotton fabric keeps getting in here.

Yeah, what is sad is it is way too easy to troll in a place like that and come off as sincere as many actual arguments there are just as insane.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#93

Post by lurkinggrue »

Flemlord wrote: post #77
mcav wrote: post #48

When I visit the site, I get this: Unavailable A very high volume of Americans are speaking out right now. Please wait a moment and try again.

Of all the comments on the site and in this thread, this is the one that made me laugh.

Yesterday all you got was .net error pages.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#95

Post by notauser »

illumin8 wrote: post #87
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrat's new website not exactly what he hoped it would be : "Today presently in our world you can notice a lot of instability in our Earth’s physic’s. Like now we are having a lot of Earthquakes, Tsunamis, we also have El nino on the equator and now something new like Iceland’s new erupting Volcano and this hasn’t happened since the 18 hundreds. I would also like to talk about how I thing we can possibly repair so…

Quit linking to insane blog posts and pretending it comes from an official DNC website. Anyone can create a blog at my.barackobama.com. It's like blogspot. Unfortunately, there is no mandatory mental health screening required to purchase an Internet connection or a computer.

I think you mean 'fortunately'. A few trolls is a small price to pay for something approximating anonymity and freedom.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#96

Post by emehrkay »

hugh3 wrote: post #31
emehrkay wrote: post #9

They're trolling for troll-attention. They know the more trolls that come and make funny posting the more attention it will garnish. ..at least I hope that is their plan. Anyway, this site doesnt need software that maps moons, I'm sure it could be done as a weekend project with [your favorite set of frameworks] and some red bull.

Also, the trolls will get bored after a few days and move on, but the site will still be there long after 4chan has forgotten about it. It's possible that a genuine community will show up to use the site in the way they intended.

If the site hasnt changed policies after it is used in its intended manor, the re-tolling would be that much better.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#97

Post by fgf »

lukev wrote: post #17
hugh3 wrote: post #11

They seem to have underestimated the speed at which trolls can ruin everything. This, of course, is why we can't have nice things.

I'd have more sympathy, except that attempting to establish policy by soliciting on a public, unmoderated website is a ludicrous idea to begin with. It's got about the same validity as Fox News running a radiobutton poll on their website on "Is Obama really a citizen?"

You seem to be under the impression that they give a shit about the results. I think it's just a publicity stunt. (They do, of course, care about getting votes but there are more effective methods for finding out what voters want them to say.)

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#98

Post by prospero »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #90
grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

An almost exactly analogous argument could be used to "prove" that Wikipedia would entirely fail [1]. Replace "Great political ideas" by "High-quality encyclopedia articles" etcetera. I don't personally think much of Republican policies, but I'm glad they're at least giving things like this a go. I could wish, however, that they'd spoken with more people who have real insight into how social websites work. They could…

Wikipedia is not a coherent entity, it's a bunch of tinpot dictators ruling over their own little fiefdoms. Wikipedia's success doesn't disprove the above statement, it just shows that the quality of one article is orthogonal to all the others.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#99

Post by yummyfajitas »

illumin8 wrote: post #85
yummyfajitas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone doubts it would be different if the Dems made such a site: "We must not stop until the American people win the war on Health-Care [...] Our leaders today are nothing short of Angels. “Gods Elect” put in power by God for his people and his world." http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/dalecourtney?p...

You're linking to a blog post, not an official DNC site. Anyone can post any tripe they want on my.barackobama.com... Notice the "my" domain name?

Anyone can post any tripe they want on americaspeakingout.com. That's the point - any community generated political site will be full of crazy nonsense, regardless of the party behind it.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#100

Post by amanfredi »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #90
grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

An almost exactly analogous argument could be used to "prove" that Wikipedia would entirely fail [1]. Replace "Great political ideas" by "High-quality encyclopedia articles" etcetera. I don't personally think much of Republican policies, but I'm glad they're at least giving things like this a go. I could wish, however, that they'd spoken with more people who have real insight into how social websites work. They could…

This isn't a valid comparison. A high quality encyclopedia article is not analogous to a great political idea. Particularly, an encyclopedia article is grounded in fact, while a great political idea may be considered an untested theory.
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