As usual Flavius, your well intended post will draw only air, not even iron.

I tried to tell them way back when they were trashing Clinton that they're fanaticism only served to scare many of those who hadn't drunk the cool aid towards McCain.

I'd like to see the regular professional posters come out and take a stance on what you said. It's almost as if they're playing out of a playbook that says "Comment not" and "Recommend not" to anyone whose not on the team.

Posted at September 14, 2008 11:10 AM in response to Vetting or fanatacism

She would refuse it anyway. Last thing she wants is the bottom spot on this ticket. She's acting like she's interested because she'd seem like a spoil sport if she publicly said she wouldn't take it.

I'm sure she has told Obama not to ask her. He's acting like she's under consideration to mollify the PUMA's.

Posted at July 30, 2008 12:12 AM in response to Hillary for VP-please

A number of people are almost certainly using work computers and perhaps even doing it on company time.

Posted at July 22, 2008 7:57 PM in response to Real, Fake and Both.

What about a written code of ethics? We have none that I know of. It would explicity deem certain behaviors unacceptable and morally reprehensible.

Here's a list:

Use of ethnic or misogynic slurs in a way that someone in that class would feel is demeaning

shilling without acknowledgement (people paid to support an issue or candidate should identify themselves as such)

pseud attacks discussed above

Repeated reposting

Posted at July 22, 2008 7:55 PM in response to Real, Fake and Both.

If campaigns or advocacy groups hired posters to post things on TPM and other sites, they might hesitate to do so if there was an ethics policy in place. You and Ben are thinking about the individual violators; it's the institutional violators who have the most to lose if they get caught.

While it would be nearly impossible to catch an individual, it would be very hard for an institutional violator to get away with this for long.

Let's say one of the telecom companies or an industry trade group wanted to counter the progressive opposition to telecom immunity on blogs like TPM. They then to out and hire 30 people (most likely through a subcontractor) to make regular post pro-immunity arguments on 100s of TPM-like sites around the country.

The institution would be taking a huge risk because one or more of those people would have second thoughts, want to steal some spotlight or perceive a chance to cash in and become whistleblowers.

If TPM and other sites had ethics statements or rules prohibiting this conduct, the outing of this behavior would be a huge story and the telecom/industry trade group would end up with a huge black eye.

That's why I want to see an ethics statement.

Posted at July 22, 2008 1:15 PM in response to Please define "troll"

Shill is a better word for a paid poster. In a previous life I was a poker dealer. Every card room had shills, though what most people think of as shills are now called proposition players or props.

In Nevada you can ask whether there are any proposition players or shills in the game and according to state law the cardroom management must identify them. I think TPM should have an ethics policy that requires paid posters to identify themselves as such.

Do you know of any such policy on TPM?

Posted at July 22, 2008 12:45 PM in response to Please define "troll"

Does TPM have an ethics policy relevant to this thread?

Is it a violation of TPM ethics to repost the same thing over and over?

Is it a violation of TPM ethics for a poster paid by a campaign or advocacy group to post an advocacy piece without identifying that they are paid staff?

Is it a violation of TPM ethics to post ethnic slurs?

Is it a violation of TPM ethics to advocate violence against a person, group or organizational entity?

Posted at July 22, 2008 12:29 PM in response to How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The TPM Trolls

People like Billy Glad or Getalife make (usually) pro-Clinton or contrarian posts, but are not considered trolls.

To me a troll is a paid poster, one who is paid to make posts advocating for or against an issue. McCain campaing trolls were accused of exacerbating the conflict between Clinton and Obama supporters. Many Clinton supporters believe that Obama's campaign used paid staff to post pro-Obama and anti-Clinton material. Because this is an Obamabot dominated site, these people blended in and were rarely identified (here) as trolls.

Are you aware of any ethics statement or policy about this kind of trolling.

Posted at July 22, 2008 11:51 AM in response to Please define "troll"

Is trolling a violation of TPM policy? Is there a ethics policy in place that requires a paid operative of a campaign to identify themselves as such?

Posted at July 22, 2008 11:29 AM in response to OBAMA RESPONSIBLE FOR HIGH GAS PRICES?

Your well thought out post will get little notice. This is an anti-Clinton site. Post this somewhere else if you want to hear comments.

My comment is that it's naive to characterize all of Clinton's ill treatment by the MSM as sexism. I really think that many in the media didn't want Clinton to lap the field and take away their fun. If Edwards, Gore, Kerry or anyone else had been the early front runner, they would have been equally mistreated. McCarthy got it in 68, Muskie in 72, Udall and Henry Jackson in 76, Carter in 80 was so pilloried by the press that Kennedy almost won the nomination over a sitting president (unprecedented since the civil was), Mondale in 84 was treated a lot like Clinton was this year(old, career politician, been in Washington forever) while Hart was given the coveted Camelot mantle (this was the last time the Superdelegates had to step in and decide things); Mondale won because he won the big state winner take alls, Hart in 88 was the huge favorite until the press turned the Donna Rice thing into the biggest news event since the Moon Landing; Tsongas in 92; Dean in 04.

Clinton lost because of the rules changes. The requirement that every state had to use strictly proportional delegate allocation cost her the nomination. If we had used the same method as the Republicans--or the same methods the Democrats used the last 40 years Clinton would have won in February. If just California alone had used the same winner take all primary it has had for all these years, Clinton would have won easily and early.

Posted at June 9, 2008 5:32 PM in response to A Call for Leadership from American Journalism