
Dear internet: You've been trolled - llambda
http://raganwald.posterous.com/dear-internet-youve-been-trolled
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danso
I wager the OP knows more about the Magna Carta than I do, but boy did he miss
the point.

He says himself that the Magna Carta was written to restrain the king. That
does not translate to not calling someone out for a transgression. For
example, in America, if I witness you beating my child to death with a bat,
you are still innocent until proven guilty...in the eyes of the court. But I
have every right to call you a murderer and blare it across the land if i want

~~~
raganwald
I think you mistake my point, or I missed you when I aimed it. My question is
not whether the essay should make a factual statement about the existence of a
web page that purports to be an essay submitted as coursework and more than it
is about a fictitious accusation of murder.

My essay is about what we do when we encounter the accusation. I am not all
that concerned about someone shouting “Jim Henson murdered Frank Oz.” I am
concerned with whether people hearing this cry repeat it and turn it into
folklore (“Everybody knows Jim murdered Frank”) that becomes the basis for
punishment in practice (“Hire Jim? No way, I heard he’s a killer”).

~~~
spacemanaki
I think I missed the point too, because this comment, your comments on the
College Misery HN thread, and your other posts about Internet mobs (I'm having
deja vu, I think you must have commented about this in the past) just come off
as more clear headed and make much more sense than this blog post. I can only
speak for myself, but I think it's partly that you have some thinly veiled
support for people gaming the credentialism system and because I have a knee
jerk reaction to plagiarism that's probably partly indoctrination and partly
some moral sense of fairness.

Personally, I am really interested in hearing more of your thoughts about the
credentialism issue (I apologize if you've blogged about it before and I've
missed it). But I think that the issue of Internet lynch mobs is a different
topic and getting these two topics with potentials for emotional reactions
mixed up is what's confusing me.

