I’m excited to announce one of our new projects, more to come :)
We were talking in the milkchat tonight about how it would be nice to have a safe place for all the Gay Youth Bloggers out there to host their blogs. A place they can rely on and trust in, where they won’t get kicked for random reasons like it happens at services like Blogger. Since we have way more web space on the milboys server than we need… I thought we could just create such a place right here, right now! :D
Want to know more?
This is awesome, Josh. I’m not a queer teen, so I won’t participate. But it’s a very cool initiative.
Just wondering, is this going to replace the original idea you had for the collective “playground” or “oscillate wildly” blog we were talking about on the board? Or are they separate ideas?
Josh you are one of the kindest, most generous people its been a pleasure never to have met. (cept on the internetz) you put so much into this site and ask nothing for your self in return. I for one want to say Thank you!
cool idea^^
Who does your website design? Is this your work? It’s very good.
Ooh Josh! You are buying yourself a whole load of trouble! …because now *you* are going to have to be the censor! There *are* things you would find unacceptable on your server – not least because they are borderline-illegal. Now Josh the boyblog anarchist becomes the Josh the boyblog police :( !
Yeah soz but I agree with Rimmer above. How long before Boy blogs was hacked and burned.
Thank you. We know that there’re many that could use more such resources, and you seem well informed and equipped.
May I second Rimmer’s post, and only add to remain wary of “Family” Ministries that only care about the families they aprove of, the CiD, et al.
Best of hopes,
Giles.
i love you
@josephk
That’s another project, the collaboration blog will most likely start this weekend :)
@tux
I’m really not that good, I fear xD It’s a design made by Smashing Magazine. Let me know if you want the link.
@rimmer
I’m not that concerned. The service is meant to be for personal blogs only, that should invite much trouble (I hope at least). The problem with boyblogs was that it was open for every kind of blog (including edgy picture blogs) and that it used out of date software (regarding the “hack” which I don’t like to call hacking since, you know, that’s something different xD).
@all
Thanks :)
Great news, I wish I had such a place to contribute to when I was an opinionated teen myself. Of course I never identified as gay and have come to learn that no society in all of history has ever had a concept of “sexual orientation” except post-Victorian western societies. More and more it’s clear to me that such an idea is simply wrong. Human sexuality is far too fluid. It only serves to be a way to divide people when no real divide actually exists.
Probably not the place for this discussion, but per otakucode666’s post, when I was young, I thought I was heterosexual. Then I finally admitted that I liked guys a lot too, so I decided I was bisexual. After a while, I realized I was only sleeping with guys, so I decided I must be homosexual. Lately, I’ve got to the point that I really don’t give a rat’s ass what gender I get off with, and frankly there are a lot of women that I’d like to boff if I knew they wouldn’t be picking out a china pattern the next day, so I’ve decided that I’m just sexual.
Kudos to you, Josh, for offering this space, but I will exho the cautionary notes that others have posted. Do be careful, please?
*hugs*
Great idea. There are so many forces on the internet working against us.
Josh, you should really post this trailer. This looks like a beautiful film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRwSK8JFXvY
Wow. You’re awesome Josh. :)
It has me intrigued, mainly cos i’m thinking about just how cool it would be to be associated with milkboys and have the name in my blog address. You are super-famous/awesome after all. ;)
MB
@mirrorboy
Let me know if you want one :)
Wow this sounds great! Let me know if you need any help with anything. I hope this works out well. :)
@otakucode666, @angel_1in, I agree with you completely, but we are in the minority. It is hard for people to give up their illusions, and those illusions about “sexual identity” may be the worst of all to let go since this fiction allows so many to believe they are part of this or that group that doesn’t exist to begin with. Like all boundaries, they are artificial conventions. Life itself is fluid as otakucode666 has correctly pointed out about sexuality. Why divide where no division exists to begin with?
This also underscores the almost absolute belief in the omnipotence of words which are at best only vague and constantly shifting and unstable metaphors. The little word “is” has caused more trouble than all the curses that have befallen mankind put together. Stop and think: nothing “is” anything else.
HCE
@Josh
Love the blogs idea. Like Rimmer, I have concerns … but if I rememver rightly, he in the UK, and I think we here are somewhat more paranoid about these things than you euros.
@otakucode666 and others:
“no society in all of history has ever had a concept of “sexual orientation” except post-Victorian western societies”.
It is not clear that this is true. Firstly there are such concepts as berdaches, etc, that suggest sexualised differences. The idea that “Human sexuality is far too fluid” to be “a way to divide people when no real divide actually exists” is a theory, much like the theory human sexuality CAN “divide” people. If it turns out that homsexuality has genetic causes, then there will be a way to divide homos from hets. If, on the other hand, people “choose” their own sexuality, you might be right.
Some people say that if sexuality is fixed, then people of different sexualities should be treated the same – it’s not their “fault”. Saying that sexuality is chosen but we are all basically the same is like saying “don’t hate me, I’m just the same as you”, to which I say bullshit. This is how I am, if you don’t like it f*ck off and die.
@HCE:
Nothing “is” anything else??? wow
“Now Josh the boyblog anarchist becomes the Josh the boyblog police :( !”
Look at how the last Periodical Political Post ended (i.e. was shut down) and tell me he isn’t already flirting with hypocrisy on that front. So much for all the rhetoric, eh?
This IS a good idea, though, and an excellent service. Kudos. Half-heartedly.
@MrChives
I closed the comments there because you went off topic and were attacking each other instead of discussing the topic. That’s called moderation, not censorship -_-
@Josh
Please allow me to apologize for my part in the infighting. One of my posts misaddressed MrChives and somehow inferred that I approve of anarchy. As for Peters reference to ”Wir Kinder auf Bahnhoff Zoo” (good film, good song), it took that for me to read his analogy to chimps.
As for my earlier response to this post, my own concerns regarding public suppression border on paranoia and where thus reflected. It was comforting to read later posts and learn that there might be some remedy through the EU.
@MrChives
At no point did I intend to antagonize anyone. My ideals are my own, and, I assure you, they do not discount the necessity of government. It’s hardly the fault of any popularly elected government if they respond to Moral Panic, if that is what the populace demand. As for impenetrable expressions, I can always write in the colloquial, I only find it more difficult.
And what is the purpose of moderation? Generally speaking, moderation is the act of regulating a set of materials that is exposed to a given audience at the expense of very few members of that audience. The benefit is considered to outweigh the expense, which justifies the act. The goal of a moderator should be to moderate as little as possible; in other words, only when the benefit truly does outweigh the cost. The reason for this is that moderation has downsides; firstly, it can lead directly to self-censorship. Secondly, the act itself assumes a certain omniscience on the part of the one doing the moderating (to say nothing of condescending ’sigh’ emoticons).
Now, one way to look at the cost/benefit ratio is to examine the number of people who are exposed to the material who would rather not see it. In a typical forum, that number would be fairly high, since a response to a given thread bumps that thread back to the top of the page. In a blog setting, such is not the case. However, that alone does not suggest that moderation is not needed on a blog. If the comment section on a given post is still ‘alive’ in the sense that people are commenting on it who are not a part of the content that one wishes to moderate, there is an impetus to moderate. It is to the benefit of everyone who is still engaged in the conversation.
However, when a post is four to five days old, and the comment section is ‘dead’ with the exception of the argument, the number of people who are going to be exposed to that information unwillingly is relatively low. By that point, we may reasonably assume that whoever is frequenting the given comment section is doing so with the purpose of following the argument itself. Whether or not they find it distasteful is irrelevant, then, to the discussion on moderation.
If the foregoing is true, then it stands to reason that ‘moderation’ under those circumstances is more costly than it is beneficial. And when THAT is the case, ‘moderation’ is essentially censorship.
I remember someone suggesting once that every law or imposing act of government diminishes our freedom because we become afraid of doing or saying something that might be illegal…I wonder who that could’ve been…
@MrChives
If you don’t like it here – stop visiting this blog, simple as that. This is not a forum. Stop abusing the comments section of totally off topic posts for your personal crusade, will you? It’s just annoying and ridiculous how you try to depict yourself as a victim of censorship just because you’re asked to use comments for an ON TOPIC discussion without personal insults.
Open a thread in the board if you want to discuss this or anything else that has nothing to do with the post.
Josh – I have been a moderator on two different forums that had a perfectly simple approach to trolls. They were treated exactly the same way as spammers: troll-posts were deleted without comment, and no discussion about the decision was entered into, in public or in private. Think about it: how does a troll post differ from a spam post? It doesn’t. It might in theory be of interest to some minuscule percentage of readers, but it doesn’t belong on your blog any more than spam does: in the context of the blog (or the forum for that matter), it’s a self-publicising nuisance, just like spam. Delete delete, then happily ignore and delete again. Yes, he has the right to free speech – just as a spammer has the right to promote a legal business – but on his own blog and server, not on yours; yes, he has the right to free speech, but he does not have the right to stomp through your garden and yell what he thinks through your letterbox, or to vandalise your magazine on its way to your readers. – R.