BoH: Miranda PJ (BCC Zeitcast 51)
Welcome to part five of the 5-Year Anniversary Banner of Heaven Retrospective! This is the first of four conversations I have recorded with individuals who were closely involved with the Banner of Heaven Weblog. The individuals interviewed represent different points of reference, but all played a role and felt some measure of the consequences of the hoax. In this first entry, DKL (the creator of “Miranda PJ”) discusses the creation of BoH, the individuals involved, the thoughts and intents of those behind the scenes, and more.
Links for your convenience to posts discussed in the podcast:
- Rosalynde’s Famous Comment
- Books Bad. Libraries Good.
- Porn, Divorce, and Modern Women
- In the Future There Will Be No Diet Soda
- Greg Fox’s argument for banning DKL
- SeptimusH’s argument against banning DKL
- Happy Birthday Wilford Brimley!
- Movie Review: The Life Aquatic
——————
Subscribe to the BCC Zeitcast in iTunes here.
Hrm. Hold on–looks like the file isn’t showing up.
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Ah. There we go–now it’s up.
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
so Scott is a real person.
Comment by Dan — June 4, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
What happened to DKL’s final comment?
Comment by Tracy M — June 4, 2010 @ 3:25 pm
Clearly, someone hasn’t been subscribing in iTunes…
Clearly, someone doesn’t appreciate KeyboardCat…
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 3:35 pm
Scott,
Yeah, I haven’t gotten into the Zeitcast yet. Though I just downloaded this one (currently listening to your interview with DKL).
Comment by Dan — June 4, 2010 @ 3:36 pm
Oh hell! I knew I recognized that horrible music from somewhere…
Comment by Tracy M — June 4, 2010 @ 3:37 pm
Interesting retrospective. I think I came across Banner of Heaven right after all the explosions had already happened and was a bit confused by it all so good to have some reaffirmation of what on earth went on.
Comment by JonW — June 4, 2010 @ 4:51 pm
Way to cut off DKL there at the end!
This was really interesting, partly because I’ve never heard DKL’s voice before, and he sounds exactly like my cousin. One thing, though, that I think you got wrong, is that, until quite recently, BoH was not so covered up and nailed into a coffin that you couldn’t find out about it. It was still up for quite a while and I actually stumbled accross it by accident in 2007 and read it little by little over the course of that year. For me it was like reading a great dime store novel or watching a train wreck in slow motion. I couldn’t look away. I stopped watching TV completely for a while and just read BoH. It was all the entertainment I needed.
I think that’s why I have the fond feelings about it that I do. I know some people got their feelings hurt, and there is some very good reason for apologies and regrets there, but apart from that, it was a wonderful creative acheivement, and I loved reading it and experiencing it even after the fact. I don’t know how I would have felt if I was present at the creation and experienced it firsthand as a commenter, and I have even less idea what it would have been like to be one of the writers, but I hope that in both cases I would have enough big-picture perspective to recognize the same thing I did later, the dirty little secret that dares not speak its name: BoH was very cool and a lot of fun. (Shhh. Don’t say it out loud).
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 6:29 pm
The one telling thing on this podcast is Rosalynde’s unwillingness to act deceptively. She was the only one who with the foresight to recognize how people were going to react to being tricked. They all knew she had misgivings about it, and forged on regardless with their grand enterprise. From this podcast it doesnt sound like her withdrawl resulted in any internal soul-searching or discussion with the rest of them.
People’s perceptions of whats funny sure is different.
That didnt change my opinion of DKL and Miranda at all. I still see her as a whipping post for his pride, setting her up as a dingbat that he humiliates for his own personal gratification. Take the SCOTUS nomination post for example. DKL sees no harm in fighting with her. How many times did Miranda win an argument with DKL? Sorry, but I cannot help but see at least some subtle misogyny here. One of the reasons I never put DKL together with her when guessing who the authors were during the outing was I couldnt fathom someone being so callous and self-promoting in setting her up as his intrinsically flawed opposite.
Comment by Kurt — June 4, 2010 @ 7:47 pm
Oh yeah–I saw Rosalynde’s original comment.
Comment by ESO — June 4, 2010 @ 7:54 pm
Kurt,
That part of the conversation didn’t strike me as being very poignant when we were recording–obviously, as I just marched on with the conversation. However, afterward when I was editing the podcast, that little bit about Rosalynde really stuck out to me, too.
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 7:54 pm
ESO,
I don’t think that’s the part we’re talking about.
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 7:55 pm
Scott–I am not responding to Kurt’s comment, just to the podcast. DKL did not seem to confirm that he had seen the original comment. I am just saying that it did exist–I saw it–and it was my introduction to BoH.
Comment by ESO — June 4, 2010 @ 8:15 pm
So, I still don’t get why Rosalynde phrased her comment in that way. I met her once and I really cannot picture her saying that. On top of which, she’s not exactly known for making comments like that before or since. What gives?
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 8:25 pm
Uh, Kurt, how many times has anyone won an argument with DKL? If Miranda ever won, you would have known immediately that she was fake (or that they were having an affair).
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 8:27 pm
MCQ,
When DKL is losing he resorts to ad hominems, obfuscation and tangents to throw his opponent off. He knows that as well as anyone who has ever backed him into a corner. Go and read that SCOTUS post MCQ, and knowing what you know now, doesnt that just reek of him wanting to show off and using Miranda to shill? If he was really being self-aware, he would have had her backing him into a corner and him employing all those tactics against her.
Comment by Kurt — June 4, 2010 @ 8:39 pm
Yeah, I’m not saying he fights fair, just that he never admits to ever losing or even appearing to lose. In the case of Miranda, I think he was in a tough position, because he didn’t write her as being all that bright, so he couldn’t actually have her look like much of a challenge to him. But it’s not showing off to beat up on someone weaker than you. It just makes him look like a bully, which in turn allowed them to use that material as the impetus behind the “ban DKL” threads. I’m not sure, but that may have been his motivation all along, rather than some latent misogyny. DKL has never struck me as a woman hater.
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 8:45 pm
Now THAT would have been a sweet story arc.
Comment by ESO — June 4, 2010 @ 8:45 pm
ESO, that was a real missed opportunity, no question about it.
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 8:45 pm
The one lingering question for me is where did that neck come from? She’s a giraffe!
Comment by Eric Russell — June 4, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
Yeah, the neck was insane! Didn’t they steal the pic from some Danish school website?
I looked it up, it was a Norwegian music academy. It’s sad that I still remembered that.
Comment by NFlanders — June 4, 2010 @ 9:26 pm
I think you should have pressed him a little bit more on the non-apology, but otherwise it was very insightful.
Comment by Tim J — June 4, 2010 @ 9:34 pm
Free “Obey Aaron” T-shirt for anyone who finds the picture of the original Miranda.
Comment by Brian G. — June 4, 2010 @ 10:36 pm
Found it!
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/music/gracejones/sonar09/7.jpg
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 10:48 pm
Tim J,
We actually had a failed attempt at recording the night before this one was recorded, but the audio quality was poor due to an Internet connection issue and we quit after 10 minutes.
In any case, during those 10 minutes, I asked DKL if he still stands behind his non-apology.
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 10:59 pm
Btw, we are all now proving DKL right about how we all talk about him in 3rd person as if he isn’t here.
Or did I edit that part out? I don’t even remember…
Comment by Scott B. — June 4, 2010 @ 11:01 pm
DKL has a sexy voice.
Comment by DKL's Wife — June 4, 2010 @ 11:08 pm
No need to tell us his answer.
Isn’t that how we talk about anyone who isn’t the author of the post?
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 11:14 pm
Brian G, arj already found it and sent it to me. It’s up on the blog. When I saw it in his email, my heart jumped. I think that you cannot fully understand Miranda without seeing that photo.
Kurt, “whipping post for [DKL's] pride”? No. It could never be. I think Miranda was awesome. Really awesome. I know she hated me. But for all her flaws, for all her issues, she was my adored, if slightly damaged, creation. And who among us isn’t slightly damaged, anyway. For the record, if you keep score, you’ll see that Miranda wins or gets the last word in many, if not most of the exchanges.
For my part, I thought that the argument she offered against Harriet Miers was better than any I read from liberal columnists. My response is intense, but free of the ad hominem fallacy, though I am aware that you mistakenly believe that any type of name calling at all is ad hominem. At any rate, she no more lost that exchange than Nate Oman loses an argument based on the fact that I comment and he does not respond.
But if I went after Miranda because she was such an easy target, then how do you explain how frequently I’ve gone after you?
MCQ, I don’t think that’s very funny. Even so, thanks for your spirited defense. You’re awesome.
Tim J, Scott B is correct. Our original podcast attempt was frustrated by the poor internet connection at the hotel where I was staying for the recent MHA Conference in Independence, MO. In that original attempt, the first question that Scott B asked me was about my non-apology,
He read to me from the opening passages, “Unlike my co-bloggers, I offer no general apology. After all, I have historically been among the most reviled participants in the Bloggernacle. Why stop now?” He then asked me, “DKL, after 4 and a half years, how does that strike you?”
Comment by DKL — June 4, 2010 @ 11:26 pm
It seems like she was trying to do her part in the project by being outrageous (especially for her) in the comments. It certainly added to the air of surreality in the blog. I was a bit miffed that she edited out her vulgarity as it made me look like I was shocked by a bowel movement instead of a four-letter word.
Of course, if you put an amateur psychoanalyst hat on, it could be that she was trying to atone for her complicity in the enterprise by opening herself up to ridicule by acting way outside her normal comfort zone.
Comment by NFlanders — June 4, 2010 @ 11:27 pm
Or it was a freudian slip…
Comment by MCQ — June 4, 2010 @ 11:39 pm
I was a bit miffed that she edited out her vulgarity as it made me look like I was shocked by a bowel movement instead of a four-letter word.
What vulgarity did she edit out? “Taking a shit?” Let us readers know. (And don’t tell me it was on the podcast; I don’t listen to them.)
Comment by Russell Arben Fox — June 4, 2010 @ 11:50 pm
MCQ, I’m surprised you haven’t heard my voice before. I did another podcast about less serious topics with Steve Evans and Ronan Head right here. This podcast with Scott B was pretty much a casual and informative discussion about Banner of Heaven. The Steve Evans podcast is a raucous affair centered on porn, perversions, and violence. Make no mistake: Nobody can talk porn, perversions and violence like I can. (I don’t want to give too much away, but in it I explain how tithing and the twelfth Article of Faith contribute to porn usage in Utah.) It should be required material for college freshmen.
Comment by DKL — June 5, 2010 @ 12:19 am
If you can’t get the link to work on the podcast, you can read this comment that I made to a Jed Woodworth guest post at Times and Seasons, where I answer his questions about the ideal university.
Comment by DKL — June 5, 2010 @ 12:29 am
Now I remember, but in that podcast, you were using your porn voice!
Comment by MCQ — June 5, 2010 @ 12:54 am
Sadly (or not, depending on your preferences for violences, perversions, and p0rn), all of the Zeitcasts from Season 2 are lost and shall never return. The hosting service Steve, Ronan, and co. used went under and didn’t bother notifying anyone in time to save the files.
Actually, if anyone out there happens to have downloaded any of those mp3 files, and thus has a copy on a hard drive or iPod, then I would very much appreciate letting me know…
Comment by Scott B. — June 5, 2010 @ 2:12 am
Russell,
It is on the podcast. If you can’t be bothered to click on the “play” button and listen for 20 minutes, then poop to you.
Comment by Scott B. — June 5, 2010 @ 2:15 am
Back in the day I tried very hard to find the original image of all the participants. By “original” I mean find where it came from on the web before BoH. I must have spent hours on Norwegian music academy sites with no luck. In fact, I never found any of the photos. I only discovered that Aaron’s photo contained an embedded copyright from Duke University. I spent a huge amount of time on the Duke site looking for a background and uniform that matched to no avail. 9M commenter Sleuth found the actual Aaron Fenton glare photo. All those photos came down after the Duke lacrosse scandal.
Comment by a random John — June 5, 2010 @ 9:49 am
Oh bother, I generally hate listening to podcasts. But all right….
[twenty minutes later]
Hmm. Okay, so I was right–”taking a shit.” Doesn’t strike me as particularly freakin’ hilarious, but to each their own. (Speaking of arguably funny comment threads, didn’t DKL, way back when, get banned from one blog or another for referring to “sluts”?)
Comment by Russell Arben Fox — June 5, 2010 @ 3:37 pm
RAF,
The comment alone isn’t that funny–it’s the continued replies from Septimus as he can’t get over it throughout the thread.
Comment by Scott B. — June 5, 2010 @ 4:11 pm
Aaron: “in Sep’s post A Man Alone one reader who I will not name, expressed pleasure in crapping. Which disgusted Septimus who thought another solo activity was more understandable. For this other solo activity I prefer the scriptural term, spilling seed. But then in a surprising twist in Miranda’s post the reader finding pleasure in crapping was disgusted in the strongest terms with spilling seed. I guess this reader and Septimus won’t be getting together anytime soon. As their tolerance of solo activities are opposite.”
Comment by Eric Russell — June 5, 2010 @ 4:42 pm
Precisely, Eric Russell–the way that Rosalynde’s comment just took on a life of its own and found its way into multiple other threads is the reason it’s so fantastic.
Comment by Scott B. — June 5, 2010 @ 5:04 pm
Russell Arben Fox: didn’t DKL, way back when, get banned from one blog or another for referring to “sluts”?
Not even close. I’m tempted to say something like “If that’s the sort of delusion that you must entertain in order to maintain the legitimacy of your ban at T&S, then far be it from me to burst your bubble,” but I’m in a polite mood. So I’ll just point out that I resent your making this sort of accusation, since it’s exactly the sort of accusation that creates misimpressions that are likely to be perpetuated beyond this thread.
Just to be perfectly clear: One factor that led the Times & Seasons permabloggers to ban me was my refusal to stop using the word “chick” on the hallowed pages of their blog, as in with this comment, where I say, “…I think chicks look great in garments.” (For the record, I stand by this comment. Chicks do, in fact, look great in garments.)
There was also this thing with Neil Labute, where he showed up and started insulting everyone and generally behaving like Eeyore, while everyone responded by fawning over him and falling all over each other to be the next person to receive insults from his startlingly pedestrian wit. When I responded in kind by returning Labute’s insults (e.g.. “Renee Zellweger never made anything of mine boring”), the T&S permabloggers stepped in to rescue him by banning me. Thereafter, Mr. Labute was able to resume insulting other regular T&S commenters and bloggers without interference. (The paucity of moral courage demonstrated by T&S bloggers in this instance, however, was nothing compared to the spinelessness they demonstrated when Banner of Heaven was discovered to be fake.)
This was the sort of behavior that led to me being labeled (as Brian G. delicately put it) a “widely despised loudmouth.”
Comment by DKL — June 5, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
btw, Russell, it was great to meet you at the MHA.
Comment by DKL — June 5, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
Vintage DKL! Love it.
Comment by MCQ — June 5, 2010 @ 7:25 pm
Nice meeting you too, David. For what it’s worth, I honestly hadn’t been thinking about any of that “chick” stuff; I’d actually been thinking that there had been some contretemps over at FMH in regards to that term. But my memory is often poor, so maybe that never happened, or maybe it involved someone else. My apologies.
Comment by Russell Arben Fox — June 5, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
If memory serves the earliest DKL
controversy at T&S was his use of the word “dyke.”
Comment by a random John — June 5, 2010 @ 10:22 pm
DKL (#28) I see you never stopped posting as your wife, even after all these years.
DKL (#30) Regarding your first paragraph, that is unconvincing. You love your flawed creation, she hates you? I am just too much the cynic to buy that. I could temporarily suspend my disbelief in your explanation only by seeing her hatred of you the same way a psychoanalyst would.
David, we both know what an ad hominem is, and we both know you would rather employ them than admit to being wrong. It doesnt bother me that you do it, in fact that is one of the things I love about you, as it is a tacit admission that you have lost the logical argument.
Thank you for the compliment, I judge you to be a worthy adversary as well. But, that doesnt get you off the hook, my good friend. I see Miranda as the anti-David, and you set her up as an easy target so you could disembowel her without real effort and show your might and power in doing so. She was such a soft target, and the way you set her up to feed yourself easy arguments just seems a tad too self-serving to one so cynical as myself. I can almost buy MCQ’s reading of it as being part of the whole story arc leading to DKL’s banning, but you could have just as easily brought that about by being yourself to some other BofH persona, instead of Miranda.
Comment by Kurt — June 5, 2010 @ 10:36 pm
“bitch”, “dyke”, “chick”. Anyone still want to argue DKL isnt a misogynist with me? What would Miranda say?
Comment by Kurt — June 5, 2010 @ 10:38 pm
arj, my usage of the word “chick” had been an issue for quite some time before I referred to “the dykes in ‘The Color Purple.’” I offered them as an example of potentially lurid content that might pass muster in International Cinema, but certainly have never been shown in The Varsity Theatre. The comment in question is here.
I had a bit of fun with this when gst asked me “David, since when is it acceptable to say ‘dykes’ to refer to lesbians? Isn’t that kind of like the term ‘fags’?” and I responded:
I think that may be my favorite all-time comment ever.
Of course, the term “dyke” never come up again, and my refusal to budge on this issue was certainly the sort of thing that led Times & Seasons to ban me.
Either way, in defense of the protectors of morality at Times & Seasons, it is a mistake to surmise from their defense of dykes that that they dig chicks that dig chicks.
Comment by DKL — June 5, 2010 @ 11:59 pm
Oh, that’s really sad, Scott. I just BARELY deleted my Zeitcast downloads in iTunes a week ago, and I probably had a few season 2 episodes.
Comment by Ben Pratt — June 6, 2010 @ 12:14 am
Russell, no worries. I have a rigid set of standards, and I can get kind of prickly when other people imply that I’ve violated them. I’m sure that it doesn’t make much sense outside of my own head, but I’d scrupulously avoid the term “slut” in most contexts.
Comment by DKL — June 6, 2010 @ 8:15 am
My recollection is that Rosalynde’s precise phrasing was not “taking a shit”, but as follows: “I’m rarely alone, and when I am I’m almost always doing something pleasurable (like showering or shitting or touring NYC), so I really like to be by myself…”
I think she chose the word “shitting” simply because it was the perfect fit alliteratively and rhythmically. Perhaps at first she felt free to do so because BoH was still relatively unknown and had a private feel, at least by comparison with Times and Seasons. I think those who know Rosalynde will not be overly surprised, upon reflection, to recognize that along with her prodigious Shakespearean capacity for elevated thought and language, she also has—again like Shakespeare—an earthy side, and is capable of showing it when circumstances warrant. It’s a pity her sensitivity to usual Mormon expectations won out here, as the change ended up badly marring a vigorous and beautifully constructed expression.
Comment by Christian Cardall — June 6, 2010 @ 9:21 am
a random John (#39): If I remember correctly, that embedded text you uncovered was the first unassailable hard fact that led to the unraveling. Without that I don’t know how long it would have taken the IP address hunt to finally happen. You deserve credit big time—or at least a t-shirt!
Comment by Christian Cardall — June 6, 2010 @ 11:23 am
Re: #54
Not only that, Christian, but it s also widely held that Shakespeare, too, enjoyed dropping a dookie.
Comment by Brian G. — June 6, 2010 @ 7:41 pm
Apparently, the Bard pooped in pentameter.
Comment by Brian G. — June 6, 2010 @ 7:42 pm
Hence the often quoted, but widely misunderstood words, “What dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.”
Comment by Brian G. — June 6, 2010 @ 7:44 pm
DKL (51 & 53), “I’d scrupulously avoid the term “slut” in most contexts“, thanks for proving my point for me.
Regarding comments 16, 19 & 20, given his well-known position on self-love, wouldnt that indicate DKL has been carrying on an affair with Miranda for quite some time?
Comment by Kurt — June 6, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
Christian,
I will openly admit to having played a very small part. Frankly given the amount of time that I spent attempting to investigate BoH I didn’t come up with much. But I do have a BoH t-shirt that I wear proudly, and which was given to my for my role in the scandal.
One day I should spring for the Obey Aaron t-shirt. My recollection is that the design sprang from a very short suggestion that I made and Rusty’s incredible implementation. I believe that Kurt, Rusty, and I were trying to figure out what would motivate others to devote some small fraction of the energy we had to this project and somebody thought a t-shirt would do the trick. Crowdsourcing turned out more answers in a day than our work had during the course of BoH.
Comment by a random John — June 7, 2010 @ 12:19 am
As earthy as Ms. Welch may have been (and, frankly, I don’t remember her being all that earthy), she was at the time part of the Times & Seasons blog, a group that was clenched so tight, I don’t think any of us thought them capable of defecating, let alone engaging in pleasurable solo activities.
By the way, I dug up some old emails related to BoH, including one from Kurt about DKL that is pretty humorous in retrospect. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me sharing, considering what he’s already posted on this thread…
Comment by NFlanders — June 7, 2010 @ 7:08 am
NFlanders,
Ready, fire, aim!
Comment by Kurt — June 7, 2010 @ 8:27 am
One thing people don’t give BoH enough credit for is that it helped rehabilitate DKL’s reputation. With our help he went from widely despised to completely reviled.
Comment by Brian G. — June 7, 2010 @ 11:22 am
That’s true, Brian, and I never could have done it without you guys!
Comment by DKL — June 7, 2010 @ 11:34 am
Thanks, Kurt. At the time, we were debating which of the BoH bloggers were real or fake and who could be behind them.
Kurt wrote the following:
Oh, if only we’d known. Circumspect is not in DKL’s vocabulary.
Comment by NFlanders — June 7, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
“[DKL] is impetuous and self-admittedly arrogant. Those kinds of characteristics don’t lend well to long-term sustainable collusion.”
I love that!
Comment by DKL — June 7, 2010 @ 1:58 pm
DKL was a pleasure to collaborate with. Whether a collusion sustained for several months counts as “long-term” may be debatable, but the unraveling was not DKL’s fault. (Well the accidental unmasking of Aaron’s identity was in part DKL’s fault, but by then the unraveling was well underway.) And of course DKL can be circumspect—he just may have different ideas than some about when circumspection is necessary, or desirable.
Comment by Christian Cardall — June 7, 2010 @ 2:38 pm
I agree with Christian. DKL was a consumate team player behind the scenes. Given his reputation and my own pre-conceived ideas at the time, I admit I was a little bit surprised.
The one thing the podcast makes no mention of is DKL’s technological contribution to BOH, specifically the design. It looked so cool that people wondered why anyone would put so much thought and energy into the design of something fake.
Comment by Brian G. — June 7, 2010 @ 2:51 pm
Brian–that is something that DKL and I talked about for quite a while on the phone, but before we started recording. You’re right–he put a ton of effort into it, and put a ton of effort into putting it back up for me last week.
Comment by Scott B. — June 7, 2010 @ 3:07 pm
Thanks for the kind words, guys. The fact that people of your calibre are willing to stick up for me is one of the thing that makes the bloggernacle worth coming back to.
Comment by DKL — June 7, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
Well, I don’t want to stick up for you, DKL, but it was a great-looking site, especially for 2005. Most blogs at the time were just Blogger template sites (like mine) and BoH was miles ahead. I think I remember that you swiped the design from a commercial site, but it was still very nice. I especially liked the ranking of commenters by number of comments.
As I remember, the top ten were DKL, Miranda, Septimus, Brian, Steve Evans, Christian, Aaron, Jenn, etc. Maybe annegb and I were in there too, but that’s it. Did you take it down because it made it too obvious that you six were the ringleaders?
Comment by NFlanders — June 7, 2010 @ 9:13 pm
This is the greatest reunion show EVAR!!!
Comment by Rusty — June 7, 2010 @ 9:20 pm
Well, congratulations DKL, when it comes to collusion, deception and self-promotion you are a genuine team player, as illustrated by the testimony of your indicted co-conspirators. I was obviously wrong about your inability to play nice with others. Mea culpa.
Comment by Kurt — June 7, 2010 @ 9:33 pm
NFlanders, thanks for the kind words. The starting point for the theme was another, rather bland, free blog theme. I kept the essentials, but basically rewrote it to polish the appearance, give it a distinctive look, and create orderly css/html code. I also wrote all of the plugins instead of using any of the freely available ones. I do this for everything I use online. For all the cool free stuff out there for WordPress blogs, it’s all rather shabbily written, and I’m a stickler for nice looking code (even if it is only PHP).
I’d like to have redone the underlying WordPress database; it’s not well designed. Redoing the database would have required rewriting portions of WordPress, which would have been interesting, but would also have made easy upgrades impossible. I satisfied myself just adding indices to improve performance, converting the database tables to InnoDB format, and adding integrity constraints.
I wrote that AKA plugin (as in “also known as…”), which showed us who blogged under what names. It uses a self-join to gather all the IP addresses that a person has used and connect them to all the names associated with those IPs, and it required adding another index to maintain performance. Identifying people based on IP addresses his its limits, since IP addresses frequently underdetermine a commenter’s identity. Given its limitations, it worked well enough. Self-joins strike me as pretty rudimentary, but apparently they confuse a lot of people, and I’ve never seen a plugin with similar functionality.
Regarding the comment counter, it quickly became a list of which BoH characters commented most (Miranda, Septimus, Jenn, Mari, etc.), so within the first few weeks I changed it to block them. If you look at the comment counter at Mormon Mentality, you’ll notice that it contains none of the names of the permabloggers. They’re also blocked, otherwise we’d occupy almost all of the top 10 slots, which would make the comment counter kind of pointless.
I also blocked the comment counts of real identities of the perma-bloggers, because we didn’t want to attract attention to ourselves. We eventually turned off that plugin altogether, because (if I recall) we thought it was discouraging commenters who were super-active by making it appear that they had no life outside of commenting on our blog.
I work at least 60 hours a week at work, and frequently as many as 80 or 100. Back when the blog started, I was Ward Mission Leader, and I became Scoutmaster about half way through — those are both very time intensive callings. I also make it through at least a few books a month. So, with programming BoH, collaborating with the BoH co-bloggers via email, writing BoH posts (twice as many as anyone else except Septimus, whom I tied), commenting as Miranda on BoH and other sites, and maintaining my prolific commenting habits as DKL everywhere on the ‘nacle (if I’d have dropped out of sight when Miranda appeared, it would have been a dead giveaway), BoH involved a great deal of commitment and a lot of energy — so much so that it’s difficult to describe. Luckily, pulling off these sorts of balancing acts gives me a real charge, I rarely feel drained, and it’s a habit of mine keep a lot on my plate. (“Sleep is for mere mortals,” I always say.)
Kurt, apology accepted.
Comment by DKL — June 7, 2010 @ 10:59 pm
Ironically, I created a table this afternoon displaying the comments by group (permas, inquisitors, “in-the-knowers”, etc…) as a percentage of the total (4069). Post it tomorrow.
Comment by Scott B. — June 7, 2010 @ 11:09 pm
I’m glad you did that; I’m interested to see the results. The thing I’m struck most by, when reading the comments again, is that 90% of them seem to be by the conspirators themselves. Obviously, that’s something I didn’t know on the first go-round, and I never bothered to go back and read the comments again after the truth came out.
Comment by NFlanders — June 8, 2010 @ 12:48 am
Scott, that’s the sort of thing that I can generate reports for in just a few key strokes. Drop me an email if there’s any other analysis you’d like to perform, because I may be able to save you some time.
Comment by DKL — June 8, 2010 @ 1:56 am
As with the reconstruction of the blog itself, I should have asked you first, as it would have saved me some time. Alas, it’s already completed…
Comment by Scott B. — June 8, 2010 @ 2:02 am
Hmmm. Ok, Superman, so what’s the holdup on that other thing you’ve supposedly been working on?
Comment by MCQ — June 8, 2010 @ 2:44 am
This reminds of some cartoons.
Comment by Kurt — June 8, 2010 @ 6:56 am
Wow. That’s some serious dedication. I bet you could save social security for future generations if you would just use your powers for good instead of evil.
Comment by Peter LLC — June 8, 2010 @ 8:37 am
Peter LLC, LOL!
I’m afraid not even I can save social security for future generations.
Comment by DKL — June 8, 2010 @ 9:29 am
I will attest to DKL being a great guy to work with. Kurt–you should come blog with us at Mormon Mentality–you’d be surprised.
Comment by ESO — June 8, 2010 @ 10:03 am
Oh, my, no. I am sure DKL is great to work with, as long as you agree with or defer to him. But, I have a long history of not doing either. In fact, I think the first time I got banned from BCC it was in a fight with DKL over the WofW. You see, when people are as smart as DKL, they are used to being right all the time, and they dont like people to come along and point out when they are wrong, which I have a bad habit of doing in a rather uncharitable way. No, I have repented of the sin of blogging. Lead me not into temptation.
Comment by Kurt — June 8, 2010 @ 10:43 am
Kurt–I certainly do not agree with DKL and do not defer! I promise you that blogging with him is a different world than fighting him in the comments.
Comment by ESO — June 8, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
The “dykes” and “chicks” controversy at T&S was entirely self-contained, I think. I was the only perma there who was really bothered, and we finally banned DKL because I got tired of editing all his comments. I was not, however, one of the BCC permas who got exercised (or should I say “gave a shit” to demonstrate that I have an earthy side, too?) about BofH.
Comment by Kristine — June 8, 2010 @ 5:12 pm
Kristine, I’m so hot for you right now.
Comment by MCQ — June 8, 2010 @ 9:35 pm
ESO, you rock. Thanks for the kind words.
Comment by DKL — June 8, 2010 @ 9:48 pm
By way of shameless self-promotion, I would appreciate it if any of you would subscribe in iTunes and leave a small review there. The Zeitcast is currently super-duper low on the podcast list for keyword Mormon, and subscriptions and reviews influence this tremendously.
Comment by Scott B. — June 9, 2010 @ 9:24 am