(This post originally appeared in November 2007 at my StumbleUpon blog.)

Anti-censorship internet hero disemvowels balanced and calm criticisms.

A few days ago on BoingBoing Cory Doctorow posted an announcement that, gasp!, his short story, 0wnz0red was translated into Swedish.

If you scroll down to the comments, you'll find some interesting bits. The first comment was by Flying Squid. He says in a very polite way that it seems unreasonable for Cory Doctorow to use BoingBoing for personal PR. Cory responds with several paragraphs of "I can do what I want," which is basically true, and the reason I don't bother reading BoingBoing. There's nothing on that site I won't see elsewhere on the internet, minus all the tush-patting of the aging BoingBoing brigade. Flying Squid responds by hanging his head in impotent apology.

My friend and roommate, Yeago, decided at that point to post a comment. Some time ago a member of our personal mailing list suggested 0wnz0red as good reading and a long thread ensued wherein I gave my criticism of the story. Yeago quoted me within a polite frame, and even deleted the last few sentences which were perhaps too scathing for the BoingBoing readership. Shortly after that post Nutkin joined in, telling Flying Squid not to roll over, and that Mr. Doctorow's personal blog is where those posts belong. Seems reasonable. Shortly after that, both Yeago and Nutkin were disemvowelled.

For those of you who don't know what that is, all the vowels were removed from their comments, rendering them illegible without undue scrutiny. Teresa Nielson Hayden is the moderator responsible for this. She also runs the blog and moderates discussion at Making Light, where a response blog was posted by her husband Patrick, titled Blow, blow, thou wanker wind, and yet more disemvowelling occurred.

For a crew of internet standbys with a Fulbright Chair on Public Diplomacy for USC as their frontman, there seems to be nothing diplomatic in the way BoingBoing handles honest, balanced criticism. But Cory, I thought Online Censorship Hurts Us All. True enough, but when "psychopathic trolls" participate in an otherwise civil discussion, it's okay to censor them.

On this thread, though, there was no hate speech, no threats of violence, and no unsubstantiated flaming &mdash just calm disagreement. If someone wants to post a violent or racist comment, then sure. Delete it. Wtvr. But deleting truly offensive content and disemvowelling content that is simply disliked by moderators are two different things. Disemvowellment is just plain nasty. And who the hell is Teresa Nielson Hayden, anyway? A fifty-something sci-fi editor and fanzine writer. She's also very proud of her cutesy/malicious moderation techniques.

After a wave of deletions and disemvowelments, the BoingBoingers said, don't worry, we're not really censoring that many people... they are all just "sock-puppets" of the same person. Yeago has never had anything to do with Flying Squid or Nutkin or TheCynic, or anyone else. None of the readers are affiliated. Cory, Teresa, and Patrick, all are. Hmph. The fact is these comments were not malicious trolling. A discussion which was uncomfortable for Mr. Doctorow's ego was squelched in the most childish way possible: disemvowellment. BB has a nasty habit of doing this far too much. Their defenders say that BB doesn't have to allow anything they don't like on Their blog. I say that if you are going to be that sensitive to calm disagreement, stop feigning to allow discussion, or get out of the public forum.

Here is a link to Yeago, where you'll find my original criticism of 0wnz0red. To be honest, I'm quite proud of what I wrote, and prouder yet that a friend remembered it well enough to dig it out of his email archives. So what if the people at Making Light are all members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America? Doesn't mean most of them aren't crap, and it certainly doesn't mean that I haven't read every sci-fi bit they have.

The BoingBoingers are all fake, and Teresa Hayden is dense. She is on a Deletion Rampage to cover her mistaken charges of sockpuppetry. To defend themselves further, they routinely misrepresent the content of deleted posts and private emails from unnecessarily banned users.