Eye on Winer

Back in 2005, Dave Winer got into a bizarre raging argument with other bloggers at the BlogNashville conference while he was moderating a panel on blog civility. That’s not sarcasm. The topic really was civility. Stan Brown, one of the people in attendance, described Winer’s meltdown:

As others have noted, he (Winer) got into a ridiculous exchange with John Cox that got really heated and went on and on and on to the point that people in the room began to get really uncomfortable. At that point, someone wondered if Dave was trying to conduct some kind of encounter group. As others have noted, his treatment of Robin Burk was totally out of line. He was rude quite often. About a third of the way through, he took a deep breath, slowed everything down and mentioned we still had another hour to go. I was actually feeling sympathy for him at this point. It occurred to me that perhaps he was taking medications that he had forgotten to bring with him on this trip.

That’s the back story for today’s gratuitous insult against Nashville on Scripting News, in case you were curious. Winer’s hatred has grown from one roomful of bloggers to the entire city.

Given this, it’s funny to read the recent weblog post by Rex Hammock, a friend who’s been coming to Winer’s defense for years and years:

I know that most of the people who read this blog are not from Nashville. However, my style of blogging has always been to keep it personal. And one of the most personal things about me is my love of a place I call home, Nashville, Tennessee.

Hammock’s attempt back in ‘05 to rationalize Winer’s obnoxious behavior at BlogNashville is still a pungent example of asskissery:

From what I’ve observed, Dave is a designer of (a visionary of?) and defender of common grounds. … Like Real Simple Syndication (RSS), one of Dave’s earlier battles for common ground, we’re now struggling to discover the protocols of what I would call Real Simple Values.

Dave Winer today:

I wrote the first howto for demoers at DEMO in 1991.

And unlike some people’s howtos, this one is still on the web.

Yeah, a lot of the ideas that people claim as theirs now were in this piece, written 17 years ago.

The massive ego was too much for commenter Barry Kelly, who responded:

Dave, *incredibly* few ideas are original. You *really* need to get over your paranoia and arrogance in this respect — it’s becoming really, really wearing; it seems that I can’t hear you on a podcast or read more than 5 posts from you without you claiming ownership on this or that idea.

Dave Winer killed a blog post last night related to his feud with Loren Feldman, creator of a Winer puppet that mocks the shit out of him:

Shel got a reprieve

Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Well, it worked.

They let Shel Israel off the hook. He gets his name back, the puppet is retired. The mock trial they were planning for the TechCrunch summer party, that I learned of this morning, is cancelled. I don’t know what Heather and Mike were thinking, or if they were even in the loop, but people need to be a lot more careful with each others’ reputations, if we ever want to get anywhere.

Maybe after a breathing period we can resume some of our friendships.

Lately Winer has been complaining about the treatment of Israel, another butt of Feldman’s jokes who has been turned into a puppet. Winer’s comments on FriendFeed show why:

Do you think they would be doing this if Shel’s name was Kathy Sierra? Why is it funny to destroy a middle-aged Jewish guy?

It amazes me the people who just stand by and do and say nothing.

I don’t just think his Jewishness has anything to do with it, I’m sure of it.

Israel is, of course, a stand-in for Winer’s own beef with Feldman — the poor middle-aged Jewish tech blogger that the Nazi puppetmaster and his anti-Semitic thugs wants to destroy. First they came for the A listers, but I did not complain, for I was a B-lister …

The notion that anti-Semitism is at play here is deranged. As J. Michael Arrington pointed out on that FriendFeed discussion, Winer praised the puppets (including the Israel one) as recently as June 28 — Twitter messages he has since deleted.

In a discussion on Feldman’s site, Winer pleaded with Feldman to “cancel the vendetta against me”:

I just heard today what you think I said to or about your girlfriend. Loren, listen to this carefully — it never happened. Think about it. What if you got this wrong. How the fuck are you ever going to make it up.

Accusing a man of abusing women is the worst thing you can say about him. You really have fucked up here big time. And if you feel like a mensch, you should apologize, cause you really wronged me. Swear to god.

PS: I heard about it from a woman friend who knows your girlfriend. I asked her to let her know that what you said about me is absolutely untrue.

Winer has so little self-knowledge that he can’t understand how his actions might make him a rich target for mockery. In his head, the only reason Feldman could possibly be going after him is some personal slight involving Feldman’s girlfriend.

Feldman, who has to be loving Winer’s overwrought hysterics, has big plans for Puppet Dave:

Im preparing a documentary with puppets of course about Dave Winer. Please email me all Winer Incidents, all replies in strict confidence.

Dave Winer recently launched NewsJunk, an RSS-backed aggregator of political news, with Nicco Mele. Mele, the former webmaster for the Howard Dean campaign, says they’ve been developing it for months:

I’ve been working on a new project with Dave Winer — Newsjunk.com. For the last few months, I’ve been annoyed at how hard it is to follow the political coverage. News pops up in a lot of different places, and having single source to follow what’s happening throughout the day has been an itch that needs scratching. Dave remembers the briefing books we had on the Dean campaign, a fixture of many campaigns. So NewsJunk.com started as a way to scratch the itch of the political news junkie, and a way to begin to build an open briefing book.

During the 2000 cycle, I worked as the webmaster and technical director of the Shadow Conventions. That’s actually where I first met Dave, through Edit This Page.com. Then during the 2004 cycle, I worked as the webmaster for Howard Dean. This cycle (2008) after a false start, I’m excited to be working on NewsJunk.

What’s the over/under on how long it takes before this collaboration crashes and burns? As Jason Calacanis will tell any human or puppet who asks, Winer can’t work with people. He’s never mastered the principle “you have to be a friend to have a friend.” Mele, who destroyed his rep among former Deaniacs by backing McCain, is exhibiting some weird judgment here too.

As Mele ponders how much effort to put into their joint venture, perhaps he should consider the significance of the following three facts:

1. Winer owns the domain
2. Winer runs the application on his own server at 70.85.234.142
3. Winer claims all rights to the project: “© 2008 Scripting News, Inc. NewsJunk is a trademark of Scripting News, Inc.”

Loren Feldman’s earning his Winer Number:

Want to have some fun? Trademark the 1938Media name than take those cyber-squatting domains away from DW..

By Fred Grott on May 28, 2008

Fred - I dont give a shit about anything Winer does. His career is finished, mine is just starting. His legacy will be that of a desperate old douche bag. Fail.

By Loren Feldman on May 28, 2008

Videoblogger Loren Feldman recently began mocking Dave Winer through the magic of puppetry:

1. The Dave Winer Experience
2. Happy RSS Awareness Day from Dave Winer
3. Is Obama Black or Black?
4. Dave Winer on Desensitizing Twitter

Winer responded by cybersquatting the domain names 1938media.net and 1938media.org on May 1, created an account on YouTube under the name evilmikearrington on May 5 and used it and the domains to promote his own puppet video, which shows he’d get killed in a puppet war.

One of these days, Winer’s habit of cybersquatting to fuck with people is going to bite him in the ass.

In a post today about how sites should give users back their data, Dave Winer sings his own praises in this regard, complete with a lame claim for credit:

I’ve always believed that blogging and RSS tools should export their data so users can switch tools and the products at UserLand all did this. As a result, there’s a tradition among RSS readers that they import and export OPML subscription lists. It happened because Radio UserLand, the early market leader, did.

One thing he neglects to mention, which was pointed out several times by McD in comments here: In the entire time that Share Your OPML was running, the site never shared its OPML. Thousands of users shared their OPML subscription lists with Winer’s site, at his urging, and he never reciprocated.

As for the portability of data in Radio LuserLand and Winer’s other software, there’s a reason that Robert Scoble and most other LUserLand bloggers never moved their data when they abandoned the software, leaving years of work and all of their subscribers behind. It’s a giant nightmare to get the data out, because the software’s export capabilities are non-standard, XML support is a messy kludge, and there are character encoding glitches out the ass.

Even Donovan Watts, the author of Radio UserLand: The Missing Manual and the biggest expert on the software, never exported his blog when he switched to WordPress.

Data portability requires more than some cheesy “seal of approval” Winer is thinking about giving out. You have to do the work to fully support the standards that make data portable.

Dave Winer’s declaration that no one has the right to judge Rev. Wright provoked this exchange in his comments with a blogger named Marco:

Marco 18 hours ago

It will be hard to believe but this is not meant to be a shrill attack.

Posts like these are jarring in their inconsistency. I fully understand your point on Rev Wright and even sympathize with your position.

What I don’t understand is why you can’t see the hypocrisy in wanting to extend individuals like Rev Wright every possible explanation for their words or actions (”He was alienated”, “He was caught in a position non of us have ever been in”) but when someone you disagree with politically is automatically an evil person and each misstatement is borne of the most nefarious motives.

Its insulting to see you constantly deride others for sweeping generalizations and oversimplification of issues only to have you follow up with a string of posts casting sweeping dispersions and attacks based on 3 seconds sound bites addressing unbelievably complex topics.

I appreciate the perspective you bring which is why I haven’t yet unplugged from your feed but it would be great to see just a little of the balance you want to see in our political process displayed in your posts.

dave 17 hours ago

It’s pretty simple, I say what I have to say and it’s a function of what happens in the world. So when things change, my point of view may change too. If you disagree, go ahead and disagree. But all these charged words, hypocrisy, insulting, deride, attacks, etc — sorry, that’s your mind playing tricks on you. I’m none of those things. Usually I don’t let comments that require defensive responses (or else I admit to all the BS you accuse me of) through, but this time I wanted to restate this, that I’ve said many times before. My blog is my space to say what I think. You don’t have to agree, and if you want to, start your own blog to say what you have to say. That’s where comments like yours (above) belong, not here.

dave 17 hours ago

See how much space it takes to clear up your mess. But now that it’s clear I can answer your question.

BECAUSE MY MIND WORKS DIFFERENTLY FROM YOURS.

Which is so obvious it doesn’t even need to be said. All our minds work differently, we were all raised in different environments with different values. To say basically that I should see everything the same way you do is a waste of bandwidth. It’s ridiculous. It’ll never happen nor should it ever happen.

Marco 17 hours ago

That’s not even remotely my point.

Do you really think I would be interested in engaging you or anyone else who did not agree with my world view if that was what I believed? Of course not.

Your response is a wonderful defense of your desire to remain ideologically isolated. “I see things the way I see things and I have no need to try and understand your position” is a great way to stifle true debate and a horrible way to effectively change the way we approach issues in this country. As I said before - it wouldn’t matter to me if you wouldn’t insist on standing on your soapbox and donning sackcloth and ashes to mourn the death of honest debate.

dave 17 hours ago

Okay you get the last word, the rest of it, if there is more — in your space.

Marco, like every well-intentioned person who responds to Winer, hasn’t learned yet that he can’t handle criticism. Winer’s statement, “Usually I don’t let comments that require defensive responses (or else I admit to all the BS you accuse me of),” is one of the clearest explanations he’s ever given that explains why: He thinks that if he doesn’t delete critical comments, it means they are true.

Open and honest dialogue is not possible on any forum that Winer controls.

Dave Winer’s rant against Comcast, which cut off his high-speed Internet service without warning over excessive bandwidth use, neglects to tell Scripting News readers that he was consuming a gigantic 450GB a month of bandwidth.

On Digg, a former Comcast rep made this comment on the situation:

It pains me to defend Comcast but… I think this user is obviously breaking the ToS of his contract. First the whole 3 years I worked there I only received maybe 3 or 4 users that have disconnected due to bandwidth violations. Take in mind I took close to 200-300 calls a week, 15,000k a year and I only got one out of 1/15000 a year that hit this problem. Second, the fact is the Comcast infrastructure sucks, and isn’t setup for these super downloaders. This guy was downloading so much crap (most likely terabytes and terabytes a month) that it actually effected his neighbors download speeds. That’s the only time you get this notice when you are using so much bandwidth that you are capping your neighborhood node. The tier 2.5 will get notifications that a node in a neighborhood is hitting unacceptable numbers and when it’s mostly one user there is a problem. Instead of capping everyones download speed (i know except for bittorent) they view these on a case by case basis which is why there is no set limit. If your not ***** with your neighbors or download in off-peak times no problem. Third this guy was stealing terabytes of pictures for websites? Why? It’s obvious he is running some sort of business which is a violation of the terms of agreement by comcast. If the guy has DSL and Comcast as a backup he’s running a home business. The fact that he thought DSL was faster than Comcast proves this guy is an idiot.

Comcast is a terrible company that’s infamous for mistreating its customers, but it’s also clear that Winer’s a terrible Internet user. ISPs have struggled for years with bandwidth hogs like Winer, who degrade service for everyone else who has the misfortune to be their neighbor. There’s no way to offer residential high-speed Internet access that won’t suffer when your neighbor’s pulling down that much data. Blogger Jay Cuthrell points this out in a post titled Comcast vs. Dave Winer vs. Everyone Else in His Neighborhood.

Although Winer believes his use of FlickrFan is the cause, most people who scarf down that much bandwidth are downloading pirated movies and TV shows on BitTorrent. ZDNet’s Russell Shaw said as much last year in an item about Comcast’s hog problem.

So now I am thinking how anyone could download 550 gigabytes in a month.

Hmm. Maybe torrents of movies?

If that’s the case, these bandwidth hogs are abusing the system. Maybe Comcast shouldn’t suspend their service, but hit ‘em with a surcharge.

Winer’s a BitTorrent user who’s been obsessing lately about watching entire seasons of Battlestar Galactica. Now that media outlets are starting to take an interest in this situation, reporters should pin Winer down on exactly what he’s been downloading.

Now that Dave “I am a racist” Winer has settled the long-standing problem of race in America, he’s turning his attention to religious discord with a series of tweets:

Okay next subject. I find it weird that any candidate believes in a Christian god. Do they really think the world was created in 7 days? 02:20 PM April 10, 2008

When their preachers start saying that nutty shit, why don’t they walk out? 02:20 PM April 10, 2008

Come on, everyone knows that Jesus was just a random guy, not the son of god. 02:21 PM April 10, 2008

Y’all know what I’m saying. How loony toons is it for people to ask why Obama didn’t quit Wright’s church for saying nonsense about the US. 02:35 PM April 10, 2008

When (to lots of people) the whole gospel stuff is loony toons. Ignore the elephant in the room. You’re all talking about fairy tales! 02:36 PM April 10, 2008

We’ve lost our fucking minds. 02:36 PM April 10, 2008

@AndruEdwards — I’m tolerant of people with beliefs other than my own. I have to be, every candidate has to say he or she loves christ. 02:56 PM April 10, 2008 in reply to AndruEdwards

I happen to think that’s lunacy. But I look the other way. It’s time for people who don’t like Rev Wright to learn a little tolerance too. 02:57 PM April 10, 2008

You Jesus-lovers are real bullies. You need to take a look at how you push everyone else around. I, for one, am tired of it. Fed up actually 02:58 PM April 10, 2008

@chicofelipe “The bullies are the ones who call themselves Jesus-lovers in order to excercise power and control.” Amen brother. 03:07 PM April 10, 2008 in reply to chicofelipe

can say Amen. It’s not owned by Jesus Christ. The point is Rev Wright’s religion is what it is. No nuttier than your religion or mine. 03:08 PM April 10, 2008

But if the Christians make an issue of Rev Wright, I’m going to make an issue of Jesus Christ. 03:09 PM April 10, 2008

That’ll at least get all you Christians on the same fucking page. 03:09 PM April 10, 2008

For more on Winer’s contempt for Christians, read his Christmas rant fueled by a 30-minute wait at a Berkeley post office during the holiday season.

… I’m a pretty friendly guy, and that’s 365 days a year, and most of these people are bastards most of the time, but could they really be this nice for a few days a year? … Why are they so happy for one week, and so pissed off the rest of the time? And for what it’s worth, I don’t believe the happy bullshit for one second. I’ve had the privilege of being inside on a few of these Christian Christmases, with shicksa women I was dating, and let me tell you, if you haven’t had a chance to see the inside of the holiday, it’s pretty pissy and angry, you know, like people really are, not like they pretend they are.

Check out TweetScan to see how some of his followers on Twitter received the attack on their religion. Winer sees himself as friendly “365 days a year,” unlike Christians whose phony holiday cheer masks their true anger and unhappiness. Since of course, friendly people often start unprovoked arguments by mocking the religious beliefs of other people as “fairy tales.”