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| 6/1 |
| 2004/8/3 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:32665 Activity:very high |
8/3 Oh wow, a politics purge. You're an asshole.
\_ I second that.
\_ The politics on the motd are something like 95% noise 5% signal.
Everytime someone tries to point out the truth (at any place in the
political spectrum) he's drowned out by inanity. It's truly sad,
IMO. But as a result, I'm not crying when the political threads get
nuked. -emarkp
\_ aren't you the guy who deletes swearing? don't you have
a couple of kids you should be teaching how to sharpen
an ax instead?
\_ 1) fuck you.
2) I know you're responsible for some of the purges.
\_ I won't ask you how you "know" -- I see far more claims about
people knowing than are likely true. Yes, I've done my fair
share of purging, typically when the garbage ratio goes too
high, when factual responses get repeatedly deleted, or the
thread gets partially deleted. And? -emarkp
\_ I don't think it's reasonable for you to appoint yourself
the arbiter of motd political-thread 'accepatbility'.
It's often interesting and informative to see what people
are thinking or saying about current politics. If a thread
offends you don't read it: motd doesn't need a self
appointed nanny to cleanse threads based on obscure
and subjective metrics -- especially if they don't take
activity into account.
\_ don't fuck with him. he has root power and can nuke
a lot more than just motd. he could make a lot of
"accident" happen to your account. be wise.
\_ On a world writable forum, we're all nannies. I'm not
appointing myself "THE" anything. When I purge, I try
to purge obvious noise or the whole thread, not simply
points with which I disagree--unlike other people.
-emarkp
\_ there are exactly two types of purges that don't
make you a fucking asshole:
1) purging old stuff, as in more than two days old
2) purging stuff that has been messed up in some
way, like when some tool uses a script to
reverse all the words.
\_ So you're appointing yourself as the nanny now?
-emarkp
\_ Don't get all huffy, dude -- just stop
censoring the motd.
\_ from /csua/adm/doc/policies/motd
Destruction of the MOTD (by repeated
deletion, jive, or any other method) is
severly frowned upon and will result in the
termination of your account.
i'd argue that 1) doesn't count as destruction.
as for 2) its a grey area as messed up text is
sometimes still readable. i would count selective
purging based on what one considers "noise" to
be destruction under the above policy. -erikk
\_ Gee, I wonder where the policy police is
when people repeatedly fuck up my posts
(Delete a few lines, change some things,
sign my name to things I didn't write, etc.)
This entire thread is bullshit. Apply
'The Policy' uniformly, or don't bring it
up at all. -- ilyas
\_ Ilyas, 'The Policy' can't en enforced
in your favor if you just sit back in
silence and allow yourself to be
violated. And no, one line quips
probably aren't enough to make it clear
you're being victimized. If you're not
going to stand up for your rights, then
I have a hard time understanding your
tone here.
\_ Last time some mental giant decided
to sign my name to some shit I didn't
write, I made a post about it to the
motd, which got promptly ignored and
soon deleted. People regularly edit
and delete my posts, it's pretty
clear if you have been paying
attention. I guess next time it
happens I ll just snitch to the
politburo... *sigh*
It's clear to me people have a huge
double standard for 'The Policy.'
When some people do stuff, it's
harmless fun and pranks, when others
do it, it's Censorship with a capital
C. These days, my policy is, if I
see someone fuck up (which is different
from an overwrite) what I wrote,
I nuke the thread. As far as I am
concerned, the conversation is then
over. If that's a violation of
'The Policy' take it up with people
who fucked up the thread first.
-- ilyas
\_ I do pay attention, and you're
not the only victim by a long
shot. So why do you sign your
name? why does anyone sign their
name? I still don't see the
advantage, and I see many
disadvantages.
\_ I don't always sign my name.
When I do, it's because I want
to own what I say. The
proper response to a macaque
having fun at someone else's
expense is to not stop
signing like a coward, but to
make sure the macaque
understands its fun will soon
end if it does it (i.e the
thread will get nuked).
-- ilyas
\_ I still don't see the point.
How exactly do you "own"
your posts? who cares?
you know you posted them,
and i'll read them
regardless, so who cares?
I think a lot of the
funniest, most interesting
stuff is by anon. posters,
and some of the most
useless drivel is by the
name-signers (I'm not
talking about you here.)
\_ So this is some sort of vague threat? Or is
it just a lesson that those who nuke threads
should remain anonymous? Seriously.
-emarkp
3) fuck you.
4) some of us get a lot out of those discussions that you
identify as "noise."
\_ So identify "us". I've seen the same rabid partisan
back-and-forth for years now. I have learned a few things,
but the biggest thing I've learned is that most people
aren't listening to each other, nor do they care about the
truth. Most people on the motd are partisan nutjobs.
-emarkp
\_ I guess you missed the poll a couple weeks back of how
long people have spent doing background research relating
to a motd discussion. One guy spent a month researching
WMD claims 20 hours a week. I spent two weeks
researching the 2000 election debacle because of a motd
discussion, and ended up reading the supreme court
decision and actually changing my opinion on the issue.
I'm afraid it is you who are the partisan nutjob
if you're incapable of seeing that people are getting
something real out of these discussions, in spite of
all the flameing.
\_ Just out of curiousity, what's your current
opinion of the 2000 election?
\_ That it was a total clusterfuck, and that neither
side really cheated. I had previously bought
the democratic party line that the republicans
had "stolen" the election, but became convinced
that the things that were broken in florida
were just good ol' fashioned bipartisan idiocy.
I was also amazed at how much other idiocy there
was outside of florida that no one cared about
because it didn't come down to so few votes.
There was one county in South Carolina where the
official tally had one vote for Gore, one for Bush,
and several thousand for Nader and Buchannan.
and several hundred for Nader and Buchannan.
\_ What? Are you serious? How did that
happen? (about the county in SC)
\_ well, I got it from this paper:
http://elections.fas.harvard.edu/pc01/node5.html
But for details, you'd have to look up
the reference from there.
That paper is *really* worth reading,
by the way, if you want the whole story
about the "butterfly ballot."
5) did i mention fuck you?
\_ You know he's responsible for some of the purges, huh?
Why, because he's got the guts to sign his name and you
don't? Oooo.. that's ome pretty hard evidence. -jrleek
\_ Look, the Mormons are banding together! You know what,
sometimes the trolls annoy me too but I don't want your
self-appointed cleansing going on with active discussions.
If other people are using the motd then you're just a
stupid dick to wipe it all out. But hey I'll be a dick
too: I only care to see that Doom 3 thread.
\_ Yeah, that's mature. You're really swaying my opinion
with your masterful argument. -emarkp
\_ I'm not the "fuck you" guy by the way but I agree.
Re: your "truth", do you have the truth? I think
not. That's the point of discussion.
\_ Again, why do you keep claiming I, or he, have
wiped anything? I've personally never deleted
anyone else's stuff from the motd on purpose.
Hello? Any proof, at all? No? Bye troll, I'm
done. -jrleek
\_ emarkp admits it a few posts up.
\_ Whoops, didn't see that. I stand corrected.
-jrleek
\_ What does my being Mormon have to do with anything?
Besides, if you want to criticize our connections,
complain that he's my brother-in-law, not just that both
of us are Mormons. -emarkp
\_ We already know you guys are all related.
\_ Aren't all mormons in-laws of each other?
\_ Hope you didn't pay much for that bait. I
don't think you're gonna catch any billy-goats.
\_ Those who don't participate don't care.
In any case, it's not so hard to nuke the political threads
at the end of the day when everyone's gone home and eating
dinner instead of in the middle when people are loafing. |
| 6/1 |
|
| elections.fas.harvard.edu/pc01/node5.html Robust Estimation of an The Buchanan Vote Across the Country in 2000 To analyze the results of the 2000 election in counties across the country, we define $ y_{i}$ to be the number of votes counted for Patrick Buchanan in the 2000 presidential election in county $ i$ . The linear predictor is $\displaystyle x'_{i} \beta$ $\displaystyle = \beta_{0} + \beta_{1} x_{1i} + \beta_{2} x_{2i},$ where $ x_{1i}$ is the proportion of votes officially received by the Republican candidate in the 1996 presidential election in county $ i$ and $ x_{2i}$ is the proportion of votes officially received by the Reform Party candidate in the 1996 presidential election. It should be clear that our independent variables may be contaminated. The same kinds of irregularities that led to outliers in the 2000 election may have led to outliers in 1996. It is important that the estimator we have chosen is robust to contamination from $ x_{i}$ values as well as robust to contamination from the disturbance. We estimate the model separately for each state in the United States. This is done because results not presented here show that we cannot pool the coefficient or dispersion parameters across states. Therefore we obtain separate estimates of $ \beta$ and $ \sigma$ in each state in the analysis. But the residuals of interest are comparable across states because of the studentization described above. Jasper County did not receive much national media attention, because the county's total vote was a fraction of Bush's margin of victory and because the county's vote was immaterial to the outcome of the 2000 presidential contest. The figure plots the expected or predicted Buchanan vote share, based on 1996 presidential returns, versus corresponding studentized residuals. With the exception of Palm Beach County--which is pointed out explicitly--there appears to be no systematic relationship between expected vote share and studentized residual. The quantile-quantile plot is relatively smooth, excluding Palm Beach County, and the jump in the plot indicates that the studentized residual for this county lies far in the tail of the distribution of studentized residuals from Florida. After Palm Beach County the next most anomalous county with respect to 2000 Buchanan vote share is Hancock County, West Virginia. A remarkable feature of Hancock County is that it is part of a geographically contiguous cluster of seven counties that had unusually high levels of votes for Buchanan. Five of the counties are in West Virginia and two are in the state of Ohio. Because it spans two states, it is highly unlikely that this exceptional burst of support for Buchanan reflects problems of ballot format or electoral administration. Most likely the reason is special success in mobilizing voters for Buchanan in those areas, perhaps on a basis of economic interests special to those areas. Another cluster of outlier counties that spans state boundaries includes three counties in Nebraska and two in Iowa. The isolation bolsters our tracing of the anomaly in that county to problems in a single precinct. Palm Beach County also does not belong to a cluster of exceptionally pro-Buchanan counties. Therefore, the explanation for Palm Beach County's large positive residual is most likely at the geographic resolution of county or lower. It is possible that Palm Beach County is an outlier because of only a few anomalous precincts. We engage this issue in Section 3 Among counties with negative studentized residuals, the one with the largest residual is Cook County, Illinois, which is traditionally a heavily Democratic county. Cook County is surrounded by other Illinois counties that contributed very few votes to Buchanan. In other words, while Cook County was unusual insofar as its extreme lack of Buchanan votes, it is not unusual in the larger sense of being located in an area that is generally pro-Buchanan. Post-election news stories documented serious balloting problems in Cook County, although not focusing on the aberration in the vote recorded for Buchanan. The Colorado cluster reflects a huge rift in the Reform Party there, which in addition abetted an extreme kind of ballot problem. John Hagelin--not Buchanan--was on the Colorado ballot as the Reform Party candidate. Buchanan appeared as the Colorado Freedom Party nominee. The detection of an outlier is grounds for further investigation and not proof of voting irregularities as was definitively determined in the case of Jasper County, South Carolina. For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that Palm Beach County is one of the most unusual counties in the country. This finding supports--but of course on its own does not prove--that Buchanan received a larger number of votes than Palm Beach County voters intended to give him. |