Patterico's Pontifications

4/17/2006

Is Hiltzik Censoring Critical Comments (Again)? Help Me Find Out!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:53 pm



Is Michael Hiltzik refusing to approve comments critical of him? I don’t know — but I need your help to find out.

As I noted yesterday, Hiltzik’s recent post about Hugh Hewitt’s Site Meter was thoroughly debunked by Independent Sources, and later by Armed Liberal.

I tried to leave a comment on Hiltzik’s site with links to these posts. But my comments wouldn’t publish.

After my first try, I figured my comment was just awaiting approval in the moderation queue. I know from experience that comments get caught in such queues from time to time.

After my comment was swallowed, two subsequent comments by lefties were published that supported Hiltzik.

So I decided to try to republish my comment. This time I saved it, in case it failed to publish again.

Here is the comment, which I left on Hiltzik’s blog last night at 8:25 p.m.:

Let me try posting this again.

Independent Sources effectively debunks the factual premise of this post here:

http://independentsources.com/2006/04/16/the-los-angeles-times-michael-hiltzik-abuses-web-stats-for-fun-and-profit

Looks like there has been some cherry-picking here.

And Armed Liberal suggests that Hiltzik has been dishonest here:

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008459.php

Armed Liberal asks: why did Hiltzik fail to link Hugh’s actual Site Meter? His conclusion: because Hiltzik is dishonest, and linking Hewitt’s actual Site Meter would have shown Hiltzik’s claims are a distortion.

I’m saving this comment in case it doesn’t get posted.

More than 24 hours have passed since I tried to post that comment. More comments supportive of Hiltzik’s position have appeared on his site. Mine still isn’t there.

I suppose this could still be the result of some innocent technical glitch. That’s where you come in.

Go to Hiltzik’s post and leave links to the Independent Sources and Armed Liberal posts. Then come back here and tell me if you were successful.

UPDATE: More on this strange business here, including the odd lack of success commenters have had in posting the Independent Sources link at Hiltzik’s site.

7 Responses to “Is Hiltzik Censoring Critical Comments (Again)? Help Me Find Out!”

  1. He published this within about 20 minutes:

    “First time I have seen “sedulous” used as a dirty word. You are a good wordsmith. But this post is childish. Kind of like “stay away from girls because they have cooties”.
    Posted by: nk | April 17, 2006 at 09:18 PM”

    Maybe because he didn’t think there was anything very challenging in it?

    [See what happens if you try posting the Independent Sources and Armed Liberal links. I want to see if he deep-sixes all such posts, the way he deep-sixed James Chen’s posts about his paper’s declining circulation — Patterico]

    nk (d5dd10)

  2. Patrick: You’re a classically trained guy trying to debate with someone who can only feel, not think. A person who clings blindly to an idealogy in order to elevate himself (in his own mind) to a position of superior intellect, compassion, etc. I appreciate your well thought out arguments which are amply supported by relevant citations, but alas, young man, I feel you are ultimately casting pearls before the swine…

    Now don’t get me started on this Angry Claim fellow.

    Deacon Bleau (938eb2)

  3. I tried this:

    Will you allow this link showing you are 100% wrong about Hewitt’s Site Meter?

    I got an automated message immediately: “This blog does not allow HTML comments”.

    [That happened to me the first time I tried it. So I tried submitting the link, but not in HTML format. The two times I described in the post, I simply set forth the link or links without any HTML coding. Try that, if you don’t mind. — P]

    nk (d5dd10)

  4. OK, I posted this two minutes ago:

    “Will you allow this reference, http://independentsources.com/2006/04/16/the-los-angeles-times-michael-hiltzik-abuses-web-stats-for-fun-and-profit/, showing you are 100% wrong about Hewitt’s Site Meter? In fact, the statistics are the opposite of what you represent.”

    Let’s see what happens.

    nk (956ea1)

  5. BTW: I DID do it without HTML coding. [I believe you! — P] Your site turned it into a link automatically. I got no “no HTML” message from him this time.

    [Yet, I don’t see your comment. Interesting. — P]

    [UPDATE: I tried simply leaving an uncoded reference to http://google.com as an experiment. It didn’t take that either. Maybe it’s simply impossible to leave links in his comments, whether coded or not. Of course, that makes it hard to debunk his posts by linking to contrary authority in his comments. — P]

    nk (956ea1)

  6. I went back with this:

    “Mr. Hiltzik,

    I barely blog. My blog is more like a web page. But I allow open, unmoderated, uncensored comments. You posted a relatively harmless comment of mine within minutes of me submitting it, but this comment with substance behind it, has still not appeared:

    “Will you allow this reference, http://independentsources.com/2006/04/16/the-los-angeles-times-michael-hiltzik-abuses-web-stats-for-fun-and-profit/, showing you are 100% wrong about Hewitt’s Site Meter? In fact, the statistics are the opposite of what you represent.”

    Why not?”

    Ok, we’re possibly rolling in the mud again.

    [Patience, my son. Give it until morning to test out my theory (set forth in a new post) that his blog simply does not record any comment with a link. There may yet be an innocent explanation for the odd behavior of his comments — though the theory I have propounded, if true, is a real problem for a blogger who wants to make their comments an open forum for discussion. If commenters can’t post links, what’s the point of comments? — P]

    nk (956ea1)

  7. OK I wondered about this.

    That Independent Sources post showed up the same day as Patterico’s original post. After I posted on the thread in Patterico’s original post I checked back at Hiltzik’s site repeatedly – to the point that I felt I probably doubled his hits for the day to, I dunno like 18 vs its usual 6-9 – but nobody posted about it.

    So I went ahead and posted it. When I previewed the post I noticed the hyperlink hadn’t taken properly so I changed my post to include the Independant Sources post’s URL and a brief comment. My comment was critical but perfectly clean and very brief.

    That was on 4/16, evening time CDT. It never appeared. I checked back a few times after that and saw new comments but decided to just blow it off.

    [Very curious indeed. Thanks for passing this along. I have more here: patterico.com/2006/04/17/4460/the-hiltzik-commenting-problem/ — P]

    Dwilkers (a1687a)


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