That Shane Richmond / Charles Arthur Twackdown in full ... 8
The Telegraph had to briefly remove its budget twitterfall box after people deliberately tweeted #budget plus swear words to make them appear on the Telegraph site. They filter out rude words now.
But the Guardian came over a little bit (ie a lot) smug about it.
Here's the full text of the row that then erupted live on Twitter between @shanerichmond (Communities editor and technology blogger at Telegraph.co.uk) and @charlesarthur (The Guardian's Technology editor).
I'm calling it for Shane Richmond
Although Charles Arthur started it without any provocation and had the last word, I'm calling it for Shane Richmond - Charles Arthur's argument that Twitter is a private conversation seems a bit odd. He has 4,796 followers for instance ... (although this aside was funny: "If you offer people a wall, don't be surprised if some try to piss on it. Bank on it.")
That argument in full
Innocuous start
shanerichmond: I've read only one JG Ballard novel, Kingdom Come, and I hated it - http://www.26books.com/?p=107. Should I read more?
charlesarthur: Read The Wind From Nowhere and The Drowned World.
First sly dig
charlesarthur: You could also set up a Twitterfall page for him. Just watch you don't crash your car into a #ballard
The argument heats up
shanerichmond: I was going to reply with a rimshot but you really need better material. That was barely coherent.
charlesarthur: I'll crowdsource something better, while I read the funniest #budget screenshots from Telegraph of yesterday.
Shane gets dismissive
shanerichmond: Really? That's it? After 15 minutes? [The delay before the last tweet]
charlesarthur: Haven't finished reading the funny tweets yet. The ones about the Barclay brothers are among the funniest. What's yours?
charlesarthur: 50 tweets with #budget for the past hour. I could do this faster than the Telegraph. I could *automate* this better than them. Guys, give up [This was the only tweet not sent as an @reply]
shanerichmond: That's more like it. Smug suits you better than funny.
Shane gets serious
shanerichmond: It's a snapshot of the conversation that's going on around the Budget. Why is that so hard to figure out?
charlesarthur: Why is it hard to figure out? Because there wasn't a conversation around the budget. It hasn't happened yet
shanerichmond: So without a conversation happening you were unable to understand what that bit of the page was for?
Charles gets dismissive
charlesarthur: What "conversation"? You were mining peoples' tweets. That's not conversation. That's eavesdropping, and you got stung for it
shanerichmond: My dictionary has eavesdropping as "to listen secretly to a private conversation". Secret and private don't apply here
shanerichmond: So we eavesdropped in the sense that we listened publicly to a public conversation. Good word choice otherwise though.
charlesarthur: Buy a bigger dictionary - you can eavesdrop in a restaurant to conversations at another table.
shanerichmond: Yes and that would be secret listening to a private conversation. You see how that works?
Charles gets even more dismissive ...
charlesarthur: So tell us - was the outcome of Monday defined as a success or failure in your dictionary?
The end
Thanks to the brilliant Twitter Greasemonkey script for making conversation threading easy.
Charles does seem rather aggressive; I wonder what nerve they hit. The Telegraph public Twitterfall was much more useful than the Guardian showcasing their own tweets. We saw the dangers of the Twitterfall but looking at today it seemed to work really well.
I call for Shane; but it wasn't just these two...
Squabble aside, thanks for the Greasemonkey script tip, Malcolm - will be very useful! j
Nice find on the script. I'd only point out that this was a far more multidimensional discussion than this portrays: Justin Williams (Telegraph) and Darren Waters (BBC) weighed in too, and Mathew Ingram. Portraying this as a "he said/he said" is a bit limited, when the whole thing's out there with *all* the people who joined in.
My central point was actually the one about what happens when you make a wall available to anyone. That's the key point here, not whether I found the correct word after a long day for "republishing grep-matching titbits from a public stream".
The Telegraph first pass didn't hit any nerve; though my funny bone was much affected.
Script is brilliant - given up on desktop clients as a result.
And you're right about the others on Twitter - your exchange with Shaun had a certain self-contained quality, though. Plus I couldn't find a way to easily find and show everyone's related comments in a way that would be easy to follow.
Next Guardian / Telegraph debate on Twitter needs its own hashtag ...
I enjoyed your lie detector column to day by the way!
Ah, yes, the lie detector - such a pity we couldn't use the still from The Wire Series 5 Episode 1 where that appears. To fact-check the piece I had to hunt it down on YouTube. What a brilliant opener that is.
And the best thing is that they really, really did do that in real life in the Baltimore and Detroit homicide departments!
If only they were witty.
I don't think they're obliged to be (or were aiming to be).
Agreed on the script - couldn't find an easy way of doing it myself. Didn't see the initial few tweets! Much as I enjoy sniping techies, it didn't seem the most helpful way of discussing the pros and cons of Twitterfail.