Let's do the time warp again. Let's jump back to, oh I dunno, sometime around 2001. You see apparently BoingBoing had decided to use quicktopic.com as a free and easy way to discuss the entries posted on BoingBoing. We all know that for whatever reason Quicktopics didn't work out for them-- what we don't know is exactly why. Hopefully this will shed some light on the issue...

September 10th, 2003 appears to be the last day that comments officially existed on BoingBoing. Let's analyze the last few posts conveniently made by Xeni Jardin:

*H-Bomb architect Edward Teller dies
*Bill Joy leaves Sun

That's odd. The discussion links no longer work. But Cory's post earlier that day seems to work just fine. And all of Xeni's earlier discussion posts (9/9/03 and prior) appear to work fine as well. What happened on 9/10/03?

Nobody appears to know for sure. In Xeni's wikipedia discussion some people mention death threats, and others, well:

"... BoingBoing used to have open comments and the were pretty much overtaken by criticisms of Jardin. Cory Doctorow eventually turned them off, if I remember correctly..." --Kickstart70-T-C 01:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Fortunately, I've answered the mystery for you folks in anti-xeni land and hopefully this will put to rest the discussion on Wikipedia. Kickstart was already heading in the right direction and this confirms it. There are atleast three references to what may have really happened. Here's a quote of the good stuff:

I also noticed that there were a few people posting comments as Xeni and Cory, impersonating them, and other exceedingly juvenile things. Part of the problem with Quicktopics (thich BB used for comments) is that the only indicator that you're the "real" Cory, etc. is a star next to your name. Since not everyone knows what the star means, the impersonators were sometimes believed to be the real thing. I suspect this is part of the whole deal, too

whoops that's bad, but it gets worse!:

...Someone had spoofed Xeni *with* the little authentication star, and it actually fooled me a first. It's only 2-3 people that are being really vile...

Golly, it sounds to me that quicktopic had quite a flawed system. Who on earth would want to use a system that allowed people to spoof the administrators of their own forums (besides us of course)? Either Xeni's account was hacked or there was a SIGNIFICANT flaw in the quicktopic system. If there was such a huge flaw who would use such a system today? Apparently Xeni would:

From the quicktopic buzz testimonials:

Xeni Jardin, co-editor of BoingBoing: QuickTopic is an indispensable part of every blog project I've been part of, from BoingBoing to kevinsites.net. The ease-of-use for both administrators and audience is unparalleled. Half of what makes a great blog great is what the blogger has to say. The other half? What the audience has to say. QuickTopic rules my blogosphere.

Why such a glowing testimonial from Xeni Jardin? It was their flawed system that allowed those juvenile pranks to happen. My personal speculation would be to assume that it wasn't quicktopic's fault for what had happened... You guys figure out from there.

"Half of what makes a great blog is what the blogger has to say. The other half? What the audience has to say." For once I can say that I completely 100% agree with Xeni on that one. Too bad she didnt agree with it in the long term...

Caught on camera, a surprise cameo showed up to the recent "Day Without an Immigrant" protests:



I tend to agree, Strong Bad, I tend to agree...

Hi, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Andrea James and I'm a transgender activist. You may not have heard of me because you see; I have no legitimate claim to fame other than the fact that I am currently in a relationship with a person named Calpernia Addams.

What's that? You haven't heard of Calpernia Addams?

What about Barry Winchell? You see Barry and Calpernia were in a relationship (not at all gay!) and when rumors began to circulate around the military base that Barry was in love with a transgender showgirl, some transsexual hating bigots murdered him. Calpernia was subsequently thrown in the national spotlight showcasing the military's "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy.

In the true sense of Dr. Frankenfurter we decided "don't dream it, be it". Calpernia and I decided that the best way to profit from help the transgender community was to start a company and take our show on the road to Hollywood. We were able to sell our story of Barry and Calpernia's star-crossed love as a movie called "Soldier's girl".

More recently, Calpernia and I have helped coach Felicity Huffman in her role in Transamerica. So now everyone can see the difference that we have made by profiting bringing attention to the plight of the transgender community.

When I heard about Xeni's backlash, and subsequent smear campaign on the internet, I couldn't help but jump into the fray. Afterall we're fighting all forms of transgender hatred and although even we're not sure which side of the fence Xeni Jardin is on, we wanted to let her know that transgender blogging is OK and that we won't stand for any of this Xeni Sucks nonsense. Transsexuals should have a voice to blog with! Hopefully somebody will buy our movie rights for a story tentatively titled, "Blogger Bigotry: The story of Xeni Jardin"

Shouldn't come as news to anyone who has ever been to the post office. Naturally, the solution is that we give this same big government the responsibility of taking care of everyone's healthcare.

This is lame on a variety of levels:

1) Screen Captures of ASCII Art. Because the ASCII art, by itself, just didn't take up enough disk space.
2) People who used BBSs in the "80s and early 90s" are what we who were using the Internet back then refer to as "lame". Seriously, seriously lame.
3) Appealling to a nostalgia you had no part in originally: ALSO PRETTY LAME.

What's next? BITNET LISTSERV INBOX SCREEN CAPTURES? Maybe they could be "mashed-up" with some seriously hot dildo cozies?

Xeni doesn't know what "freestyle" means. Probably thinks Neil Young pioneered the form, as well. Mashup mashup blah blah blah.

Man in an elaborate woman costume, Jokestress has decided all that discussion prior to her reading this site was wrong, and has decided to go ahead and edit the Xeni Jardin page herself.

I looked at the xenisucks.com site and was pretty underwhelmed by the quality of the content. Further, the site really doesn't seem to be that notable. Alexa has it at 270,000th or something like that. The "criticism" is basically one tepid potshot for each BoingBoing post made by this article's subject. If you are going to rant on someone for their "lameness," your rants better not be lame in comparison.

Or what? You'll edit the Wikipedia page? OH NOES!!!1111 LOL DONGS.

Three words, "Jokestress": NEW YORK TIMES.

Thus making his "new" record apparantly culturally relevant. Why else would this be "Directory of Wonderful Things-worthy"?

Neil Young hasn't put out a good record, oh, say, ever, though the bloated tard of a "songwriter" sure has the knack of taking credit for all sorts of innovation he had nothing to do with. All the comparisons made to Dylan are entirely appropriate in my book, since in my humble opinion, Dylan single-handedly ruined rock music by bringing the hippies over. Oh, if only all those jackasses were kept corralled in by A Mighty Wind-esque revival concerts...

Yeah, why don't we take a cue from them?

Oh wait, that's right. We're America. Pick your side of the border you want to stand on, Xeni. No sense in being a hypocrite.

EFF: Oh noes! You did comprehensive automated wiretaps on citizens in order to datamine who may be threats to our country!
Government: Yeah, so watcha gonna do about it?
EFF: We're gonna... sue you! We'll get the information from you!
Government: Darn, we'd love to share the info but it's a secret.
EFF: :(

Rarely-used defense? Didn't see that one coming, Xeni? You're an asshat.