Chez Watt nominations for September 2022

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
went fairly smoothly.

One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vmy46boX-Vc/m/rvgg62b-ZR0J

[Thanks to Burkhard for this link.] Several of the 2013 entries were side-splitting,
because of the clever categories the nominators dreamt up.

Perhaps the much longer lead time before nominations are closed this month
will help improve things on that score. In fact, before posting the nominations
to this thread, it might help to first put the nominees and categories
up on the thread where the nominee arose. Then others might
suggest more witty wordings for the categories, and the glory(?)
for the most voted would be shared by the one who first spotted
the passage and the one who came up with the category.

In line with this, only nominations posted to this thread will be put up
for voting at the beginning of October. Some nominations for this
month were made on the thread for August, but the nominators
might want to change the wording or their minds about submitting
them to this thread.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 13:13:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
>went fairly smoothly.
>
>One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
>nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.

To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in
direct response to your post and directed at the thread which you
started, and not at the nominations.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[Glenn]

On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:45:05 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 13:13:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
> >went fairly smoothly.
> >
> >One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
> >nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.

> To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in
> direct response to your post and directed at the thread which you
> started, and not at the nominations.
>

What would you do with this post, Peter? Leave it in, argue with it, or snip it?

[Glenn]

I've not seen you comment on this, and maybe you are aware of it and chose
to change the custom. But in the past, individuals
created threads premised with "Chez Watt". At the end of the month they were all collected into one thread.

As it stands now, one single thread has the potential to be abused, even likely, and although you could at some time or times create a reply post that removed such noise, the subject post could also get lost in the maze of a months worth of other threads, making it hard to find. And removing extraneous posts would cause you more trouble.

That I think could destine your attempt to failure, thru no fault of yours.
Collecting a lot of individual threads that were marked as Chez Watt nominations may be a considerable chore, especially without software, and would still need to be read to extract just the Chez Watt. Potentially a lot of work.

Your call.

[erik simpson]

On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:15:05 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

The most humorous of the Chez Watts were of the unintentional kind.

[jillery]

On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 14:17:45 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Fortunately, only DIG has the power to remove posts.
And why ask PeeWee Peter? Do you now need his permission to make
unmarked and mindless snips?

[Glenn]

I suppose this could be construed by some to be at least a marginally relevant concern.

By "snip it" I meant to not include such posts in a separate thread that correlated all the actual Chez Watt nominations, plus any valid concerns anyone might make.

A new thread, perhaps at the end of the month, could be renamed and Chez Watts collected from this thread. This could also be done more than once during the month.
Off topic posts such as yours could be left out, snipped as it were. Or left in as a comment.
That is what is happening now.
At the end of the month, there may not be but a handful of genuine Chez Watt nominations, and a lot of off topic garbage. This would appear to me to discourage participants.
Better in my opinion to allow anyone to start a new thread with "Chez Watt:" in the subject header, and for Peter to pull that nomination from the first original post, and ignore all the rest of any posts made in that thread, at the end of the month, and put them all in a new thread in a single post.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 8:05:05 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 3:10:06 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> > On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 14:17:45 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> > wrote:
> > >On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:45:05 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> > >> On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 13:13:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> > >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> >Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
> > >> >went fairly smoothly.
> > >> >
> > >> >One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
> > >> >nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.
> > >
> > >> To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in
> > >> direct response to your post

Jillery omits all hint of what post of mine she is referring to. Perhaps she
is referring to Erik Simpson, who made his criticism while casting his vote,
presumably in direct reply to my OP.

Jillery then lit into Erik for "bliind"ing himself "to the evidence of [my] posts." Documentation here:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/IxGZckMYygw/m/uy71SATfCQAJ
Sep 7, 2022, 2:50:05 AM

> > >> and directed at the thread which you started, and not at the nominations.

The thread was the sum of its parts, and the biggest contrast in humor with that 2013 thread was
to be found in the categories, which were part of the nominations. That's what I was
saying earlier, in different words.

> > >>
> > >What would you do with this post, Peter? Leave it in, argue with it, or snip it?

I've dealt with it above.

I believe jillery is just hurting herself with her bliind animosity towards me.
She's been making unprovoked attacks at me all through these Chez Watt threads.

> > Fortunately, only DIG has the power to remove posts.

Did DIG ever exercise that power? I've only seen him wield his power to ban
people from talk.origins. The last time I saw him wield it, alas, it was unwisely.

> > And why ask PeeWee Peter? Do you now need his permission to make
> > unmarked and mindless snips?

How many years have you been the target of jillery's bliind hostility to you, Glenn?

> I suppose this could be construed by some to be at least a marginally relevant concern.
>
> By "snip it" I meant to not include such posts in a separate thread that correlated all the actual Chez Watt nominations, plus any valid concerns anyone might make.

IOW, exactly how I handled the August nominations. No need to even think of omitting any of them.

> A new thread, perhaps at the end of the month, could be renamed and Chez Watts collected from this thread. This could also be done more than once during the month.

Once is enough.

> Off topic posts such as yours could be left out, snipped as it were. Or left in as a comment.

Why are you bothering to say this? I haven't duplicated ANY posts from the nominating thread
(which is what we are on now for September) to the thread for voting, only the nominations
themselves. That is as it should be, no?

> That is what is happening now.
> At the end of the month, there may not be but a handful of genuine Chez Watt nominations, and a lot of off topic garbage. This would appear to me to discourage participants.

I can't figure out what you are saying below, Glenn.

> Better in my opinion to allow anyone to start a new thread with "Chez Watt:" in the subject header, and for Peter to pull that nomination from the first original post, and ignore all the rest of any posts made in that thread, at the end of the month, and put them all in a new thread in a single post.

I plan to proceed exactly as I wrote in my OP: only accept nominations
made to this thread, and put the nominations and nothing else into the thread for voting.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 18:22:48 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 8:05:05 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
>> On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 3:10:06 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> > On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 14:17:45 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>> > wrote:
>> > >On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:45:05 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> > >> On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 13:13:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> > >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >> >Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
>> > >> >went fairly smoothly.
>> > >> >
>> > >> >One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
>> > >> >nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.

<PeeWee Peter's unmarked and mindless snip restored>

>>> >> To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in

>>> >> direct response to your post and directed at the thread which you

>>> >> started, and not at the nominations.
>

>Jillery omits all hint of what post of mine she is referring to.

All that jillery refers is in the quoted text above. PeeWee Peter's
comment above is a transparent and willfully stupid lie, backed up by
his unmarked and mindless snip. Apparently this is what he thinks it
meant by 'fair and impartial'. How many times does he have to
metaphorically grab T.O. posters by their pussies before they get a
clue?

[jillery]

On Thu, 08 Sep 2022 22:44:53 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 18:22:48 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
><peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 8:05:05 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 3:10:06 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>>> > On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 14:17:45 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>>> > wrote:
>>> > >On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:45:05 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>>> > >> On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 13:13:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>>> > >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > >>
>>> > >> >Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
>>> > >> >went fairly smoothly.
>>> > >> >
>>> > >> >One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
>>> > >> >nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.
>
>
><PeeWee Peter's unmarked and mindless snip restored>

Correction: PeeWee Peter did an unmarked and mindless *plagiarism*,
per his definition of the word. I suppose some posters might think
that makes a difference.

>>>> >> To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in
>>>> >> direct response to your post and directed at the thread which you
>>>> >> started, and not at the nominations.
>>
>>Jillery omits all hint of what post of mine she is referring to.

jillery can't omit what never existed. In fact it was PeeWee Peter
who vaguely alluded to some criticism. But to refresh his convenient
amnesia, the following is PeeWee Peter's post to which jillery
referred:
*************************************
Subject: Chez Watt nominations for August 2022
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:07:43 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <4be3751c-1b5d-45fc...@googlegroups.com>
On Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:07:43 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm trying to revive, however imperfectly, a "ancient" tradition of talk.origins.
*************************************

and the following is the post in its entirety which criticized the
thread's lack of humor:
*************************************
Subject: Re: Chez Watt: was Re: Chez Watt nominations for August 2022
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2022 11:23:39 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <6f36a0e7-edc2-408b...@googlegroups.com>
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 11:23:39 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
<j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Regards this thread:
>
>Like the humor leapt off the page, made a mad dash for the door,
>and kept running at full speed, never to be seen again, almost like
>it was never there to begin with.
>
>I nominate myself, under the category of "Too little, too late"
****************************************

>All that jillery refers is in the quoted text above. PeeWee Peter's
>comment above is a transparent and willfully stupid lie, backed up by

>his unmarked and mindless snip. Apparently this is what he thinks is

[Glenn]

It is however you want to do it. But it wasn't this way in the past. Individuals either created new threads that included "Chez Watt" in the subject header or changed the subject header of an existing post with "Chez Watt re:" (the original header). At the end of the month, these were all collected and pasted into a voting thread, like "Chez Watt Ballot for August".

Whether that "should be" is the question.

> > That is what is happening now.
> > At the end of the month, there may not be but a handful of genuine Chez Watt nominations, and a lot of off topic garbage. This would appear to me to discourage participants.
> I can't figure out what you are saying below, Glenn.

Just look back at some years old posts.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/search?q=subject%3AChez%20subject%3AWatt%20before%3A2010-09-30

> > Better in my opinion to allow anyone to start a new thread with "Chez Watt:" in the subject header, and for Peter to pull that nomination from the first original post, and ignore all the rest of any posts made in that thread, at the end of the month, and put them all in a new thread in a single post.
> I plan to proceed exactly as I wrote in my OP: only accept nominations
> made to this thread, and put the nominations and nothing else into the thread for voting.
>

OK with me. That might be easier than how it was done in the past.
But it doesn't allow for people to make a Chez Watt anywhere except in this one thread,
at least where you will pick it up, they may not be encouraged to search for this one thread to post a Chez Watt, and it isn't really a good place to discuss a Chez Watt when it is first nominated.

[Mark Isaak]

On 9/8/22 1:13 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> [...]

> In line with this, only nominations posted to this thread will be put up
> for voting at the beginning of October.

For what it's worth, the past practice for nominations was to reply to
the post with the quotable material, cut out all of the original post
(including attributes) except that which is to be nominated, and add
"Chez Watt:" to the start of the Subject line. This made it easy for
nominators and only slightly harder for the nomination gatherer, who
needed once, at the end of the month, to search for posts with the
tagged subjects. In fact, that might be easier than looking through
this thread, which already has a dozen non-chez-watt posts in in.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[erik simpson]

Hear, hear! Too many rules is the death of humor.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 10:45:07 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 18:22:48 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 8:05:05 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> >> On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 3:10:06 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> >> > On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 14:17:45 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> >> > wrote:
> >> > >On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:45:05 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> >> > >> On Thu, 8 Sep 2022 13:13:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> >> > >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > >>
> >> > >> >Despite a very late start, the Chez Watt nominations and voting for August
> >> > >> >went fairly smoothly.
> >> > >> >
> >> > >> >One criticism was a shortage of humor, and after seeing what the
> >> > >> >nominations looked like for June of 2013, I have to agree.
>

<PeeWee Peter's unmarked and mindless snip restored>

What is actually happening is that jillery re-connected two halves of what I kept in,
and is falsely accusing me of "an unmarked and mindless snip".

I believe this kind of destructive behavior is all part a deliberate campaign from the get-go
by jillery to sabotage the revival of the Chez Watt voting tradition.


Here is jillery's re-connecting of those two halves:

> >>> >> To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in
> >>> >> direct response to your post and directed at the thread which you
> >>> >> started, and not at the nominations.
> >
> >Jillery omits all hint of what post of mine she is referring to.

> All that jillery refers is in the quoted text above.

Jillery thereby confirms the truth of the sentence that
immediately precedes hers, and which was made
directly after the first half of what I had kept in:

[repost:]

>> >> To correct your self-serving revisionism above, that criticism was in
> >>> direct response to your post

[end of repost]

To make her "All that jillery refers..." defensible, jillery did a REAL, UNMARKED snip of what
immediately followed the above note by me of jillery's omission:

<begin restoration of jillery's snip >

>>Perhaps she is referring to Erik Simpson, who made his criticism while casting his vote,
>>presumably in direct reply to my OP.

>>Jillery then lit into Erik for "bliind"ing himself "to the evidence of [my] posts." Documentation here:
>>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/IxGZckMYygw/m/uy71SATfCQAJ
>>Sep 7, 2022, 2:50:05 AM

<end of restoration>


Having snipped a sample of the evidence which jillery berated Erik for bliinding himself to,
Jillery next changed the subject to the other half [re-restored below] of the quoted text.

> PeeWee Peter's
> comment above is a transparent and willfully stupid lie, backed up by
> his unmarked and mindless snip.

The above is a libel, and the first half of a GIGO. Now comes the second half:

> Apparently this is what he thinks it
> meant by 'fair and impartial'.

This garbage was made possible by a completely mindful
and despicable snip by jillery of what followed the second half of
what jillery re-connected, which was:

>>> > >> and directed at the thread which you started, and not at the nominations.

<restoration of a REAL snip by jillery:>

>>The thread was the sum of its parts, and the biggest contrast in humor with that 2013 thread was
>>to be found in the categories, which were part of the nominations. That's what I was
>>saying earlier, in different words.

<end of restoration>

All of the above was done under the hypothesis that jillery's "your post" referred to
Erik Simpson's comment about a lack of humor, as can be seen by clicking on the url above.

> How many times does he have to
> metaphorically grab T.O. posters by their pussies before they get a
> clue?

Despicable and baseless attempt at guilt by association (with Trump? or some other politicians?) noted.

> You're entitled to your own opinions.
> You're not entitled to your own facts.

I have commented many times over the years, IN CONTEXT, on jillery's totalitarian mentality,
which (inter alia) allows jillery to purposely (and logically) exempt herself from the "You" in her .sig.


With this post, jillery seems to be morphing into something not seen since Thrinaxodon's
rampages that caused DIG to ban the person who subsequently reinvented herself as Oxyaena.

A Talk.Origins Terrorist.

It shouldn't surprise anyone who has forgotten, or never knew, that jillery and Oxyaena
were the most faithful allies I have ever seen in talk.origins, except for one pair that
shall here remain un-named since neither member of the pair has posted to this thread yet.


Peter Nyikos

[Glenn]

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 8:15:05 AM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:

> On 9/8/22 1:13 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > [...]
> > In line with this, only nominations posted to this thread will be put up
> > for voting at the beginning of October.
> For what it's worth, the past practice for nominations was to reply to
> the post with the quotable material, cut out all of the original post
> (including attributes) except that which is to be nominated, and add
> "Chez Watt:" to the start of the Subject line. This made it easy for
> nominators and only slightly harder for the nomination gatherer, who
> needed once, at the end of the month, to search for posts with the
> tagged subjects. In fact, that might be easier than looking through
> this thread, which already has a dozen non-chez-watt posts in in.
>

I also wonder how Peter will be able to determine whether posts to this thread are intended to be Chez Watt nominations.

[Glenn]

The funny bone is after all connected to the elbow bone.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Mark and Erik and I discuss a possible change in procedure for
Chez Watt nominations. Interested readers are encouraged to
take a look and see what they think of a proposed change at the end.

Thanks, I would follow Mark's sage advice, except for one thing.

Under Old Google Groups, and the original New Google Groups,
any time a thread title was changed without doing an OP for
a brand new thread, the new title (which would include "Chez Watt")
showed up in boldface on the webpage for the whole Google thread.

But now, under what Google anachronistically calls "New Google Groups"
new thread titles are invisible; the only way to discover them is to
inaugurate a reply to the post. Then the new title appears in a small window
separate from the reply itself.

It appears that the majority of participants do their posting via
"Newest Google Groups." The last time Google Groups went down
but Beagle remained up, the participants using a different posting facility
commented on how shrunken the traffic in talk.origins had become.
This is a sign that very few participants will see the new thread title
if that is all that is changed.

Mark, Erik, what do you think of the following way of circumventing this problem:
"Newest Google Groups" still provides part of the first line of each post.
Suppose I amend the current procedure to ask that anyone NOT submitting
their Chez Watts to this thread, and who want them to appear in the end of month
compilation, should begin the TEXT of their post with the words "Chez Watt."

Do you think that this is a good jury-rigged adjustment to the procedure Mark describes?


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. ISTM using a Usenet
reader ought to be a necessary job requirement for counting votes from
a Usenet froup. But jillery doesn't know anything. jillery is just a
despicable terrorist. Bad jillery. Bad, bad, bad. So very bad.

--

[Mark Isaak]

On 9/9/22 9:01 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> Mark and Erik and I discuss a possible change in procedure for
> Chez Watt nominations. Interested readers are encouraged to
> take a look and see what they think of a proposed change at the end.
>
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 11:25:06 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
>> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 8:15:05 AM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 9/8/22 1:13 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> In line with this, only nominations posted to this thread will be put up
>>>> for voting at the beginning of October.
>
>>> For what it's worth, the past practice for nominations was to reply to
>>> the post with the quotable material, cut out all of the original post
>>> (including attributes) except that which is to be nominated, and add
>>> "Chez Watt:" to the start of the Subject line. This made it easy for
>>> nominators and only slightly harder for the nomination gatherer, who
>>> needed once, at the end of the month, to search for posts with the
>>> tagged subjects. In fact, that might be easier than looking through
>>> this thread, which already has a dozen non-chez-watt posts in in.
>

>> Hear, hear! Too many rules is the death of humor.
>
> Thanks, I would follow Mark's sage advice, except for one thing.
>
> Under Old Google Groups, and the original New Google Groups,
> any time a thread title was changed without doing an OP for
> a brand new thread, the new title (which would include "Chez Watt")
> showed up in boldface on the webpage for the whole Google thread.
>
> But now, under what Google anachronistically calls "New Google Groups"
> new thread titles are invisible; the only way to discover them is to
> inaugurate a reply to the post. Then the new title appears in a small window
> separate from the reply itself.
>
> It appears that the majority of participants do their posting via
> "Newest Google Groups." The last time Google Groups went down
> but Beagle remained up, the participants using a different posting facility
> commented on how shrunken the traffic in talk.origins had become.
> This is a sign that very few participants will see the new thread title
> if that is all that is changed.

What other participants can see does not much matter; it's you who needs
to find the nominations.

> Mark, Erik, what do you think of the following way of circumventing this problem:
> "Newest Google Groups" still provides part of the first line of each post.
> Suppose I amend the current procedure to ask that anyone NOT submitting
> their Chez Watts to this thread, and who want them to appear in the end of month
> compilation, should begin the TEXT of their post with the words "Chez Watt."
>
> Do you think that this is a good jury-rigged adjustment to the procedure Mark describes?

I have no idea. I have used Google Groups only a few times (when my
other newsfeed was down), and only to post.

Thunderbird, which I use to read USENET, allows a search (actually a
filter, so that only selected posts show) by word or phrase in the
Subject. Other newsreaders may do the same. It is ironic that a search
engine company be particularly bad at searching.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I can color code incoming posts for various parameters on NewsTap.

[Glenn]

Google is bad a searching? Thanks for letting me know. Do you have any alternate recommendations?

[Glenn]

I believe you even have the ability to spray paint your computer screen purple.

[Lawyer Daggett]

under the category of:
“Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.”

> Stick to law, [name redacted], and don't try to lecture scientists on how they should
> do their work -- at least, not until you have read the webpage.

[Lawyer Daggett]

Nominated in the category of
Bringing coals to readers of talk.origins

> And this is not even surprising, as generating meaningless random text
> that "feels like" proper English is also reasonably easy and has been done ...

[peter2...@gmail.com]

In light of the above, and more, I am asking you to take over the work
of facilitating Chez Watt nominations and voting.

I believe you can bring to Chez Watt a lightheartedness that has
been sorely missing since I began trying to revive it,
and which is so essential to the spirit of Chez Watt.


Peter Nyikos

[Lawyer Daggett]

It is a gracious and likely wise suggestion, and yet I'll anticipate that Mark will ask
himself "when did I volunteer to do that?"

In response to that I'll suggest that if Mark is willing, history suggests that those who
take on these roles did, on occasion (frequently), allow life to intervene causing delays
in the compilation and submission of a request for votes. And they missed posts that
needed to get added or tacked on to a subsequent month. This to say, if you did, at least
temporarily take up the job, I expect readers would be very grateful and forgiving, or at least
as forgiving as a starving pack of hyenas awaiting being fed.

[Mark Isaak]

I'll try it one month and see how it goes. Maybe after that I'll hand
it off to someone else who doesn't want the job.

[Glenn]

On Monday, September 12, 2022 at 11:55:07 AM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:

> I'll try it one month and see how it goes. Maybe after that I'll hand
> it off to someone else who doesn't want the job.
> --

Say what?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Thank you very much, Mark.

You might want to set up a new thread to make a fresh start and to
attract some regulars who might have become alienated by the goings-on
in the Chez Watt threads so far; but do whatever you deem best.


By the way, I'm taking a posting break from Friday to the end of next week.
But I'll be back to my present pace on the following Monday.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Or you could let Chez Watts return to their unattended state, as that
worked just fine for the past several years.

[jillery]

To quote the honorable Judge John E. Jones III, "Oh goody."

[Lawyer Daggett]

under the category of
Renewing the Talk.Origins Home Game[1] points scoring system

> I will add you to my list of people who ...

[1] http://www.antievolution.org/features/evohumor/tohome.html
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/IqmkDQimr24/m/Go6HdPemAl0J

[Glenn]

Sort of ironic, eh J Nobel?

[Mark Isaak]

These are all I found. Sorry I did not ask earlier if I missed any; I'm
still new to the job. In the future, I will probably not consider
nominations unless they have "Chez Watt" in the subject and are the
start of a thread (or a stand-alone post); it is too much hassle going
through long threads about, but not containing, chez watts. Votes, on
the other hand, MUST be followups to this post.

The nominees are:

=====

=====

under the category of
Renewing the Talk.Origins Home Game[1] points scoring system

> I will add you to my list of people who ...

[1] http://www.antievolution.org/features/evohumor/tohome.html
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/IqmkDQimr24/m/Go6HdPemAl0J

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, October 2, 2022 at 10:30:28 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:

> These are all I found. Sorry I did not ask earlier if I missed any; I'm
> still new to the job.

If you give people another week to cast their final vote (perhaps
withdrawing earlier votes), and to remind you of any
you missed, this won't be a problem even this time around.

> In the future, I will probably not consider
> nominations unless they have "Chez Watt" in the subject and are the
> start of a thread (or a stand-alone post); it is too much hassle going
> through long threads about, but not containing, chez watts. Votes, on
> the other hand, MUST be followups to this post.

I could add a couple that you missed, but I think it's better to
have the original nominator respond, if they still like the
ones that they nominated almost a month ago.

>
> The nominees are:
> > under the category of:
> > “Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.”
> >
> >> Stick to law, [name redacted], and don't try to lecture scientists on how they should
> >> do their work -- at least, not until you have read the webpage.
> =====
> Nominated in the category of
> Bringing coals to readers of talk.origins
>
> > And this is not even surprising, as generating meaningless random text
> > that "feels like" proper English is also reasonably easy and has been
> done ...
> =====
> under the category of
> Renewing the Talk.Origins Home Game[1] points scoring system
>
> > I will add you to my list of people who ...

This one has my vote. As was often the case in the past, the
description was better than the thing described. It was good to see
the webpage linked below.

> [1] http://www.antievolution.org/features/evohumor/tohome.html

I liked the way the anti-creationism regulars could lose points as
well as gain points at the expense of creationists. [1]
I note that various critics of mine have unknowingly [2] received
lots of negative points on account of bottom-posts over the years
that fit the following description:

-1 for quoting the entire text of a post, then responding to
a single point (unless you are composing a parody of Antti)

[1] This was later broadened to include non-creationists like myself.

[2] I am applying ye olde "Give them the benefit of the doubt" scoring system here. :)

The author, Chris Colby, bequeathed to us this points scoring system
way back on October 8, 1992, so it is no wonder [3] that several people,
including even old-timers like Hemidactylus, are trying to promote bottom-posting
as the "best" way to respond to posts.

[3] See [2].


Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Mark Isaak wrote:
> These are all I found.  Sorry I did not ask earlier if I missed any; I'm
> still new to the job.  In the future, I will probably not consider
> nominations unless they have "Chez Watt" in the subject and are the
> start of a thread (or a stand-alone post); it is too much hassle going
> through long threads about, but not containing, chez watts.  Votes, on
> the other hand, MUST be followups to this post.
>
> The nominees are:
>
>
>> under the category of:
>> “Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see
>> us.”
>>
>>> Stick to law, [name redacted], and don't try to lecture scientists on
>>> how they should
>>> do their work -- at least, not until you have read the webpage.
>
> =====
>

I feel seen - but as I'd have to declare an interest with both
candidates, I vote for this one:

[jillery]

On Sun, 2 Oct 2022 07:28:30 -0700, Mark Isaak
<spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:

>These are all I found. Sorry I did not ask earlier if I missed any; I'm
>still new to the job. In the future, I will probably not consider
>nominations unless they have "Chez Watt" in the subject and are the
>start of a thread (or a stand-alone post); it is too much hassle going
>through long threads about, but not containing, chez watts. Votes, on
>the other hand, MUST be followups to this post.

Point of order: the phrase "new topic" is ambiguous. IIUC GG regards
any change to a subject name, excepting the prefix "RE:", as a new
topic. OTOH Usenet defines a new topic as having no references in its
headers. To add to the confusion, different newsreaders follow one or
the other convention, while AGENT will follow either convention
depending on display settings.

In the spirit of supporting anonymity of the source, and for
simplicity in identification, I would argue that valid Chez Watt noms
must at a minimum be both new topics aka without header references AND
prefixed with "CHEZ WATT", which excludes "RE:"s.

>The nominees are:
>
>
>> under the category of:
>> “Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.”
>>
>>> Stick to law, [name redacted], and don't try to lecture scientists on how they should
>>> do their work -- at least, not until you have read the webpage.
>
>=====
>
>Nominated in the category of
>Bringing coals to readers of talk.origins
>
> > And this is not even surprising, as generating meaningless random text
> > that "feels like" proper English is also reasonably easy and has been
>done ...
>
>=====
>
>under the category of
>Renewing the Talk.Origins Home Game[1] points scoring system
>
> > I will add you to my list of people who ...
>
>[1] http://www.antievolution.org/features/evohumor/tohome.html
>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/IqmkDQimr24/m/Go6HdPemAl0J

--

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/4/22 1:59 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Oct 2022 07:28:30 -0700, Mark Isaak
> <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
>
>> These are all I found. Sorry I did not ask earlier if I missed any; I'm
>> still new to the job. In the future, I will probably not consider
>> nominations unless they have "Chez Watt" in the subject and are the
>> start of a thread (or a stand-alone post); it is too much hassle going
>> through long threads about, but not containing, chez watts. Votes, on
>> the other hand, MUST be followups to this post.
>
>
> Point of order: the phrase "new topic" is ambiguous. IIUC GG regards
> any change to a subject name, excepting the prefix "RE:", as a new
> topic. OTOH Usenet defines a new topic as having no references in its
> headers. To add to the confusion, different newsreaders follow one or
> the other convention, while AGENT will follow either convention
> depending on display settings.

The reason is so I don't have to look through tons of irrelevant posts.
If I filter for "chez watt", I can find any new thread or subthread, but
if the nominees are buried in a long Chez Watt thread, it's easy to miss
them.

> In the spirit of supporting anonymity of the source, and for
> simplicity in identification, I would argue that valid Chez Watt noms
> must at a minimum be both new topics aka without header references AND
> prefixed with "CHEZ WATT", which excludes "RE:"s.

I *think* new thread vs. new subthread doesn't matter for my purposes.
(Apparently, I missed some from September; I'll need to check why.)
I'll leave the anonymity issue to the discretion of the nominators. But
yes, "Chez Watt" without "Re:" is important.

[Martin Harran]

That goes back before my time here. Did Glenn used to be called Ted?

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 05 Oct 2022 08:39:33 +0100, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com>:

I just glanced at the thread and date in Gurgle, but it's
probably Ted Holden. Ted was one of the more sane and
amiable denialists, as contrasted with such as Karl
"Woodpecker" Crawford. And no, the two were/are different
people.
>
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[peter2...@gmail.com]

<sigh> So far, the only vote that has been cast on this sub-thread is mine.
Three people who have since posted have neglected to cast them,
besides you, Mark. [I guess you are abstaining, as I did on the August vote.]

In hopes of "sweetening the pot" [old poker term], I am adding a nomination
that you missed, and which was made very early in September,
at the end of this post.

On Tuesday, October 4, 2022 at 11:55:29 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/4/22 1:59 AM, jillery wrote:
> > On Sun, 2 Oct 2022 07:28:30 -0700, Mark Isaak
> > <spec...@curioustaxonomy.net> wrote:
> >
> >> These are all I found. Sorry I did not ask earlier if I missed any; I'm
> >> still new to the job. In the future, I will probably not consider
> >> nominations unless they have "Chez Watt" in the subject and are the
> >> start of a thread (or a stand-alone post); it is too much hassle going
> >> through long threads about, but not containing, chez watts. Votes, on
> >> the other hand, MUST be followups to this post.
> >
> >
> > Point of order: the phrase "new topic" is ambiguous. IIUC GG regards
> > any change to a subject name, excepting the prefix "RE:", as a new
> > topic.

It appears that the methods used by GG for making CLEAR that a topic is "new"
are more complicated than this.

Mark, the Subject line of your OP (if that was what you intended it to be)
shows up as follows when I try to find it the only way I can
in Google Groups -- by initiating a reply to the post:

Re: CHEZ WATT vote for September

Can you see that there is no "Re" in front of the actual Subject line
in your newsreader?

On the other hand, it seems that you were directly following
up to a post that GG would show to me as:

Re: Chez Watt nominations for September 2022

It used to be that first Deja News, then the original GG,
then the first "New GG" showed lots of headers when fed
the right kind of url for the post. But in "the second New GG,"
the "right" kind no longer seems to work.

And thus, the only way I can tell that the Subject line
has changed is to compare the wording that follows the "Re"
with the wording that follows the "Re" in earlier posts, by
initiating replies to both.

> > OTOH Usenet defines a new topic as having no references in its
> > headers.

I'm not sure "defines" is the right word, but in practice this
means that some newsreaders will display the new Subject
line as a whole new topic in its "table of contents" or whatever
the right term is.

OTOH this "second new Google Groups" will continue to display
it under its original Subject line in its table of contents, EXCEPT
when one clicks the "New conversation" button on the top left.

And then, if the clicker wants to do a Chez Watt
nomination, the simplest way is to copy the
nominated text text and paste it into the resulting display,
adding one "chevron" (>) in the margin, and then typing
in the wittiest category 'e can think of.

> > To add to the confusion, different newsreaders follow one or
> > the other convention, while AGENT will follow either convention
> > depending on display settings.

> The reason is so I don't have to look through tons of irrelevant posts.
> If I filter for "chez watt", I can find any new thread or subthread, but
> if the nominees are buried in a long Chez Watt thread, it's easy to miss
> them.

> > In the spirit of supporting anonymity of the source, and for
> > simplicity in identification, I would argue that valid Chez Watt noms
> > must at a minimum be both new topics aka without header references AND
> > prefixed with "CHEZ WATT", which excludes "RE:"s.

Mark, I thought that you could filter out anything that didn't fit
the description, but you missed one that someone produced
on the thread for August nominations.

Because time is short, and I would like to provide another
candidate, I am reposting that candidate without
divulging the identity of the "someone" here.

======================
CHEZ WATT
In the category of DILUTION ALERT: Bartender, you call this a drink? Let
me speak to the manager:

> ALERT: this thread has been diluted to the point where, barring
> a vote like the one [redacted] is demanding below, I will be starting
> a new thread this coming Monday with a title like,
> "Voting for Chez Watt Candidates to Take Place Here."
> Rationale explained below.
======================

Having cast my vote for the winner, I am voting for this nominee as my
second choice. ["Vote early, vote often."]

Peter Nyikos (not the original nominator)

[Burkhard]

peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> <sigh> So far, the only vote that has been cast on this sub-thread is mine.

that's because I cast mine in the "Chez Watt votes for September",which
is the thread Mark set up for the votes, at least that's how it looks in
my newsreader.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 11:15:32 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > <sigh> So far, the only vote that has been cast on this sub-thread is mine.

> that's because I cast mine in the "Chez Watt votes for September",which
> is the thread Mark set up for the votes, at least that's how it looks in
> my newsreader.

I apologize for the senior moment: I actually saw your vote a few days ago,
but forgot about it.

Oh, well, no harm done, I hope, in adding that nominee at the end,
one that Mark overlooked:

<snip for focus>

> > Because time is short, and I would like to provide another
> > candidate, I am reposting that candidate without
> > divulging the identity of the "someone" here.
> >
> > ======================
> > CHEZ WATT
> > In the category of DILUTION ALERT: Bartender, you call this a drink? Let
> > me speak to the manager:
> >
> >> ALERT: this thread has been diluted to the point where, barring
> >> a vote like the one [redacted] is demanding below, I will be starting
> >> a new thread this coming Monday with a title like,
> >> "Voting for Chez Watt Candidates to Take Place Here."
> >> Rationale explained below.
> > ======================
> >
> > Having cast my vote for the winner, I am voting for this nominee as my
> > second choice. ["Vote early, vote often."]
> >
> > Peter Nyikos (not the original nominator)
> >

Perhaps you, too, would like to vote for a second choice, Burk (and maybe more?)


Peter Nyikos

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Sunday, October 2, 2022 at 10:30:28 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:

I hereby vote for

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 05 Oct 2022 10:21:05 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

>On Wed, 05 Oct 2022 08:39:33 +0100, the following appeared
>in talk.origins, posted by Martin Harran
><martin...@gmail.com>:
>
>>On Thu, 15 Sep 2022 05:08:57 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
>><j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>under the category of
>>>Renewing the Talk.Origins Home Game[1] points scoring system
>>>
>>>> I will add you to my list of people who ...
>>>
>>>[1] http://www.antievolution.org/features/evohumor/tohome.html
>>>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/IqmkDQimr24/m/Go6HdPemAl0J
>>
>>
>>That goes back before my time here. Did Glenn used to be called Ted?
>>
>I just glanced at the thread and date in Gurgle, but it's
>probably Ted Holden. Ted was one of the more sane and
>amiable denialists, as contrasted with such as Karl
>"Woodpecker" Crawford. And no, the two were/are different
>people.
>>

It was just that some of the special *Ted* awards would be equally
appropriate for Glenn e.g.:

======================================
The "Ted Badge of Courage" award
+12

This can only be awarded by Ted, and you can only receive the points
for it once. You score 12 if Ted responds by attacking you personally.
For example, if he attempts to ridicule you by making fun of your
weight or claiming you must be on drugs to believe whatever it is
you believe.
======================================

In fairness, I can think of at least one other poster of whom the same
could be said!