I first posted to this blog exactly 8 years ago, after a few years of dithering over which blog software to use (WordPress was the first that made me not feel like I had to write my own; maybe I was waiting for 1.0, released January 2004).

A little over two years ago I had the idea for a “refutation blog”: after some number of years, a blogger might attempt to refute whatever they wrote previously. In some cases they may believe they were wrong and/or stupid, in all cases, every text and idea is worthy of all-out attack, given enough resources to carry out such, and passing of time might allow attacks to be carried out a bit more honestly. I have little doubt this has been done before, and analogously for pre-blog forms; I’d love pointers.

The last two Februaries have passed without adequate time to start refuting. In order to get started (I could also write software to manage and render refutations, and figure out what vocabulary to use to annotate them, and unlikely but might in the fullness of time, but I won’t accept the excuse for years more of delay right now) I’m lowering my sights from “all-out attack” to a very brief attack on the substance of a previous post, and will do my best to avoid snarky asides.

I have added a refutation category. I will probably continue non-refutation posts here (and hope to refute those 8 years after posting). I may eventually move my current blogging or something similar to another site.

Back to that first post, See Yous at Etech. “Alpha geeks” indeed. With all the unintended at the time, but fully apparent in the name, implication of status seeking and vaporware over deep technical substance and advancement. The “new CC metadata-enhanced application” introduced there was a search prototype. The enhancement was a net negative. Metadata is costly, and usually crap. Although implemented elsewhere since then, as far as I can tell a license filter added to text-based search has never been very useful. I never use it, except as a curiosity. I do search specific collections, where metadata, including license, is a side effect of other collection processes. Maybe as and if sites automatically add annotations to curated objects, aggregation via search with a license and other filters will become useful.