03:05 am - More people should know what 'freedom of speech' actually means.
Looking over some of the negative responses to StupidFilter, I came across some comments that sadly point to a distressing idea that's becoming endemic among even otherwise rational people -- an attitude that I myself encountered when I implemented the Steve-blocker in pickleclicky (which is now redundant, since Steve has been banned from the RHMB), so let me spell this out in big bold letters.
An inalienable right to free speech is not an inalienable right to be heard.
Everyone has the right to ignore you if they so desire, and that right extends to the right to not even have to look at your drivel in the first place. Claiming that such blocking methods are an affront to the inalienable right to free speech (and, by the way, very nearly every blogging service and web hosting provider only allows free speech within reason anyway, even without the use of filters) is like saying you have a right to prevent me from not looking at your comments. That's logically equivalent to saying you have a right to force me to look at your comments, which is patently ridiculous.
Post what you want, you're not going to keep me from deciding whether or not I want to see it. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous.
Another criticism of StupidFilter is that its rules are arbitrary. That's the kind of stupid criticism the filter will, sadly, be unable to block (it only blocks based on form, not content). For one thing, it's open source, so if you don't like the rules you could always write new ones. For another thing, it's still in the research phase, so making any kind of judgement on the suitability of the results of the research that hasn't yet been done is, well, stupid.
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