Writing online for years has radically transformed me, and changed my voice considerably. I listen to all those posts and messages, like them or not, and many seep into my language, style and consciousness. I suspect that if I continue contributing to Slashdot for a while, that experience will take hold, as it always does, in the way I write. Ultimately, their comments are all as valuable as mine, and they have just as much a right to their means of expression. Despite relentless media and political efforts to demonize the digital world as being filled with perverts, thieves and hackers, those of us who work online every day understand that these are hideously inaccurate stereotypes.
Websites bristle with personality, values, identity.
So in one sense, this flap about me has to do with the kind of place Slashdot decides it wants to be. Whatever it collectively decides is valid. It often has a lot to do with alienation and exclusion. All geeks are by no means alike, but most have brushed against some form of rejection. The geeks I admire most take care about doing it to anybody else.