When anybody tried to post info about that, moderator Max did his best to block that.

But here’s info that did manage to remain posted briefly, until Max deleted it:

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As the OrangeBottles blog gained momentum, new readers were naively accepting that it was non-fiction, and would rave about it. Which prompted more-aware observers to chime in dismissively, pointing out that the whole thing was fictional.

Once the word was getting out that it was fictional, then naturally people were getting curious about who was behind the stunt. (As in the much more famous Plain Layne hoax, from a few years ago, which Mnspeak founder Rex wrote about in detail, for City Pages.) Their eagerness to unmask the blogger was increased by the obvious delight the blogger was taking in fooling many readers.

Discussions about the blogger’s identity occurred on various message boards, including MnSpeak.

It didn’t take long for the pieces to be put together on the blogger’s identity. Because many of her friends and fans, in lauding her, would mention both her earlier, non-fictional, blog’s name (Hookers-something-stilts) and the new (OrangeBottles-something) name, and also in some cases mentioning her real name.

As was to be expected, as soon as she could no longer remain anonymous, the blogger abruptly took down the blog’s contents. And gave up her blogging URL at Blogspot. (Then a sleazy PR-guy in the porn industry immediately snapped up that abandoned URL, as a way to steer traffic to his sites.)

I’m weaning myself from the comments there.

So then a regular, MunsingW, very reasonably asked that commenters there stick to the standard of not engaging in the same old polarized debating. And also, staying on-topic: meaning, focusing on truly local aspects. (It’s MNspeak, not USAspeak, after all).

Next, another commenter copied and pasted the commenting guidelines from the Minnesota Monitor website, which are very good, and very much in keeping with MunsingW’s sensible suggestions.

Immediately afterward, one of the regular conservative trolls at MnSpeak howled in protest, about such standards. (Of course! Under such standards, most of his usual sorts of commenting would be subject to immediate deletion.)

A short time later, moderator Max deleted those copied-and-pasted suggested guidelines for commenting.

That’s MnSpeak for ya’!

Yesterday, when that sort of thing started to happen, someone spoke up about steering the discussion back to the thread’s original, locally-focused, topic. For a while afterward, things got better (with no help from Max); when they got out-of-hand again and the person spoke up again about that, Max deleted that person’s comment.

Today Aaron commented that he’s disgusted enough to be about ready to remove MnSpeak as one of his RSS feeds.

MnSpeak has sunk down to being only a half-step superior to CraigsList rants-n-raves.

Max continues to show himself to be an inconsistent, surly, and very ineffective moderator.

Yesterday, when that sort of thing started to happen, someone spoke up about steering the discussion back to the thread’s original, locally-focused, topic. For a while afterward, things got better (with no help from Max); when they got out-of-hand again and the person spoke up again about that, Max deleted that person’s comment.

Today Aaron commented that he’s disgusted enough to be about ready to remove MnSpeak as one of his RSS feeds.

MnSpeak has sunk down to being only a half-step superior to CraigsList rants-n-raves.

Max continues to show himself to be an inconsistent, surly, and very ineffective moderator.

Oh, go ahead. You’ve got a point there, but I would say…

1. If you think there’s room for improvement, how about if you join up and contribute?

2. Los Angeles is a different (and waaay bigger) market. Metroblogging LA kicks both of our asses.