"Birthers" Fouling OpenGovt Interactive Site - Vote them Down!

[Adelante]

Micah L. Sifry | June 1, 2009 - 3:01pm |

Right now, the Open Government Dialogue created as part of the Obama administration's new initiative to engage the public in a participatory discussion of ways to make the federal government more transparent and collaborative looks like it is being overrun by the so-called "birthers"--conspiracy nuts who think the President isn't legitimately a U.S. citizen. Here's a screenshot of recent tweets from @ogovbrainstorm, which automatically shows which ideas have recently gotten 20 positive votes or more:




-more

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/birthers-fouling-op...

Vote them Down here:

http://opengov.ideascale.com /

[HopeOverFear]

1. How are they allowed to do this?

[Adelante]

4. There are pages of this crap

Each entry needs to be DUed.

[HopeOverFear]

5. How do we DU it though, I don't know how

[Adelante]

7. Here is how to do it

Go to the first page

http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/ideafactory.do?mode=...

Click on a thumbsdown and you will be asked to register (you can choose no email in your profile if you don't want email)

Then when you return to the first page

Click that first again and it will downrate the post - you will see the number decrease

Continue doing the same thing as long as you can (I got through about 12 pages), but then returned to the front and saw new ones were coming in the whole time.

[Milspec]

34. Thanks for the info

got to page 8 and quit for now.

[nxylas]

20. Not sure "they" is the right pronoun

The posts all appear to be from the same person.

[Kerrytravelers]

2. If this nonsense continues, they'll just shut down the site and reopen a more moderated board.

It's a shame something accessable by everyone gets overrun with fools who mess it up. Typical.

[HopeOverFear]

3. Right

[madamesilverspurs]

6. "Isurper" ???

I did a double take, cleaned my glasses, looked again, and it was still there. Yeesh. First thing that popped into my mind was that they are mistaking the President for a large icey drink from 7-11.

[Adelante]

8. Birther blogs posted link

According to one of the comments

The link was posted on a couple of birther blogs today, Plains Radio dot com and Dr.Orly Taitz Esg dot com, they are urging their members to come here and bomb the place.....bunch of frickin' morons.

[PatGund]

21. *Faceplant*

In other words, Dr. Orly, the birther dentist with a law degree from an on-line law school, and Ed Hale, the birther internet talk show host that claimed on Art Bell's show years ago that he shot and killed two bigfoots on his ranch in Texas.

MAJOR wack-a-loons

[Adelante]

22. They're starting to cry censorship now

Because they're getting voted down, the poor babies.

[hileeopnyn8d]

9. What a bunch of idiots!

I started to vote them down, but that's insane. There's too many of those posts, I have a very low threshold for that kind of crazy.

[Adelante]

10. These people are totally nuts

Subject lines just from the past half hour:

-No! to Fascism, Socialism, Marxism

-Prosecute Obama for Treason

-I have a right to see his Birth Certificate

-Who is valued more an abortionist or a Soldier?

-President Obama needs to show his long form birth certificate

-What is the best way to change the culture of government to embrace collaboration? (birth certificate)

-Tell Obutt That His Grandmother Said He Was Born In Kenya.

-Obama Opening Up His Birth Records and Adoption Records

-Transparency and Accountability? (birth certificate)

-Birth Certificate

-Nothing To Hide?

-Produce a valid birth certificate and close the border

-Entertain the Possibility ....that this whole administration is a fraud. (birth certificate)

-Mr. Obama prove citizenship according to your oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

-Obama citizenship

There are about 20 more pages like this

[csziggy]

11. Use the search feature to locate the spam posts, then flag them

Then click each - not only can you vote them down, but you can FLAG each for moderator attention. Most I am flagging as 'inappropriate/spam.' If they get enough flags, they will be removed by the moderators on the site.

You do have to go to each individual page for each posting. PITA but if we can get them removed, so much the better.

So far I have searched for birth certificate, fraud, long form, citizenship. If anybody has more suggestions, let me know!

[Adelante]

13. I'll go in and flag them this morning

I was wondering why I couldn't see the flag button, because I knew I had seen it before.

Thanks for the tip.

[telmerc]

12. I will vote those birther lunatics down

with gusto..........Only a fringe idiot still believes that birther crap

[Adelante]

15. Welcome to DU!

[Blue_Tires]

14. comedy....

birthers, wrath of god fundies, water fluoridation, and anti-taxers...and that's on the first page alone! who says the Ron Paul crowd has been bored post-election??

[Yukari Yakumo]

16. Too easy to spam.

All you need is a e-mail account, even a free-to-get yahoo one works. It's doesn't even use the random 6-character anti-spambot protection for signing up or to post.

[Adelante]

17. Yeah, I think it's maybe a dozen or so freaks registering over and over again

They will have to do something to filter the IP addresses.

[Occam Bandage]

18. I HAET ISURPERS

[Adelante]

19. I never met an ISURPER yet worth a damn nt

[Adelante]

23. Come on, DUers, we need your help

The freepers just keep coming and we don't have enough to beat them back.

[Canuckistanian]

24. This site is fast becoming a joke

But I'm having fun responding to some of the mouth breathers.

And just who is this Mr. I. Surper?

[O is 44]

25. I e-mailed the WH yesterday...

asking them to have the word "birth certificate" put into a special cache that would block the post. The idiots do know I hope that they have their information since you have to log in to comment. They sure are some miserable people to spend this much time on someone they hate.

[Adelante]

27. Horrible people - ugh

It's exhausting, but I've been voting down and flagging since yesterday. I can't let them get away scot free with what they're doing. But I do wish the admin there would take it in hand.

[jenmito]

26. My registration won't go through...

even though I filled out the tiny form and they replied, "We've sent an email to [e-mail] for verification. Please make sure you click on the link to verify your email address" they DIDN'T. And when I tried to register again they say I already did. But they still won't let me in.

[Adelante]

28. Shit.

This has been happening to people. I think maybe the freepers are overloading the system making new registrations with different email addresses.

Jen, here is WhiteHouse.gov's contact form

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact /

Let them know and tell them it's happening to a lot of supporters.

[jenmito]

29. Thanks...

I will.

ETA-I just did. And I added that it's happening to a lot of other people, too.

[Adelante]

30. Thanks

[jenmito]

32. I JUST got "verified."

Time to get to work.

[Adelante]

33. I saw you over there!

Great! It's getting past my bedtime

[jenmito]

35. I'm glad! I'm commenting on the ignorant comments...

but it's getting past MY bedtime, too.

[davidpdx]

31. I went through the first 500 entries on the site

and found over 100 postings by those fucking idiots. Some of them have 100 plus ratings.

[Adelante]

36. A message posted this morning by the site admin

A Message from the National Academy of Public Administration
To the Open Government community:

Since it went live on May 21, 2009, this Open Government Dialogue has received hundreds of ideas and comments on how to make government more transparent, participatory and collaborative. What distinguishes this site from an ordinary "suggestion box," however, is your ability to vote on those ideas you believe are the best. Ideas gain traction not by having been submitted in many different instances, but when the community comes together in support of individual ideas and votes them up the list.

Over the past few days, we have seen this in action, as the Discussion has begun to focus predominantly on a set of postings that are highly redundant to one another, in effect "crowding out" the diverse range of ideas that we truly hope to gain from this discussion. When this happens, regardless of the content of these ideas, the discussion loses its ability to directly inform the White House's work on issues of open and transparent government.

Our attitude is that any idea, respectfully presented, is a legitimate contribution to the site. Whether or not it is relevant to the discussion is for you to decide, which you can do by voting ideas up or down. But please keep in mind that flooding the site with comments about any single topic dilutes both the importance of that topic and the effectiveness of the Dialogue overall.

We are dedicated to maintaining this site as an open platform for a robust exchange of ideas. In fact, keeping it open past the original one-week timeframe was in direct response to requests from you -- the members of this community -- who asked for more time. So now, we are asking you for your help. Vote down the postings you feel are counterproductive to maintaining a free-flowing exchange of ideas, and flag content that you feel is duplicative or inappropriate to the discussion.

We will continue to actively moderate this site by removing any idea or comment that violates our moderation policy.

With your help, this site will remain an open, focused dialogue that will help shape the President's commitment to transparency in government.

Thank you,
The National Academy of Public Administration

http://opengov.ideascale.com /

[HopeOverFear]

37. Ok so they're aware of it then

good.

[Adelante]

38. Yeah

It hasn't stopped the fresh barrage every minute, but they are cleaning up after them, so that's good.