Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post

In its explanation of the Blue purge, BoingBoing cited what it called an "erroneous" claim that it had removed 100 Violet Blue-related posts. They did not name the allegedly erroneous post as mine or even bother to link to it, so let me name the post: it was mine, and I linked to it earlier in the sentence. Notably, BoingBoing did not offer the correct number of purged posts (saying only that they had "unpublished some posts relating to her"). Also, someone from BoingBoing refused to tell me how far off my count of 100 was.

Let me correct the record. With some help from Violet Blue herself, and her boyfriend, who stayed up late last night writing a script to scan the WayBack Machine for Blue BB posts, I can present this spreadsheet. 

It contains 72 BoingBoing posts containing the name of Violet Blue. I found one duplicate in the 40 or so that I spot checked. This was not a high duplication rate, and Violet's boyfriend, she said, had written a second script to eliminate duplicates. Maybe it missed one or two.  So maybe 72 is slightly high.

In any case, let's say that more than just "some" posts were removed. And let's also note that this search only went from January 2005 to August 2007, when the archive ends. Further, BoingBoing's Internet archive has many different gaps in it where other Blue posts might have been sitting.

In sum, I was remiss to take at face value Violet Blue's number of 100. I should have said at least 70.

I apologize for the imprecision.

Comments

[Eddie Shore]

I think you can probably remove those quotation marks around erroneous.

Do you think you can find out why BoingBoing removed the post? I'd certainly be more interested in that than the number of scripts written by someone to determine exactly how wrong your first article was.

[macattack]

You have the power of the LA Times behind you which you could use to disseminate important and worthy information and you choose to post this drivel? Who ares about this, besides Violet Blue, who most people have never even heard of. Is this really what you want to be know for, writing about junior high school type squabbles?

[zosima]

@Macattack

This is not a minor issue. BoingBoing is one of the most popular blogs on the internet (at one point they ranked #3 in traffic) and their behavior with this "unpublishing" is unconscionably hypocritical.

@David Sarno
I don't think the numbers are that big of a deal. One post deleted for such petty reasons is unacceptable.