(Seriously, from Internet searches, I actually know of someone named Paul who shares my full last name. It’d be pretty funny if you were he, but I’m also fairly certain that you’re not.)

(Seriously, from Internet searches, I actually know of someone named Paul who shares my full last name. It’d be pretty funny if you were he, but I’m also fairly certain that you’re not.)

Why would Dave W and Paul W be confused?

I figure it’s likely that “Dave” and “Paul” are both unmemorable one-syllable consonant-vowel-consonant names for somebody on the internet—likely just another guy, likely white, etc. Signing with the last initial W, on the other hand, is considerably less common and more memorable.

Or we could be confused because our parents never told us our whole last name, or which one was the evil twin. I’ve always wondered why mom not only wouldn’t tell us who our father was, but felt the need to maintain her pseudonymity with her own sons.

(Dave W, thanks for passing along the props. It’s always
good to know when somebody notices, especially somebody I respect.)

Why would Dave W and Paul W be confused?

Ask Ophelia Benson.

By the way, Paul W., Ophelia’s got some props for you that she mistakenly gave me:

http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/how-to-do-dialogue/#comment-53347

I had a clever user name, once. But it was from my teenaged, being-a-BBS-asswipe years. Much better left behind.

I’m also not Dave W. above. (We’ve been mistaken for each other before, too. I wish I’d thought of a clever unique ‘nym when I started doing this. *sigh*)

No I did not. I added my own commentary to existing comments (I think one or two of them, probably two), and that it was added cometary was supposed to be obvious. You and a few others created the folklore that I was “changing people’s comments” as though I was subtling editing, and as though I was doing it habitually, because you could not resist hyping that up.

In fact, your pit-bull dogedness in pursuing this issue was exemplary of why I wrote the post that originally started that fight.

And, at the time, it was a matter for me of deleting the comment, letting it go as is, or adding my sarcasm. I chose to add the sarcasm. That was a mistake for a number of reasons, but honestly, Paul, one of those reasons turned out to be that a handful of commenters simply don’t know how to behave. In other words, I made a mistake, but that mistake was in part me overestimating the ability of other people in the conversation to act like adults.

Paul, you and others may or may not recall how absurd things got on that post. That is not going to happen now. At this moment I’m firmly asserting that there will be no such bickering at this time on this post. I’m asking this of you as well, Stephanie. This back and forth ends here.

Comments on this post are not in limited moderation. If you write a comment and it gets held up, please refrain from going OT paranoid. Just be patient, I’ll most likely release it.

Thank you very much.

Contrary to the claims of the person on Greg’s most recent YNH thread who called this bullying, this sort of examination of bad behavior can have a protective effect for the people targeted for defamation.

I would like to take this chance to point out that Greg Laden participated in editing people’s posts in an unflattering manner during a previous scuffle with the Pharyngula commentariat. You (and he) seemed dismissive of the people who were calling it out as rather bad behavior. It wasn’t this scale, admittedly, but the same behavior was there. I suppose at least no sockpuppets were harmed.