While the substance of the following seems accurate enough to me, the mode of response--"Nertz to you, Newbie! I researched your ass!"--is facile:

"Go harass some billygoats, troll

Hi HRCin08! Congratulations on taking 30 seconds to set up a Salon account. I see that this is your first comment. The rest of us who have been here for a while really appreciate you stopping by to spam our messageboards with propaganda for your fast-fading candidate. It really shows the Clinton campaign's commitment to grassroots organizing. I hope you'll swing back by again on Wednesday with a bunch of excuses for why your candidate failed to make up any ground against Obama the night before."

But isn't the "almost cruelty" of deletion one way of urging the writer of a genuinely good article to try other, more traditional and more permanent, modes of publication first (even if the "more traditional" mode is an edited, perhaps peer-reviewed webzine)?

The question is whether Wikipedia, like the user reviews at Amazaon et al., has turned into an engine for self-publishing--one without the economic gateway of the vanity presses of old.

Yes, everybody is a critic. If you say "That movie sucks," you're a bad critic. If you say "That movie sucks because. . . ," you're on your way to being a good critic.

Naming gives others ownership of you. If you can't say, Sorry, not my name, you've been claimed.

My first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter, not James Earl. That was his decision.

The reason William Jefferson Clinton was proud of his middle name was that it immediately identified him as our first black president. (Jefferson = George and Weezie.)

And Sidney is indeed a homosexual name--it was the name of Tony Randall's first-gay-character on tv.

I think if Barack H. Obama were to mention that to Sidney McCain in a debate, the vein in Sidney's temple would explode and take out the first three rows of spectators.

1. "If you had the courage of your convictions, you wouldn't post anonymously."

2. "I won't dignify your post with a response, Anon, since you don't have the guts to post them under your own name."

3. "What Anonymous @ 3:13 meant, Anonymous @ 4:27, is that Anonymous @ 6:47 is a tool."

4. "Oh, yeah. Like 'prytania' is your real name. We're ALL anonymous."

5. Anonymice, Anonymoose, Anonymorons.

What the #%&@ was on your mind when you put a cuss word from Beetle Bailey on your front page?

I have been posting as Anonymous for over a year mainly because it pissed off Garry Owen and his bodacious buddy be-bop.

Where are the dos amigos anyway?

Flying spaghetti monster blah blah blah blah.

Delusional fundies blah blah blah blah.

Prove it blah.

What??!!

Like what's-her-name from last week, he goes into the lion's den apparently unaware that there's a lion.

Matthews is, as others have suggested, a mega-tool, a supra-dick. But he is predictable. Plan for him or stay away.

"Obama did not plagarise Patrick. He paraphrased. There is a difference."

No, there is not a difference. Paraphrase also requires attribution--just not quotation marks.

1. I think that MLK might be the kind of comparison that most people would happily accept.

2. But I agree: we might be seeing the beginning of one of those different-standards-for-different-folks deals--as in, Here's a great excuse for Chris and Bill and Sean to bring up whether African-Americans with their MLK dissertations and hippity-hop get by with this kind of petty theft (and Hey! That reminds all of you [white] voters that Obama is sort of black, doesn't it?)

(And I am just a lowly English prof. MLA-style rocks.)

Your two examples are familiar enough that they require no citation. No literate person is likely to think that you have come up with "better angels" if you quote Lincoln and Shakespeare's neologisms, like a gazillion others you could name, have entered into the general vocabulary.

I'd mention also that "Where's the beef?" (among other pop culture tags) required no citation because no one would have thought that Mondale had thought up the phrase himself. If you start a speech with a snarky look and a snotty "Mission accomplished?!," you needn't cite.

Immature politicians borrow; mature politicians steal--now there's a principle I could stand beside.

Well, yeah. I am an Obama voter and a college professor, and I see how I might get in a jam the next time I bust a kid for doing exactly what Obama did.

In speeches, of course you do not cite sources. But you can give a little shout-out: "As my friend Hillary Clinton once said, 'Bill, put down that cigar.'"

Anything not cited does, in fact, imply ownership.

The aforementioned does not change my voting preferences even a little (Would that Edwards was still around!), but, yes, there are academic standards at work here among this gaggle of law profs.

He just doesn't seem to be trying this week.

And do it much better (which is NOT necessarily true of every subject South Park treats).

Umm--who feels like breaking the bad news to Moira Kelly?

An article about anti-intellectualism gets fourteen whole pages of letters discussing anti-intellectualism before it turns into God.What God?My God.Whose God?Our God.NO God banalities.

Used to be, poetry was essential, even to laid-off workers.

W.C. Williams:

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

1. What did I ever do to deserve the ill treatment? For heaven's sake.

2. Lick me.

"[M]y English teachers always told me never to start a sentence, much less a paragraph with a conjunction[.]"

"This is the first article I've ever read in Salon that was shallow and borderline stupid."

"Paglia is a tired old broad. Ad hominem arguments are the mark of lazy thinker."