Procedural: what online fans are used to calling episodic; everything gets wrapped up neatly at the end of the episode without any To Be Continueds

Serialized: two- or multi-part episodes, or a series that runs as a full sequence; missing an episode or two means missing important developments
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I can’t remember where I first read about this, but I followed a link that followed a link, until I’d read a whole lot of interesting things like
this hilarious parody and
this annoyed commentary and
a whole
BUNCH
of
posts on this blog and
this really freakin’ long discussion (much of which is based on gossip and conjecture, I’m afraid, though there are good points in there, if you can spend the time to go through more than 600 comments!)
and the thread on Writer’s Weekly, which is the only one in which I’ve bothered to comment, since most of the rest of it is now Old News.

All in all, AW (which nickname keeps putting me in mind of and his site The House of MST, which appears to be down at the moment) seems to have failed to keep in mind that sites are dependent on their hosts, and if the host tells you there’s something that needs to be addressed, you need to address it. Pulling the lawyer card was a dumb thing to do, despite the fact that I agree that this Bauer character seems to be pretty shady. There’s a line between legitimate warnings and libel, and if the host needed to have that explained, the site should have taken the time to explain it, rather than getting belligerent about their right to free speech. Looks to me like there were mistakes on the part of both the site and the host, and the pitchfork-waving masses would do well to step back and think for a moment. Besides, the villain of the whole thing was supposed to be Bauer, was it not? Far too much screaming at the (justifiably worried) host - if it’s a small company, how are they to afford defending themselves if Bauer sued them? They were just protecting themselves. Go after the crook who started the whole mess, not the business that got caught in the middle.<p

Somehow I missed this before. I heard about the throttled internet stuff, where ISPs are talking about charging sites to be accessible by that ISP’s customers (which is another really stupid idea!) but I hadn’t heard this one. Why are there so many idiots out there trying to choke the internet?

So I was reading my Writer’s Weekly e-newsletter, and was startled to see AOL on the Whispers & Warnings page. I’d just read the previous two yesterday from the forum, but I hadn’t seen AOL on the Whispers & Warnings in the forum, so I had to check it out. That led me here, where I couldn’t believe my eyes. AOL has been filtering out spam for its users, that I knew, but to also filter out messages because they contain links to sites that oppose AOL’s behavior? Foul play!

The article has several good links, including an excellent entry on the subject from Slashdot. It’s been archived, so there can be no more comments on the /. article, but it’s worth reading and brings up a lot of good points.

There are petitions up here and at the above-linked DearAOL.com, and what a mix of groups!