paul wheaton

This morning I woke up to find that somebody was angry about the way the site is configured.  To ensure my obedience to their will, they suggested I am a "tin pot dictator".  

I asked google what it means.

A "tin-pot dictator" is a derogatory term for a petty, insignificant, or minor authoritarian ruler with little real power or political credibility, yet who possesses delusions of grandeur and behaves in a tyrannical manner. Often used to describe leaders in small or developing nations, these rulers are seen as inferior and unimpressive.

I like it.  I guess I should add this to all my stationery.  I added it to my signature.

I made a little web site with a little forum to talk about the things i wanna talk about the way i wanna talk about them.  Simple.  I pay the bills.  

And a lot of lovely people have come and supported this path.  Really nice!   I get to choose a lot of things because I pay the bills.  

I promise to be petty.

Being insignificant makes me sound thinner than i am.  Nice.

minor authoritarian ruler with little real power or political credibility

I suck at politics.  That's cool.  

As for power:  my last two kickstarters did poorly - so that shows that i don't have a lot of power.

delusions of grandeur

Mr. Rogers told me it is good to pretend.

behaves in a tyrannical manner.

This just sounds like fun!

Often used to describe leaders in small or developing nations, these rulers are seen as inferior and unimpressive.

A whole nation?  I guess I always just though of this place as "me and my buds" combined with me paying the bills, so I get to decide on some stuff.

With a nation, people have built homes and stuff.  They depend on their leaders to not fuck up.   With a site on the internet, people can just go to a different site or walk away from the internet entirely.

But, what the hell ...    tin pot dictator sounds like a good time.

paul wheaton wrote:Somebody wrote to the email river (gir bot) and raven brought it to my attention:

Hello Paul,

I started to listen to one of your podcasts, but the language was so shocking and dirty that I heard less than five minutes.  For this reason, I have not even tried to listen to any others of your podcasts, I have not bought some of the DVDs I was interested in, and would not feel I could attend any of your events.   I can’t afford to pay my hard-earned money for things I wouldn’t want to hear.

Now I am receiving e-mails with swearing in them.  I am a lady and am finding it necessary to become more demanding about treated as such since common courtesy seems to be quickly disappearing in this country.  I have come to the conclusion that if people aren’t embarrassed to use bad language, I shouldn’t need to feel embarrassed to tell them it offends me.

I must suggest that you clean up your language, or I will find it necessary to say farewell.

I apologize that this is short and blunt. I could spend several hours trying to find the exactly right wording, but I don’t have the time right now.

I need to thank people that choose to fear words to this degree.  If everybody was cool with the full beauty of the english language, the divine works of robin williams would be 30% less funny.  So I do deeply appreciate the offended people so that I can laugh 30% louder.

And that's why I giggled a little when I locked this account.

Rereading some of this thread ...

First, I seem to recall Margaret Thatcher once stating "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't".


But more importantly, the person complaining is a shamer.  Shaming others is powerful to get your way, so they do it often.  I'm glad they do it.  Not only because of the robin williams factor mentioned above, but because they wave their shamer flag and we can spot fuckwits quickly.  Then, as we grow and build our community, it has fewer fuckwits.

paul wheaton wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:A new monthly record!

      11,684,533 visits!

that was november.

december:  12,609,023


january


      17,175,586 visits!

And now February


      21,291,300 visits!

I think the thing I am advocating is that you are part of a group that does all this stuff 40 hours a week, then you are doing it.  And without the group, you might end up not doing it.

The "gardening gardeners" model is something where, I think, people end up being 20x more productive.  Not only because of the collective schedule, but because of the powerful knowledge exchange.  

On your own, you would need 20x the gumption to come close.  And in the group it all becomes easier.

Mark Brunnr wrote:Within the 'What's Pie', 'Build Up Your Pie' blurb, it mentions earning pie by getting enough apples. Didn't that option go away several years back? Or is there a one-time threshold of apples that gets you pie that this refers to, rather than getting pie for every X apples?

I'm not sure, but i think the current system is that when people get 20 apples, they get one slice of pie.  But they don't get any more apple based pie freebies after that.  

Maybe folks can confirm that this is the way things are working now?

Rebecca Blake wrote:Since you have two places to buy one slice of pie, I think it would make more sense to remove the “automatically buy pie monthly” slider and just make that the product you are purchasing in the first box that says buy pie for $10. Emphasize it’s a monthly subscription or something.

Then the place lower with the up and down arrow will let people buy a one off pie if they want.

This would keep people from accidentally registering to buy $600 (or $65) worth of pie a month which would cause refund headaches for you.

And now that's two people suggesting this ...

I definitely want to minimize headaches.  

Maybe ...  there are two sections kinda like there is now ...  the first section is the old way - the toggle and the number of pies.   And the second section is for one time bulk buys?

Ash Jackson wrote:I checked many (I think all) of the buttons, all that I clicked took me where I expected them to.

The toggle "Automatically buy pie every month" is slightly confusing to me regarding the higher $$ amounts:

Would I be spending $65/month? (Or $600/month?), that's what it means to me on first read.

I can't tell if it's meant primarily for the $10 level, and that higher levels would replenish pie when user's pie runs out

Yes, $65 per month.  

Devaka and i talked about this a bit.  Normally, everybody wants the $10 per month thing. But there are some people that want many pieces of pie each month.  And not that many that buy a bunch of pieces of pie just once.  So we default to $65 per month and see how things go.  We did move it to the top so it would be super clear.