The Kerfuffle Archive: Kerfuffle à Trois
Welcome to The Secret Lair’s Kerfuffle Archive!
The Intarweb is a busy place, and we know it’s tough to keep track of whose hackles are raised and why, so we aim to make the Kerfuffle Archive your quick-reference guide to the latest slapfights, fracases, brouhahas and donnybrooks on the Intertubes. We’ll give you the who, the what, the when and the why, with links to the source of the scuffle and other helpful information.
Even as our web-crawling, tube-scraping robots were combing every nook and cranny of the Net for information relating to the Kerfuffle of the Moment, it suddenly became old news; a new contretemps arose and we had to quickly dispatch another squadron of tiffbots to determine the identity of the new feather rufflers and feather rufflees.
Here are the three most recent kerfuffles, with the current Kerfuffle of the Moment first:
Gaiman Gets Paid
Background: On April 23, 2010, the Politics in Minnesota blog published “‘Club Book’ organizers defend pricey allocation,” in which author Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Sandman) was criticized for his speaking fee after appearing at a small Minnesota junior high school. On May 7th, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article titled “One author: $45,000 for an afternoon,” drawing further attention to the story. Mr. Gaiman has since responded on his blog; in an entry titled “Political Football in A Teacup,” the author explained that his payment came from a Minnesota tax allocation created by Minnesota’s Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment: “[e]ither they gave the money to me or it went away – it couldn’t be used [by the library] for anything else.” Mr. Gaiman said that he is in the habit of donating his speaking fees from library speaking engagements to charity. Of the $45,000 fee, Mr. Gaiman also noted that “no-one asked if I’d do it for less.”
Who’s Angry: The Minneapolis Star Tribune and people opposed to The Legacy Fund.
Response: The blog entry on Politics in Minnesota garnered only 12 comments, while the Star Tribune article has thus far generated more than 150. A Boing Boing post regarding Mr. Gaiman’s response currently has over 130 comments.
Note: Excerpts from the speech and Q&A Mr. Gaiman gave at Stillwater Junior High School can be heard on the Minnesota Public Radio web site.
Diana Gabaldon vs. Fan-fiction
Background: On May 3, 2010, author Diana Gabaldon (Outlander, Lord John and the Hellfire Club) posted an entry on her blog titled “Fan-Fiction and Moral Conundrums,” declaring that fan fiction is illegal and (in her opinion) immoral. The entry was followed by at least one more on the topic, but Ms. Gabaldon has since deleted the posts and all attached comments. As nothing ever goes away forever on the Internet, the enterprising kerfuffle-seeker will be able to find a record of the row if they do a little digging.
Who’s Angry: Writers of fan-fiction, mostly.
Response: Ms. Gabaldon’s original blog entry, as near as we can tell, generated about 550 comments, but we haven’t seen any numbers for her followup entry (or entries). Science-fiction author and blogging legend John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, The God Engines) posted “Author Pokes Fanfic Hive! Film at 11!” in his blog on May 5th; that post currently has more than 140 comments attached to it. On May 7th and 8th, author George R. R. Martin (A Game of Thrones) posted related entries on his blog titled “Someone Is Angry On the Internet,” “A Few Last Words” and “A Few More Last Words.” The three entries have generated more than 700 combined comments to date.
Roger Ebert on Video Games
Background: On April 16, 2010, renowned film critic Roger Ebert published an article on his blog at the Chicago Sun-Times. In the article, titled “Video games can never be art,” Ebert expressed the opinion that video games are not art, and that “no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.”
Who’s Angry: Video gamers; possibly video game creators.
Response: Mr. Ebert’s blog post has spawned (It’s a video game term; get it?) more than 4,000 comments as well as blog entries, YouTube videos and web comics. As we recently noted here, some of the responses have been less than civil.
Episode 0048: The Great Old Pumpkin
Oh dear, already the Kerfuffle archives need to be updated!
Evidently Wikipedia is not amused by the XKCD coined word that pokes fun at Wikipedia being put up on Wikipedia.
http://xkcd.com/739/
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/13/183221/Wikipedia-Is-Not-Amused-By-Entry-For-xkcd-Coined-Word?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29
@David — Wow. That’s nearly surreal, right there. I may have to write it up. Who’s angry? Pedants.
And yet, this might be the most awesome kerfuffle to day.