i always enjoy watching the gridcosm discussion board in its active times, like recently (for quite a while actually), even, at least in some way, when i have to cringe as things sway into and out of the land of flamewars and such.

i have never, in all my experience on the internet (1987 on) been involved with a project that hasnt, at some point, degraded to an ugly flame-war. i am *almost* used to it. how do you apply "censorship" or "control" or whatever you wanna call it? i dont know. its part of the experiment.

part of me hates to see flaming extend into the artwork of the cosm. but i guess time heals all wounds, and eventually it gets shrunk to a memory thanks to rounding errors in the scaling algorithm. and its an honest snapshot of humanity, i guess.

on a related note, addressing the "level 1500 conspiracy" (Gridcosm Level 1500 <www.mrsnazz.com> and ...discuss?num=10676) i wanted to chime in and say we (ed and i, or at least i) *did* chose to change the "sample" level from 1500 to 1503 on the "explore" section of the gridcosm main page. it was during a time when we were doing some public displays of gridcosm at some events and some other high-traffic moments. we wanted the page the were starting at to have a more gentle (if you will) appearance for the newbie eyeballs.

was this "censorship"? sure, censorship is a spectrum and this lies on it somewhere. we are pretty sure we would never want to *edit* the grid (and, as the offsite page points out, we didnt) and hope that never becomes a question; and yet there are some liberties we might take for various reasons. actually, this is the only one i can think of related to gridcosm. (building that "explore" part of the gridcosm page is a manual process, btw; hence its not being updated in forever!) that page is not really part of the gridcosm "rules" or algorithm or game or experiment; just an afterthought thumbnail sketch to act as a sampler -- the fact that a gridcosm artist decided to use the regularity/pattern as a bonus exposure point just underscores to me how creative, attentive, and involved folks can get in gridcosm. and thats awesome.

((blah blah blah muse muse muse)) some day i would like to make the "gridcosm discussion" zine of all this; highlights and lowlights in print. i hate typing/reading on the computer. *grin*