Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age

BREAKING: Knight Institute demands that President Trump unblock critics on Twitter. https://t.co/AyftwQBzJF @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Gqas7i2DfN

— Knight 1st Amendment (@knightcolumbia) June 6, 2017

The Knight Institute’s letter to President Trump is here.

POTUS

a @POTUS so mentally weak & intolerant of dissent he blocks US citizens critical of his policies from even reading his latest pronouncements pic.twitter.com/MjLuMUPqBD

— Joe Papp (@joepabike) June 4, 2017

Team Type 1 - Managing Dissent

Pappillon welcomes comments from our readership, and encourages their participation in discussions on topics of interest. Our comments policy is straightforward, with only three basic tenets, and there is no up-front moderation on posts originating within the last 10 days. If you want to comment on a post that's older than 10 days, you should still do so - it will just be delayed momentarily while its relevancy is reviewed.

This policy serves us well, and only on very rare occasions have we had to delete comments, usually because some anonymous poster is trying to impersonate someone else. Unfortunately, last week we had to delete a comment that was defamatory to Mike Creed, one of the nicest guys still racing in the pro peloton - despite his having lived with my former roommate, Igor Pugaci!

Unfortunately we didn't catch the comment quickly enough - it followed the post which revealed some level of internal dissent at Team Type 1. The spineless and cowardly anonymous commentator snarkily claimed that Mike Creed was behind the Twitter account, "Otis Crakenberry (Otisdecrack)," who is the source of the very unflattering material on Team Type 1. This person is not Mike Creed.

Leaving aside the fact that "Otis Crakenberry" is on-record stating that they are not Mike Creed, it should be apparent after even a cursory examination that there are such fundamental differences in style, vocabulary, cadence and tone between "Crakenberry" and Creed (whose Twitter account is simply "Michael_Creed") that no right-thinking individual could mistake the two.

Furthermore, it's not in Mike Creed's character to hide behind anonymity and throw stones at his employer. I've known Creed for more than a decade, and he's always been the kind of guy you'd want as a teammate: someone who knows what's "going on" and has the presence of mind to organize a group of riders on the road, unite them around a common purpose, and - if things aren't going well - publicly defend his teammates and himself. If he had a problem with you, he'd come to you directly to try to resolve it. He wouldn't set-up shop on the Internet and start a bitter campaign of anonymous carping. And anyone who thinks he would doesn't really know him half as well as they imagine.

It's actually quite difficult to believe that anyone within the Team Type 1 management could be fooled into thinking one of their most experienced, valuable riders would orchestrate an anonymous attempt to embarrass them via Twitter. But just for the record, the final reason why I'm convinced that Otis Crakenberry cannot be Mike Creed, is that I received a DM on Twitter from Crakenberry at the same time I was on the phone with Mike Creed, who himself was driving a car at the time - not sitting at Starbucks in front of a laptop banging away in anger on Twitter...

Confidential to L.A.

Make up your mind - we'll get through this more easily.

???

Thanks for the Follow, Lance Armstrong

A picture is worth a thousand words, I believe they say...

Have you always wanted to have something in common with Lance Armstrong other than a love of cycling and money, or a predilection for shameless doping? If so, check me out on Twitter - but if you decide to follow, don't be like Lance and wuss-out a few hours later.

Blocked on Twitter by Lance

Shortly after writing this comparative piece, whilst logged-in to Twitter, I happened to click on an update from a fellow cycling fan with the intention of browsing @lancearmstrong's feed. And this was what I saw:

Nearly 2.5 million followers and the guy who won the Tour de France seven times needs to go to the trouble of blocking me? I'll take that as a compliment, I guess. Oh, and to check if it might just have been a technical glitch, I logged-out, reloaded the feed, and...Voilà!
 

LOL... Anyway, if you're new to Twitter, follow me there, here. ;)

Why Not? When in Rome (or Austria) ...

Cycling Quotient - learn who's on the bike AND on Twitter...

Want to know which of your favorite cyclists (male OR female) is represented online by either a personal website, Twitter account or both? Well then, look no further than the handy list compiled by Cycling Quotient, which ranks this author (alphabetically), in a stormin' 249th place with both a personal website AND Twitter account!

Soooo...what is Cycling Quotient (CQ)?

 From their website: CQ is short for Cycling Quotient. The CQ-ranking is a world ranking of professional road cyclists, based on their performances during the last 12 months. It can be seen as the non-official successor of the UCI-ranking which disappeared when the ProTour was introduced in 2005.

History

For years, the UCI published weekly a world ranking, the UCI-ranking (formerly known as FICP-ranking). This ranking gave a value to all professional cyclists and was used in this respect in the webcompetition Gigabike. In 2005, the UCI abandoned the UCI-ranking while introducing the ProTour. Because Gigabike still required an overall ranking system of professional cyclists, the organizers decided to calculate the ranking themselves from that moment on. They called their ranking initially the Anja-ranking, based on the first names of the data managers, being Andy Roose and Jasper Van Hoof.

In 2007 Anja became CQ, representing a more professional approach. On April 14th, 2007 this website was launched with the intention to make the ranking and the results database accessible for all cycling fans all over the world.

The point scales used for the CQ-ranking are still based on the old UCI-ranking scales and follows the race categorisation as defined by the UCI. Since its foundation in 2005 only some limited adjustments were done to the existing scales. The applied scales for the different race categories can be found here.

Women CQ

Although the UCI-ranking for women still exists, the organizers of Gigabike also decided to start calculating the women Anja/CQ-ranking for their spin-off Chicabike. The main arguments for doing that, were the availability at all times of the ranking and the fact that the UCI made some mistakes in their calculations! Some people might remember the Bubnenkova/Boubnenkova confusion. Even at this moment there are still mistakes in the UCI-ranking. For example, in the final ranking of 2006: ...there were no points awarded to the world cup leader after the world cup races (according to the UCI rules, that rider must receive 10 points), ...no points were awarded in the NC time trial of Germany, France, Switzerland and Belgium, ...too many points were awarded in the NC time trial of Australia, ...no points were awarded in stage 2 of the New Zealand Tour, ...often too many riders received points in TTT's, ...Clemilda Fernandes appeared two times (Silva Clemilda Fernandes and Fernandes Silva Cremilda), ...the NC of Egypt was actually the African championship of 2005 in Egypt, etc. etc."

Twittering Cyclists - the Definitive Listing

Finally, listings of men and women cyclists connected to the elite level of our sport who are Twittering away (instead of riding km's?):

Fake Twitter Followers

Can someone explain to me please what the deal is with the spam-like followers who occasionally decide to pursue me on Twitter? You know what I mean...they're "people" with seemingly real names and a picture who randomly start to follow you, but if you click back to their profile all you see in their updates are url's and references to porn and marketing stuff and blahhh. Here's one, for example:


Are these 'bots generating these accounts and haunting people, or an individual effort or what?

Twitter?

TWITTER? When did I sign up for Twitter? Was this during one of those moments quaintly referred to as an "Ambien-induced-episode?"

Twitter	Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:58 PM
To: joe.papp01@gmail.com
Hi, joepa01 (joepa01). burked12 (burked12) is now following your updates on Twitter. Check out burked12's profile here: http://twitter.com/burked12 You may follow burked12 as well by clicking on the "follow" button. Best, Twitter -- Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Can someone tell me what the hell is going on? Do