On 7/6/05, A. Nony Mouse <temoforcomments4(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
I checked the record. Enviroknot's edits and
emails to this list do not
contain a single swear word, anywhere.
So? anyone can change their writing style.
Anyone "can" change their writing style... in the same way that people can
change their handwriting or their hair color.
Very, very rarely can someone hold such subterfuge for that long. Somewhere,
IF Enviroknot were also KaintheScion/ElKabong, there should have been a
slip-up somewhere. SOME swear. Especially with the number of people here and
on Wikipedia who were spending much time personally attacking and harassing
Enviroknot.
Swearing is the sort of thing that can be modified, especially if the
writer is tightly focussed. I've known people who swear reflexively in
one community but are the soul of decorum in another.
Nor would it be too hard to run text through something like a
spell-checker to eliminate problem words.
What would be interesting would be to get samples of text from both
editors and to compare them. I'm no sort of expert at text analysis,
but it seems to me that every writer has distinctive patterns in
mispelt words, word choice, phrasology and so on that would be
extremely hard to disguise or fake.
Remember how "Anonymous", the author of "Primary Colors", was tracked
down and exposed as Joe Klein, despite protestations from the author
that no, it wasn't him?
Of course, any similarities could be explained as commonplace or
coincidence and the (possibly manufactured) differences highlighted,
or vice versa depending on which view you wanted to push, but still, I
think an authentic voice could be distinguished or ruled out by a
reasonable person.
--
Peter in Canberra