Who is TheoDP, and why won't he blog? Even blogdaddy Dave Winer has no idea about this little gossip, last seen baiting (and catching publisher Tim O'Reilly over an old patent issue. Now Winer runs a blurb that Theo sent to him, me, and god knows who else:

On the same day Tim O'Reilly publicly pooh-poohed the legal fears of the target of a CMP cease-and-desist letter, CMP quietly appointed an L.A. Super Lawyer - one of 'World's Leading Trademark Practitioners' - to handle the controversial Web 2.0 trademark.

Not that Valleywag likes sloppy seconds, but an item from TheoDP is usually trenchant enough to post, even if everyone else is posting it too.

But back to Winer's post, and why Theo won't blog. A little research shows that Dave and I aren't as lucky as we thought — Theo seeds the Slashdot.org forum with his e-mailed blurbs. Guess those mighty A-list bloggers can't be trusted to get out his message. And just blogging it all himself? There goes that self-satisfied audience (read: people like me) happy to re-print a tip (yay! free post!).

After the jump, reason #2.

Here's another recent Theo tip, not run on Valleywag because Wikipedia arguments are boring.

Jaron Lanier on Wikipedia: 'When you see the context in which something was written and you know who the author was beyond just a name, you learn so much more than when you find the same text placed in the anonymous<! ;/a> [IP info], faux-authoritative, anti-contextual brew of the Wikipedia.'

So why can't he just post this on WordPress? Probably an unbreakable addiction to rough drafts. For instance, the following preceded the above:

One thing that really steams O'Reilly is giving the impression you're a disinterested submitter of a story. So Tim and company might want to look into who was behind those Wikipedia edits made by '209.204.147.33' - one for Tim O'Reilly and the other for Web 2.0 - that gave major props to O'Reilly. After all, they seem to have originated from oreilly.com, (as did recent edits by '209.204.147.111' for Unconferences, Foo Camp and Tim), a Wikipedia no-no. Guess you can only leave so much up to the Wisdom of Crowds.

And reason #3 that TheoDP doesn't blog? Pure bloody-mindedness.

TheoDP [Dave Winer, Scripting News]