I've snipped the rest, but this (to a new and niave reader) and the rest
sound like they could very well be responses to "Tell us about the book
Richard". What he was denying a couple of posts back was posting
unasked for mentions of the book.
Then it is unfortunate that you chose to snip before this damning quote
where he does exactly that:
Richard Heathfield:
And, if I might add one to the list?
C Unleashed, by Richard Heathfield, Lawrence Kirby, and (many!)
others, including a few other comp.lang.c regulars; Sams (Macmillan
Computer Publishing), 2000. ISBN 0-672-31896-2
Not a bad book, as it turns out, (although you should be most
suspicious of any chapters written by that Heathfield character).
But not a book for beginners.
Note the sickening mock coyness.
I really don't care enough about this to go pulling the posts to see.
I'm astonished anyone does.
That is reasonable enough, but you might change your mind if you spend
more time following this group in the future.
Imagine a fraudster who preys on old ladies, conning them into handing
over their life savings. Now it may be a lot of effort to assemble the
evidence and run this guy out of business, and if you had never been
robbed by him you might find it astonishing that anyone should care
enough to do it. But you'd have to agree that society as a whole is
better off if someone is prepared to put that effort in.
Now Heathfield may not be a criminal in the technical sense of that word
(at least, I don't have any evidence that he is), but he is certainly
someone who has done immense damage to this newsgroup over many years.
He has a strange charisma that attracts people to support him and act as
his foot-soldiers.
With this support, he:
* pushes an aggressive "topicality" agenda that seeks to restrict
discussions in this group, flying in the face of its founding charter
* conducts a nasty bullying campaign against those who try to oppose him
- principally Jacob Navia, who according to Heathfield "knows nothing
about C", even though Jacob has written a C compiler while Heathfield
has written nothing more substantial than some buggy and inefficient
solutions to a few of the exercises from K&R
* attempts to drive away new posters to preserve the "purity" of the
group on the spurious pretext that their posts are "off topic" and
could also be answered in other groups (usually the suggested groups
are completely dead and haven't had a technical post for years).
The situation is serious: until a small but growing group of refuseniks
began fighting to re-establish this group as an open forum for a frank
exchange among real-world C programmers, the activities I have described
(a process I called Heathfieldization) had made the group quite
moribund. And Heathfield is prepared to use any slur or accusation, no
matter how bare-faced, to try to shore up his position of authority in
this group. You have only to read the poison he posts about me to see
this action.
One of Heathfield's main weapons is a claim to the moral high ground. He
dismisses or ignores any evidence he is presented with, but it's
important nonetheless that someone is prepared to present that concrete,
factual evidence of his lies and deception so that fair-minded third
parties (like yourself) can make a fair judgment as to whether he is a
fit person to be allowed to decide the direction of clc.
This is a long answer, but I hope it helps gives some insight into why
people are prepared to spend time cataloging Heathfield's lies one by
one, with careful and unambiguous evidence.
