Roedy please respect the netiquette

J

John Charlois

Dear Roedy (and all the other misbehaving in this group),

First : english is not my native language, please
argue on the content of my post, not on the english
mistake I make.

My point is very simple : Roedy is *not* respecting
the netiquette.

And I'll demonstrate it here. And hope that he will
act accordingly.

I use the newsgroups a lot : but I never ever post
a single message. I post this one, exceptionally,
because I'm really pissed off by your behavior here.

You don't respect the netiquette at all, and still
give "advice" to people you find misbehave.

I use groups.google.com to find technical answers to
my problems.

About every single message posted in this newsgroup
has some response saying "please, see ... mindprod.com".

So, first thing : I find this site completely ugly and
totally overbloated. But this is personal. I'm sure
many people like it. Just like many people like
Bruce Eeckel's "Thinking in Java"... Well, I don't.
I find it "too much". Not bad, simply "too verbose".
I find the same about your site (moreover, already
told, I find it ugly).

But that's not the problem.

Already now many of the message you posted contain
links to your site that aren't working anymore
(because, for sure, you "reorganised" your mess in
something less messy : or more ?).

May I ask what happens when you decide to stop
paying for your mindprod.com domain name ?

Well, what happens is simple : countless people
looking for infos find useless post saying
"see mindprod.com/xxx/yyy/zzz" and the links
are of course not working.

But, you'll argue that you'll pay forever
for you site right !? (and, btw, also not
reorganize another time all the links) !?

Ok : you have a car crash tomorrow or
whatever... What happens ?

Exactly what I describe : countless results
(15.000 result for "see mindprob"
in comp.lang.java.programmer so far)
linking to a non-existent site anymore.

Now, of course, I cannot say that you can't
post your "see mindprob 'spam' " (yeah, I know,
I don't know what spam is and I should really
go see "mindprob.com/spam/whatever). That's
why I wrote 'spam' between " ' ". It's not
really spam, it's "roedy's special trick".

Your posts in this group totally annoys me
and I think you have a *huge* ego problem for
spending your life posting "see mindprod". But
I recognize that many may find it useful
(though not when accessing your posts
from groups.google.com or another archiving
service).

You can post your "see mindprod stuff".

But please, respect the netiquette will you ?

Configure your newsreader (your such a good
programmer you should be able to do it) so
that your message get the appropriate NNTP
header so that they are *not* ever archived
anymore by groups.google.com and the other
Usenet archiving services.

For such the "lesson giver" you are, I am
sure you will agree with this one.

You may argue however you want, but I you
die tomorrow, all your f*scking 15.000 messages
archived in comp.lang.java.programmer becomes
completely useless (not counting all the messages
that are already useless due to broken links).

When I look for infos in groups.google.com, I
have to add a "-mindprod" to discard your non
working junk links ffs !

So, Roedy, thanks for respecting the Netiquette,

John


P.S : the fact that you disagree with my bad
language (but it's your attitude that inspirates
those words, sorry, can't resist), the fact
that you disagree with my feeling towards your
ugly overbloated site, etc. is *not* the point.

The point is you are *not* respecting the
Netiquette. Thanks for adding the appropriate
NNTP headers in your future posts.
 
R

Roedy Green

Well, what happens is simple : countless people
looking for infos find useless post saying
"see mindprod.com/xxx/yyy/zzz" and the links
are of course not working.

If you want, you can get yourself a local mirror copy of the website,
and keep it automatically up to date. see
http://mindprod.com/products.html#SITE

The same questions get asked over and over and over. How could I
answer with nothing but a link if that were not so? If I did as you
suggest, I would add many useless megabytes to the newsgroups that
most people would have read many times before. It is thus more
considerate to post only a link.

Further, at the link I have the full benefit of colour and HTML to
explain my point, and to link to many related issues. I can give you
downloadable source, intact, unlike the mess newsreaders make of it.
I can't do that directly in the newsgroups.

Further, the website is constantly updated. If I learn something new,
you get the freshest info. If I posted directly on the newsgroup,
erroneous information would be out there forever misleading people.

The website is broken up into many small chunks. I am constantly
working at keeping the size of each chunk down. That way you can get
to what you need quickly, and if that is not what you want rapidly
find other related topics.

I find the alternative FAQ format much more difficult to use. You
pretty well have to read the whole thing beginning to end to find what
you want.

You may have heard an old proverb, don't look a gift horse in the
mouth. It takes hundreds of hours every month to main the website.
That does not generate a penny,(though actually it now has generated a
grand total of $1.00 in donations, which does not even offset direct
costs.)

I'm always interested in hearing ideas to improve the glossary, but I
don't see what you are doing as that.
 
R

Roedy Green

Your posts in this group totally annoys me
and I think you have a *huge* ego problem for
spending your life posting "see mindprod". B

How would my ego be any different if I quoted the material at the link
longhand?

Where's the ego? Having the nerve to think I know the answer?

Would you prefer I remain silent when I have a canned answer waiting?
No I know what you want. You want us to answer YOUR questions out
longhand, but not bore you with answers to questions you are not
interested in. You are the ultimate egotist.

It would be far more egotistical to dump megabytes of repetitious
answers on the public who have heard it all many times before.

You see this only from your newbie point of view. You forget that
everyone else has heard these answers hundreds of times before. Even
hearing the LINKS to them again and again is irritating.


There will be ever a new crop of newbies to be weaned to look thing up
for themselves. The first step is giving them links to follow rather
than totally spoon feeding them.


Finally you will find the quality of my answers on the website are
better than the ones I do off the cuff in the newsgroups. I know I am
answering for many people, not just one newbie. I am also answering
for people who know how to use Google.

The Google folks like my website even if you do not. I find when I go
to look something up, it often takes me back to my own website. I get
emails asking me what I did that gets my rankings up so high.
 
A

ak

So, first thing : I find this site completely ugly and
totally overbloated. But this is personal. I'm sure
many people like it. Just like many people like
Bruce Eeckel's "Thinking in Java"... Well, I don't.
I find it "too much". Not bad, simply "too verbose".
I find the same about your site (moreover, already
told, I find it ugly).
Exactly what I describe : countless results
(15.000 result for "see mindprob"
in comp.lang.java.programmer so far)
linking to a non-existent site anymore.

thats it John! I found his page very useful, you not.
Should we ask 15000 other humans about it?
 
R

Roedy Green

First : english is not my native language, please
argue on the content of my post, not on the english
mistake I make.

Are you saying I did criticise your English or that you don't want me
to? If I did, I apologise. I am usually the one who goes to bat for
those who post in languages other than in English or in broken
English. I am a dedicated internationalist. I usually smack down
anyone who suggests they are superior just because they were born in
North America.
 
R

Roedy Green

Ok : you have a car crash tomorrow or
whatever... What happens ?

It says on my site exactly what happens. The site reverts to the
public domain on my death (which has been a Damocletian sword hanging
over my head since 1985). You would find mirrors springing up because
many people have local copies of it kept totally up to date by the
Replicator. However, without me to maintain it, it would within a
year or two become useless, and someone else would take on the job of
maintaining it, perhaps... It is a pretty thankless job. Few people
believe me when I tell them I do it for altruistic motives and ascribe
all manner of evil motivation, e.g. that it is a wildly lucrative
enterprise, or that I seduce virgins by the truckload lured by the
scent of fresh Java, or that I get some sort of egotistical pleasure
by astonishing everyone that I have canned answers to newbie questions
that have been answered a hundred times before.

There are now lots of alternatives to the Java Glossary. You would
probably find Jon would get busy importing the best parts of it to his
Wiki.

I find your concern about the demise of the Java glossary somewhat
disingenuous when you hold such a low opinion of it.

If the material were still available anywhere, Google would sniff it
out. All you need are the key words.
 
T

Tony Morris

<two-cents>
What a load of babble.
Why don't you write it on a piece of paper, put it in a bottle, and throw it
into the sea, since it is "poor etiquette" to post your rubbish on a
newsgroup.

I don't like the look of Roedy Green's site either - in fact, I come across
information on there that is blatantly incorrect. But why babble about it?
Do you have issues? Roedy makes an effort to answer your questions. He
creates a website that answers many of the commonly asked questions. So
which part of this is a problem?
If he dies tomorrow, the site becomes useless .... blah blah what the f$%k
are you talking about again?

Seriously, fire a few neurons around, and stop wasting bandwidth with
mindless bollocks.
</two-cents>

*Note that two-cents rounds down to nothing in Australia.

--
Tony Morris
(BInfTech, Cert 3 I.T.)
Software Engineer
(2003 VTR1000F)
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform (1.4)
Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform
 
?

=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Fr=E9d=E9ric_G=E9din?=

John said:
My point is very simple : Roedy is *not* respecting
the netiquette.

Hi John

As a simple user of this newsgroup, I have some trouble to understand how
Roedy is not respecting the netiquette.

Does Roedy get some money when someone clicks on his site?
Personally, I went there several time, got useful information but did not
pay anything for it. So I do not consider this as advertising.

My understanding is that Roedy's site is another repository to find answers
to questions. In addition, Roedy's answers very often to questions in this
newgroup and I can understand that this is very time consuming. So I can
understand if the answer directs me to a page where he took some more time
to explains things as clearly as possible. I addition,if Roedy use this
way of answering to questions in this newsgroup, he has more time to answer
to other questions:)

Frederic
 
A

Andy Fish

My understanding is that Roedy's site is another repository to find answers
to questions. In addition, Roedy's answers very often to questions in this
newgroup and I can understand that this is very time consuming. So I can
understand if the answer directs me to a page where he took some more time
to explains things as clearly as possible. I addition,if Roedy use this
way of answering to questions in this newsgroup, he has more time to answer
to other questions:)

I think Roedy's site is a useful resource and the fact that he often points
us at bits we didn't know about already (or possibly writes/updates sections
in response to questions) is a bonus.

Let's not forget that 5 years ago, when deja news went under and lost
control of the usenet archive, we had to live without it for a while.
Currently the only source of this information is google - a commercial
company. We can argue all we like about who "owns" the usernet archive but
let's not pretend google is under any obligation to maintain it for free.

when google starts charging 5 cents a search and roedy's site is still free,
you might be glad of it.

Andy
 
R

Roedy Green

Please don't feed the trolls.

I don't know quite what he is actually up to. I suspected he was
someone trying to unmake my day because of my political opinions that
I try to keep separate from my Java stuff.

Most likely he just found it irritating to see all those links flying
by that meant nothing to him because he did not click them, and did
not think through how much MORE irritating they would be if the
material behind them were quoted over and over. It would be nice for
him if I quoted only the ones he had not heard before that he was
interested in at the time, and never mentioned the rest. However happy
that might make him, it would frustrate others, eager for the answer
THEY have not heard before. Further, it would drive old timers to
distraction. It is bad enough putting up with the same old newbie
questions and standard response links without putting up with the
answers endlessly repeated.

Some would say we should just let newbies sink. Let them figure out on
their own how to use Google. I want to promote Java because I think
it will speed computer evolution. I see that as the best hope to
prevent man's extinction. For that, we need Java experts. Future Java
experts are newbies now. I have no choice but to put up with them, the
same as a mother puts up with soiled diapers.


So imperfect as newbies are, I feel we have an obligation to cut them
a big chunk of slack while at the same time, avoiding spoon feeding
them too much so they as quickly as possibly develop the habit of
experiment and research on their own.

Pick anything you know. There was a time in your life when you did not
know it yet. What shame is there in that? It is so silly to get down
on someone because they don't know something yet. The ones to look
down on are those who never try to learn anything new, who are so
cowed they dare not expose their ignorance.
 
M

Mickey Segal

Roedy Green said:
I don't know quite what he is actually up to.

Wouldn't it have been hilarious if "Miss Manners" or "Dear Abby" etiquette
advice came loaded with foul language? One might suspect it was a spoof.

On a more serious note, www.archive.org does not seem to have any 2004
copies of the MindProd.com site, and the whole archive site seems like it is
sputtering worse than it did in the past. Is the Way Back Machine going
under? Maybe someone should set up some arrangement with copies of selected
worthwhile sites such as www.MindProd.com. I'd be glad to add the material
from www.Segal.org/java/.
 
H

Hylander

Dear Roedy (and all the other misbehaving in this group),

First : english is not my native language, please
argue on the content of my post, not on the english
mistake I make.

My point is very simple : Roedy is *not* respecting
the netiquette.

I don't find a link to his website in his post anything more than a
signature like many do. I'm sure if you spent hours of your time for
no $ that you might badge it around too. He also makes a good point
that it is better than posting tons of content and wasting bandwidth
here in a format that is less than compatible with many clients
compared to web browsing.

Of course, he also provides political propaganda there too which is
not really in the way as such but at least he doesn't use midi's and
blink. I'm thinking Roedy hates people like me since I'm a red white
and blue blooded American and proud of it but I find no reason to harp
on him in a long post. I'm sorry you feel dissed.

I admit being a newbie, I'm not arrogant like Roedy, if there is
anything that irks me about him, it's a personal opinion that I leave
to myself. I agree with him on a couple things though. If there is
anything that is poor nettiquette, it is probably too high a post
frequency. But at least half the newbies out there are getting at
least one person's response to their newbie post. Maybe he's just on
the rag lately and you should cut him a break. ;O)

The guy suffers quite a bit IRL I happen to know and he actually may
not live all that long from what I can tell. ??? Cut him a little
break I say. Needless to say, usenet is almost anarchy and he is
pretty tame if you've been on usenet for any amount of time (at least
he doesn't stalk you)
 
D

Davis

Andy Fish said:
I think Roedy's site is a useful resource and the fact that he often points
us at bits we didn't know about already (or possibly writes/updates sections
in response to questions) is a bonus.

Let's not forget that 5 years ago, when deja news went under and lost
control of the usenet archive, we had to live without it for a while.
Currently the only source of this information is google - a commercial
company. We can argue all we like about who "owns" the usernet archive but
let's not pretend google is under any obligation to maintain it for free.

when google starts charging 5 cents a search and roedy's site is still free,
you might be glad of it.

Andy

For someone who wants to help others in the Java community, there is
no sensible alternative to Roedy's approach. Yes there will be some
broken links in archived Newsgroup postings, but I have never found
this to be a problem.

Each of us have a different perspective, different experiences, and
different ways of describing the solutions to problems that we
encounter. I have used Roedy's glossary several times and it has
always been useful. However, it has sometimes not provided a complete
answer, or somehow I just didn't "get it" from the information
provided there. In those cases I read other news posts, checked other
repositories (like www.javaranch.com), or used the Java Tutorials
provided by Sun.

The awesome power of the Internet is that it promotes a multiplicity
of viewpoints and information sources, which gives us all a better
chance of finding something that "clicks", and helps us solve a
problem. A big part of that is the information voluntarily provided
by people like Roedy. As for the style of his site, (and
www.javaranch.com, and many others), I'm grateful that the Internet
provides a mechanism to express an individual's approach to life and
work while providing useful information at the same time.
 
R

Roedy Green

On a more serious note, www.archive.org does not seem to have any 2004
copies of the MindProd.com site, and the whole archive site seems like it is
sputtering worse than it did in the past. Is the Way Back Machine going
under? Maybe someone should set up some arrangement with copies of selected
worthwhile sites such as www.MindProd.com. I'd be glad to add the material
from www.Segal.org/java/.

The key is to have multiple copies of crucial stuff on CD where in can
be revived if need be. Keeping all the old stuff online forever could
get expensive. You can maintain a mirror copy of the mindprod.com
using the Replicator. Every time you check in it sends you in
compressed form what has changed since your last visit.

If you do that there are several advantages.

1. You have a fast local copy to browse, just as up to date as the
online website.

2. You have more of a clue what has been changing recently.

3. You can use it offline, or if my site goes down.

4. You could use it to set up a mirror site if something happens to
me.

5. You can use local search tools like Funduc Search & Replace to find
things.

6. If you use the glossary a lot, you generate less Internet traffic
since everything comes to you only once, and in compressed form.

It includes my entire site except the downloads. It is free.
 
R

Roedy Green

But at least half the newbies out there are getting at
least one person's response to their newbie post. Maybe he's just on
the rag lately and you should cut him a break. ;O)

That happens even in the best of times because of the bursty nature of
newsgroup communications. A newbie posts an easy question. People do
a sweep of new questions. It shows up on thousands of screens. 5
people answer it. Everyone does another sweep, then 3 of the 5
answers show up, On another sweep the following 2 do.

In my case there in another explanation. I read the question. I have
a canned answer that I have honed over the years that covers all the
bases. I know from previous experience that other people's posts will
cover only 90% of the bases in any one given response. So I post my
link rather than reading all the responses to see if anything was
missed, then having to go back to find the original message. I may
not even read the other responses for questions I have heard 100 times
before. I want to get on with something more valuable. Further my
link becomes an easy to remember keyword to find the information again
should anyone need to.


When someone gets a link as an answer to a question there is a mild
implied slap on the wrist for asking a frequently asked question.
There is also a mild implied suggestion they might check that same
source is future for a link before publicly posting a question, but
most newbies are like babies fascinated with the telephone, not
realising the operator is not there to play with them.
 
J

javac

[..]
clearly this entire thread needs to be added to that goddamn glossary.
f***, who does roedy think he is, helping newbies? i say: every man
for himself. personally, i only ask questions. even if i know the
answer to someones question, why would i answer it? i need money and
don't have time for altruism, it's for suckers. rather than doing
something with my life, i prefer to tear down other people's efforts,
it's much easier than accomplishing anything on my own, after all.

sincerely,

javac at mail dot com
 
J

javac

[email protected] (John Charlois) wrote in message news: said:
My point is very simple : Roedy is *not* respecting
the netiquette.

And I'll demonstrate it here. And hope that he will
act accordingly.

and then..what? roedy stops posting links to his own site...
and then you have fifty replies to "i don't understand java" or "my
program won't work" or other insanely vague subject lines. how's that
any better?
About every single message posted in this newsgroup
has some response saying "please, see ... mindprod.com".

because most posts are trivial? or poorly stated? or disguised cry's
for help?

[..]

bog. it's like a soap opera. as you said, people in this newsgroup
are seeking knowledge, not, for example, psychological help. the key
that opens the door to that knowledge is largely immaterial, hence the
rather overwhelming support on behalf of this particular library of
java, aka roedy's glossary.

roedy, believe it or not, isn't the issue. his site's useful, or not.
if it's not useful, do something constructive and revamp it. if your
not going to do that, at least offer specific criticisms. if you
were, for example, to catalogue every single broken link on your on
site and then constantly post in c.l.j.* about this crummy website,
that'd actually be constructive. on the plus side, you might keep
roedy too busy maintaining his site to post those messages you find
disrespectful.

javac at mail dot com
 
R

Ryan Stewart

javac said:
Roedy Green <[email protected]> wrote in message
[..]
clearly this entire thread needs to be added to that goddamn glossary.
f***, who does roedy think he is, helping newbies? i say: every man
for himself. personally, i only ask questions. even if i know the
answer to someones question, why would i answer it? i need money and
don't have time for altruism, it's for suckers. rather than doing
something with my life, i prefer to tear down other people's efforts,
it's much easier than accomplishing anything on my own, after all.

sincerely,

javac at mail dot com
lol
 

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