Z
zerg
Lew said:
Yeah, got that. *PLONK*
(I DID warn you of the consequences of being rude to me again.)
Yeah, got that. *PLONK*
(I DID warn you of the consequences of being rude to me again.)
Z
zerg
Arne said:
Not true. Lew, or rather whoever is impersonating him, did. See for
yourself.
You didn't seem to think it was "fine" at the time, to judge by the way
the response you wrote oozes with hostility.
Please reread my post more carefully. I stated that the wacky posts by
"Lew" are "getting in the way" of discussing Java programming.
Z
zerg
John said:
Er, that's like saying "No. Yes."
This also seems self-contradictory. "Off topic for Java" but "perhaps on
topic" for comp.lang.java.programmer? Say that again?
Watch this space. And, eventually, maybe YouTube.
Z
zerg
Lew said:
That's two people to have said this.
Terrorism is flying planes into buildings. Terrorism is blowing up a
daycare full of women and children. Terrorism is roadside bombs and
insurgency.
This is some pretty nasty flame-warring, but it is not terrorism, and
the memories of the millions of people who have lost their lives to real
terrorism over the centuries should not be sullied by misusing and
weakening that word.
Evidently, at least one person is: whomever is responsible for the
impersonations.
The last time I looked, there was only one in this newsgroup who called
himself simply "Lew", with no last name, and was a high-volume poster.
J
John B. Matthews
That is correct. You asked a compound question: No, it was not aimed at
you personally; and yes, it was a prank.
Correct again. Self reference often gives rise to apparent
contradiction: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach>. In
this case, the group's topic is Java, but we can't always evade the
non-Java drivel. Technically, we should discuss this somewhere in
news.*, but that seems unrealistic.
A
Arne Vajhøj
zerg said:
Not true. I did not berate you.
I suggested that you read various other threads.
Good advice.
But neither positive or negative.
What are you smoking ?
It is polite but not required to say please when asking for help.
But no one is saying please when they provide advice.
Why should I say please to be allowed to provide information
to you ????
That may be doable.
I don't recall asking you to read 37000 posts.
You just need to skim a few of the recent threads. Some of them
you can even pick by subject line.
Anyone with an IQ above 95 should be able to pick the right
threads based on subject lines.
No one criticized you (until you started accusing people of being rude
when they tried to help you).
In general: no.
But it do happen.
In your case: you have managed to make a complete fool of yourself, so
obviously you are now catching some fire.
Actually I try very hard never to be rude to any question posted
in good faith.
If replies are stepping out of line, then I do not have any problem
telling them that.
I guess your favorite colour is yellow.
Arne
A
Arne Vajhøj
zerg said:
The guy that needs assistance plonk the guy that is able
to provide assistance.
Smart move. NOT !
Arne
A
Arne Vajhøj
zerg said:
Most people would have guessed that the posts with subject lines:
"Missing Lew's posts but not the impostor?"
had something to do with Lew.
We did.
You posted something where it was obvious that you had not read
any of the "fake Lew" threads. And we told you to read some of
those threads to understand what is going on.
But instead of thanking us for our good advice you became
aggressive.
That is not showing very good character.
Lew and Andrew is getting attacked because they took on a spammer.
Paul D
Our ukrainian spammer.
Arne
A
Arne Vajhøj
zerg said:
It is a prank. But it is not specifically against newcomers.
Group issues are consider on topic.
Arne
A
Arne Vajhøj
zerg said:
No.
Newsmaestro posted some garbage about the original topic.
You started the sub-topic of his post.
There was not any hostility in that.
You were simply referred to look at other threads discussing the topic.
Arne
Z
zerg
Arne said:
Yes, you did.
Actually, you said
That is not "suggesting". Suggesting would be something like "Yes, it
looks rather strange. Everything is explained in the thread titled foobar".
What you did was instead express your wish that people read every SINGLE
thread before bothering you with a question regarding a topic where YOU
consider the answer to be obvious.
It reads as "negative" from where I'm sitting, and probably to most
people. I have no idea why you don't think so.
You show the same lack of politeness in subsequent messages, including
this latest. For example, flatly saying "not true" as a stand-alone
sentence amounts to calling someone a liar, and that is not generally
considered to be polite at all.
And here you go again, not being very polite.
You asked me to do something, but didn't say please. That's different
from providing advice. Advice would mean that you answered my question
in some manner, or suggested a solution to a problem I reported. You did
neither. You asked me not to ask questions without reading the whole
freaking newsgroup first. That's a very different thing from giving advice.
Even if you HAD said please, I'd have to refuse, since the group is too
high-volume for such a request to be at all reasonable (or feasible, at
least on my time budget).
But you did not provide information to me. "Try and read various other
threads" does not convey any information, other than to imply that
you're displeased with the fact that someone even asked the question.
And THAT is unsolicited and, frankly, uninteresting information. You're
welcome to your opinion, but in polite society one does not air every
single stray opinion that crosses one's mind, particularly when they're
negative and not very constructive.
You were abrupt, rude, and dismissive yet again right here.
Abrupt: you responded with nothing but a single one-word sentence.
Rude: you more or less called me a liar, for the second time.
Dismissive: you don't show the slightest interest in actually addressing
my concerns, and instead just brush them off by denying that there's any
validity to them.
All three in one single word (plus period). I have to wonder if you were
actually trying to be amusing by being intentionally ironic here, but
sadly I find myself suspecting otherwise.
If you don't feel like writing a real, quality response to something,
and especially if you feel either annoyed OR dismissive about it, it is
best not to reply at all. That doesn't mean in ALL cases where something
annoys you; in some cases, when something annoys you you should
definitely stand up and say something about it. But then it should be
something constructive and reasonably diplomatic, and it should not
brusquely dismiss all opposed points of view with a wave of the hand.
It certainly is doable, unless your computer has serious malware
problems and posts spontaneously on your behalf, or somebody is holding
a loaded weapon to your head.
You didn't in so many words, but you said "try and read various other
threads". Let's break that down in some detail:
"Try and" -> "You should have done this to begin with, but you failed".
That's rude. That's an accusation.
"Read various other threads", without specifying which threads -> read
them all, or at least read one and then another and then another until
one of them seems to contain an answer to the original question.
(You are aware, aren't you, that the original question is not one
answerable by any self-evident search query? A search on "Lew" produces
every post by Lew, plus every post replying to Lew, plus lots more,
thousands just from the past few weeks with the thread you were thinking
of maybe buried halfway down the list, and a search on "Lew aphasia" or
anything similarly descriptive produces zilch. "Lew impersonator" or
"Lew newsmaestro" may well turn up something more useful, but those
queries also include words that presuppose already knowing the answer to
the question!)
Which ones? As I said, there are hundreds, containing thousands of
individual posts, from the last month alone.
Also, "you just need to X" is yet another case of demanding behavior.
Remember, I didn't ask how to accomplish something, I asked for some
information. The proper way to answer such a question, if you don't
choose instead to ignore it, is to actually write a post that actually
contains the actual information. I didn't ask "How do I find out what's
going on with Lew", I asked "What's going on with Lew"; I didn't ask for
research tips, let alone ones so vague as to be essentially worthless, I
asked for a specific piece of information.
And please don't give me that old saw about teaching a man to fish. If I
go to a fish market I don't want to find shelves of books, I want to
find freezers of fish. If I want shelves of books I'll go to the
bookstore instead. Likewise if I want research tips I'll ask a question
intended to elicit research tips, such as "Where on the net might I find
a detailed manual for X?" rather than a question about using X, such as
"How do I make X do Y?".
You don't know better than me which sort of answer I *really* want, or
which sort would benefit me more, and it is arrogant of you to presume
otherwise, IF that is what you are doing. Frankly, I don't know; you are
increasingly striking me as an all-purpose tosser whose replies are
terse, unpleasant, and obscure out of sheer bloody-mindedness rather
than out of any other motive. :-\
Now you've just implicitly called me an idiot, right after suggesting
twice that I'm a liar. What is the MATTER with you? Did your mother
never teach you any manners?
First of all, you assume that I'd be interested in doing so at all. Why
should I spend 3/4 of an hour reading all of the subject lines
(nevermined 34 hours or more reading all of the posts) in my newsfeed?
What, only the recent ones? Thunderbird shows threads in order of OLDEST
post or individual posts in date order. The latter has me examining
every post, instead of every thread, which is ludicrous. The former has
the threads with recent posts scattered all up and down the list. In
neither case is the "answer" going to be in a small clump of only one or
two screenfuls of subject lines at the top or bottom of the list.
And I've already pointed out that this particular question was not at
all amenable to Google searches.
In fact, at the time I had no reason to expect Lew's apparent anomalous
behavior to have been discussed at all; I had not noticed any odd posts
purportedly by Lew until right before I posted that question, at which
time I came across two in a row that showed up as new. So far as I was
aware, whatever was going on had started only in the past few hours.
Since none of the other NEW messages mentioned it, I had no reason to
think any messages at all mentioned it. Did you really expect me to
spend the better part of an hour checking anyway just on the off-chance?
The very phrasing of my original post implies that I'd only just
observed this phenomenon for the first time: "That's two posts like this
and counting..."
From that, if I were more inclined to be rude I'd say that anyone with
an IQ above 95 should be able to guess that I had no reason to suspect
at the time that the matter had been previously discussed at all.
What do you call these, then?
"Try and do X" -> implies I should have done X, but didn't
"Not true" and "Neither" -> calls me a liar
"What are you smoking?" -> self-evident
"You just need to skim" -> similar to "Try and do X"
"Anyone with an IQ above 95" -> calls me an idiot
In my neck of the woods, that's called "criticism", and "what are you
smoking?" and "anyone with an IQ above 95..." are borderline flames.
You didn't try to help me. You brushed me off with a "read the rest of
the newsgroup before bothering me again" type of response. That is not a
genuine effort to help me. It is, indeed, not any kind of effort at all.
In other words, the actual answer is "yes".
I don't feel the need to dignify that bit of nastiness with a specific
response. On the other hand, if you stoop to namecalling again I will
plonk you so fast your head will spin. Got it?
Interesting loophole you've left yourself.
Obviously, you're rather narrow in what questions you consider to be "in
good faith", narrow enough to exclude any question that implies that the
guy asking it didn't know something that, in your arrogant opinion, he
should (somehow) have known.
Personally, I would consider most questions to be in good faith, even
ones answered in the FAQ or API documentation, unless I was quite sure
that the poster already knew the answer or the question itself was
something personal, rude, inflammatory, none of their goddamn beeswax,
or something else somehow offensive by nature.
The only one stepping out of line here is you. If you'll review my posts
carefully and without any blinders on, you'll observe that they're all
quite polite, calm, and civil in tone, and the only criticisms they levy
are of the constructive variety. The offtopic ones are in reply to
something offtopic or weird itself.
Then again, I am defining "out of line" basically as "not consistent
with civilized behavior". I won't be very surprised if you consider "out
of line" to include "anything that criticizes Arne" in your definition. :-/
This is another gratuitous potshot. Particularly pernicious is your
suggestion that all those who make an effort to be polite and to
actually comport themselves in civilized manner are cowards, and bravery
consists of being unnecessarily rude and hostile to complete strangers.
If I were an actual coward, I would not stand up to your rudeness; I
would have quietly plonked you and not stuck my neck out to call you on
your behavior.
Whatever else I am, I am not yellow.
Meanwhile, there is the vexing problem of deciding exactly what *you* are.
Online, your words and how you use them are your only form of "physical
appearance". Where people may ordinarily judge you partially on your
personal hygiene ordinarily, online all they have to go on is how you
speak and behave towards others. There, someone who is careful and
precise in their writing and who is polite and civil is the equivalent
of wearing a neat suit and tie, clean-looking and not smelling bad.
Someone writing "try and this", "anyone with an IQ over 95 that", and
"neither", and generally being abrupt and dismissive when he's not
writing long and convoluted blasts of namecalling, comes out looking
like the equivalent of a slovenly-dressed thuggish-looking figure who
hasn't showered or shaved/trimmed his beard in a week and is lurking in
doorways and alleys waiting to ambush someone.
Whether or not that is your intent, that is how your behavior sometimes
makes you seem. In fact, there are posts here by you that show much more
civility and erudition; it's more in your case like you occasionally
forget to shower and sometimes throw on a wrinkled and sweat-stained
shirt, or something of the sort. Still, particularly when you also
haven't brushed your teeth (or rather, when you start actually calling
people names outright), this can be repellent.
Why do you do it? If a particular question bothers you, seems not to be
in good faith, or you just don't feel it's worth your while to post a
real answer, why do you post something snappy or churlish instead of not
posting anything at all? It's not as if you're obligated to reply once
you've read it or something. Indeed, in the cases where your reply will
just be something like "try and read every other post", I daresay it's
rather the other way around, according to the rules of polite society.
Please think carefully about all of this. If your response is more
namecalling, however, you will be going directly to the bottom of my
kill-filter and you get to go on being rude to people for no good reason
and reaping the consequences of doing so. I leave the choice to you.
Z
zerg
Arne said:
Yes, if for some reason they had seen them at all. Not everyone reads
every message. In fact, in a group with this much traffic, I'll be
shocked if ANYone reads every message.
You did not. I asked a question in good faith and your response was
something like "try and read every other thread", which in a newsgroup
of this size is ludicrous, even ignoring the rude manner in which it's
phrased.
"Try and do X" in this sort of context implies that whoever you're
talking to was supposed to have done X already, but didn't, and is thus
a criticism. (This is different in the case that someone asked a "how
to" type question, where it may be simply a suggestion of one way to
accomplish it. In response to something else, though, it's a claim that
someone is doing something wrong, or failing to fulfill an obligation,
and a rather snide one at that, since instead of simply coming right out
and saying so you give them mock-helpful advice on how to fulfill the
supposed obligation or avoid the supposed mistake, without even bringing
the unspoken assumption that there WAS an obligation or a mistake into
the discussion.)
Dropping the nasty "try and" from the beginning is hardly an
improvement: "read every other thread" is an imperious demand. If you're
going to request that people read every other thread before asking a
question, it behooves you to use the word "please" SOMEWHERE in your
request.
So? If I was supposed to have read those threads, that's news to me.
There is nothing about it in the newsgroup's FAQ, in particular.
I rather suspect that it is only you who feels that I was supposed to
read those threads before asking questions related to the subject. Even
so, if you don't like the question, you're free to completely ignore it,
instead of taking a poke at the guy who asked it.
The fact is, not only hadn't I read any of those threads, I hadn't even
seen them at all, nor had I any notion that any such threads even
existed at all. I hadn't noticed any odd posts purporting to be from Lew
until I suddenly encountered two in a row, whereupon I asked the obvious
question. And then instead of simply giving me a politely-worded,
straight answer, you attacked me for not having guessed that something
that looked to me like it might have just started might already have
been extensively discussed, and for not having spent half an hour or
more reading thread subjects looking for them after so guessing. After
which another guy comes along and while he's not rude, he is
unnecessarily cryptic in his response, whose details I forget except
that it reminded me of some old bit of doggerel along the lines of "one
day I saw a man that wasn't there, he wasn't there again today, I wish
that man would go away" or something like that.
I have to wonder if there's something in the human genome that, if it's
turned on, makes one averse to posting to Usenet, and if it's turned
off, makes one averse to replying to any question with a simple,
straight answer. (Or perhaps it's the other way around with respect to
which occurs when it's off and which when it's on.) :-/
And you forgot that you're just people like me, not King Philip III and
various other royalty.
Your "good advice" was, basically, "I'm not answering your question;
read everything in the whole newsgroup before asking another." Although
you didn't phrase it that elaborately.
I did not, meanwhile, "become aggressive". Telling someone his IQ is
under 95 or that he's yellow isn't even "being aggressive", though it's
far closer than anything that I've done here.
Waving a gun around or getting into physical fisticuffs is "being
aggressive".
Calling you on being abrupt and dismissive is, indeed, showing very good
character. Letting such behavior pass would be poor character. Engaging
in such behavior myself would be poor character.
So you say. For all I know, that's a comforting fairy tale you and the
other "rude people" tell yourselves to try to convince yourselves that
your crows are not coming home to roost. I'd need to see some evidence
before believing that, given the "odd coincidence" that they are two of
the "rude people". A random two people selected from this newsgroup's
population would tend to usually contain zero, and fairly often contain
one of each, but very rarely would a randomly selected pair from here
both be rude, given that there are less than ten of you on that list out
of a total of a hundred or more posters. In fact, to be a bit more
precise, if a pair of people here get chosen in some manner that is
independent of their propensity towards rudeness, the odds of getting
two "rude people" are poorer than 1%.
Which, to me, says that there's a 1% chance that they are getting
attacked for some other reason and a 99% chance that they are getting
attacked because of their past behavior towards ordinary people on this
newsgroup, regardless of what you may claim, until and unless I see
strong evidence suggesting otherwise, in which case I guess it's that
one in a hundred big coincidence after all.
Nope, it was somebody named nectar or nebula or something like that -- I
could go look it up again, but one of those is probably close enough to
jog memories.
Opinions apparently differ. Others referred to him as a terrorist,
though this seems doubtful.
Apparently the one thing everyone agrees on is that he's Ukrainian; that
they make a point of noting this frequently makes me suspect that there
may be some racial bias around here, as well as the other ugly behaviors
already documented, including general rudeness, hazing newcomers, flame
warring from time to time, and impersonating people to try to make them
look bad. (Each having its own, separate set of guilty parties.)
Z
zerg
Arne said:
No, the guy that currently does not need assistance plonk the guy that
is unwilling to provide assistance, but is all too willing to be rude
and demanding without cause.
You have made your opinion of me abundantly clear already. There is no
need for you to repeat yourself. Please either say something
constructive or go away.
N
Nigel Wade
zerg wrote: a complete and utter diatribe:
You really do know how to win friends and influence people, don't you?
Plonk.
You really do know how to win friends and influence people, don't you?
Plonk.
Z
zerg
Arne said:
Unless, of course, you're claiming that the above is something to do
with Java programming.
Sure, there was, even if you won't admit it, perhaps even to yourself.
Why else did you say "try and read every other thread" or something
similar instead of something simple, straightforward, and polite like
"Some guy is impersonating Lew to try to make him look bad; it's best
just to ignore him", say.
There, that's an easy and quick response to write, only about twice as
long as what you actually wrote and vastly better at both answering the
question and not offending anyone.
Is writing an answer like that really so hard for you to do?
No, I was not. I'd have been referred to a source if someone had said
something like "the answer is at http://www.url.com/page.html", or
something similar -- equally specific and equally easy to follow up on
-- and, of course, the answer really WAS at the other end of the link.
What you did was say "try and read other threads". Let's see what this
did and did not do, shall we?
It DID: imply, with "try and do X to do research" in response to a
request for a specific piece of information (NOT a request for advice on
doing research), that I was supposed to have done something and failed
to do it, a claim that I dispute and, indeed, find insulting and accusatory.
It DID: imply that you cannot be bothered to answer any question that
has already got an answer written SOMEWHERE that YOU know of, but at the
same time you certainly CAN be bothered to make a point of telling the
asker this instead of simply leaving the question unreplied-to. That's a
veritable slap in the face. You might just as well have responded to
someone's question with "I know the answer but I can't be arsed to tell
you, and by the way I think you're lazy for not reading the whole
freaking newsgroup, high traffic though it may be, before asking".
It DID NOT: directly contain the information I requested.
It DID NOT: provide a specific, quickly traversable pointer to that
information either.
Z
zerg
Lew said:
Oops, I forgot to actually plonk you.
I'm sorry, but this analogy of yours is deeply flawed. Much closer would be
"Can you tell me how to get to 42nd St. from here?"
"Try and walk around some of the city streets."
"Why are you being rude to me?"
If you cannot perceive or understand the difference between your analogy
and mine, or the greater similarity of mine to what actually transpired,
then I'm afraid I cannot help you further.
And now I suppose I'd better fix my earlier oversight.
Goodbye, Lew.
Z
zerg
Arne said:
Is this a group issue, though? It seems more to be a personal spat
involving Lew and a few others, on two sides of some dispute or another,
and gone completely out of hand. Viewed that way, it clearly does not
belong in comp.lang.java.programmer at all.
Of course, people with inflated opinions of themselves/one another might
consider that anything involving those persons IS a "group" issue, but
that's clearly ludicrous; if a personal issue involving, say, me is not
a "group" issue then neither is one involving Lew, or Andrew Thompson,
or you, or NewsMaestro, or ...
Z
zerg
zerg said:
And now it occurs to me that there's an even better one. After all, I
didn't actually ask for directions. I asked for some other piece of
information entirely. So it's more like:
"Do you happen to know how many plays Shakespeare wrote?"
"Try and walk around some of the city streets."
"Why are you being rude to me?"
(and there happens to be a library in 42nd Street where one might
conceivably research Shakespeare's history in the stacks, but the only
way following the given "advice" will lead to an answer is if you start
spiraling out from your location and after an hour or two of walking
happen across a library and realize that the answer might be found
within -- moreover, the guy you asked had just come out of an
off-Broadway theatre currently playing a Shakespeare play, and was in a
costume, so it was quite probable that he personally knew the answer;
indeed, you actually asked a whole crowd of people coming out of that
theater, and it was virtually CERTAIN that at least ONE of them knew the
answer -- even then, the analogy is a bit weak, since Lew for one would
surely have known the question I asked and was present, so it's really
as if you asked within earshot of Shakespeare himself, and someone else
piped up with "try and walk around some of the city streets"...)
Z
zerg
Nigel said:
Er, not that I mean to be rude, but: Who the heck are you, and why are
you jumping into a dispute between two strangers AND PICKING THE WRONG
SIDE, instead of, say, just staying out of it?
Anyone can see that I have been unfailingly polite while Arne has not,
and that my initial question in this thread was perfectly reasonable for
a puzzled newcomer to ask, whereas Arne's response both falsely
suggested that it was not AND did not actually answer it in any
meaningful way.
If, despite these things, you think it is somehow appropriate for Arne
to respond to a good-faith question in the manner he did AND somehow
INappropriate for anyone to criticize him in any way, shape, or form,
even constructively, then I'm sorry but something is clearly wrong with you.
Particularly, please reread the last exchange, in which Arne stoops
repeatedly to outright namecalling while I attempt, once more and
probably in vain, to politely explain to him that his behavior is
inconsistent with civilized decorum and furthermore that the way that he
"answered" my original question was singularly unhelpful in its
vagueness anyway.
He is the one calling people names and generally being churlish. I am
the one being peaceable, reasonable, and polite (even when I have a
criticism). And *I* am somehow the one in the wrong?
Get real. Please.
S
Sherm Pendley
zerg said:
Learn to search it in Google, then, and spare us the whiney
diatribes.
Jerk.
*plonk*
sherm--