user923005 said:
OK, then. I guess it just means that he and I have very different
opinions on what constitutes a valuable contribution to a newsgroup.
Maybe, but in particular we've different opinions of what detracts from
the value of the newsgroup.
It is true that Richard Heathfield can be both combative and
pedantic. But when he is combative, he is almost always right. And
when he is pedantic/pedagogic I am usually in agreement with him.
Quite. It'd almost be a loss if he left and nobody took up the slack in
technical matters, which is impressive for the person I also consider
the group's chief problem. Except the problem is not just one person,
see below.
And I believe that he is never petty, and the posters that Hallvard
seems to be supporting are nothing but petty, and have no substance to
their posts whatsoever[1]. So in the final tally, I find his post
almost provocatively strange.
First, I am talking about behavior, not technical matters. (Like the
rest of this thread.) Second, my point was not actually to support
anyone. I'm not even aware of some of the people he named. I'll take
his word about them all for the occasion and it won't change my point.
(Also calling Richard "never petty" seem strange to me, but never mind.)
My point in this case is that a self-appointed "in-group" who vigorously
claim to uphold clc's standard, do not keep or hold each other to the
same standard as the "out-group" they claim to be the problem. That's
one thing that makes the "in-group" the chief problem. To put it
extremely, crooked police is a far worse problem than other crooks.
This thread illustrates of the bad parts of clc's dynamic. We start
with a few personal attacks from out-person against an in-person, which
gets jumped on. A far stronger in-person attack against out-people is
quite all right, but a response from one of his targets proves the
latter a troll. "It has to do with the other posts by both
individuals", indeed. It's not what do you or say, it's who you are.
The in-group is right because they're right, the out-group doing the
same thing is wrong because they're wrong.
In a purely off-topic thread, an out-person gets tagged as off-topic
like I mentioned. Kenny is a troll, while Jacob and Richard going on
and on at each other like Brian mentioned -- let's see, both know by now
they won't achieve anything with that, except to invite yet another post
which won't achieve anything either. That's not two people trolling
each other? (Though thanks for acknowledging Brian's point of making
killfiling useless with that, Richard.)
As for the other part of the standard they insist on holding the group
to, strict topicality: Personally I don't like it, I have no idea if
they can claim to represent this group, and as you see I don't respect
they way they're going about it anyway, so I don't care much what they
think I should post. (Except to be aware that going too far away from
their standard could be close enough to trolling on my part.)
