Re: changing flavor of the linux world? was: craig sanders
On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 03:38:13PM +0100, Russell Coker wrote:
> the course of 10 years. In fidonet days Craig was just one of many
> technically skilled people who didn't mind telling idiots to fuck off...
Indeed, you think that's a good thing? I've told people to fuck off in
the past, but I can't remember an instance that I'm proud of..
>
> One thing that you really need to learn is that the Internet is run in an
> anarchistic fashion. You can't force people to do what you want. If people
> do things you dislike then you can filter out their email, use
> iptables/ipchains to block their IPs, and pretend that they don't exist.
All of which is true, I guess, but I don't think it changes the moral
fact:
Gratuitously offending and upsetting people is wrong.
There are a few people on this list who won't agree with that. There
are many who would have rather varying definitions of 'gratuitous',
'offense' and 'upset', which is the way life is --- these things are
relative and subjective.
Some people are saying that words are irrelevant, you can just ignore
them. Words aren't irrelevant, they're very powerful (hence this
discussion).
Some people are saying that Thomas should just ignore Craig. There's
merit in that view.
But it really surprises me the amount of people who seem to be saying
that Craig was right?
Do you really think it's OK to upset and offend people? Would you
stand by someone who, when on a train, stoop up and told his fellow
passengers they were all wankers? Would you stand by someone who
regularly in his canteen at work told the cooks they were losers stuck
in a dead-end job?
Do you really think that just because debian is a cooperative anarchy,
we should have no standards of decency? [I'm not necessarily that such
standards are codified or enforced, I'm suggesting that most of us
think they exist, deep down]
I think that to work together in a large project, it is an important
exercise to show respect for other participants, even when you think
they're wrong about something.
Jules
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