Re: changing flavor of the linux world? was: craig sanders
On 2000-11-15 15:50, Jules Bean wrote:
>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..
I don't generally use the word "fuck", but apart from that I write many
messages that are similar to Craig's. I have no regrets about this.
>> 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.
Being stupid and refusing to learn is what I consider "gratuitously offending
and upsetting".
>Some people are saying that Thomas should just ignore Craig. There's
>merit in that view.
Or he could just refrain from doing whatever he has done to earn a fuck-off
message from Craig. Craig doesn't send out such messages randomly...
>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
If someone told the so-called "graffitti artists" that they are wankers then
that would be good. Also swearing at people who smoke in the non-smoking
carriage, spit on the floor, put their feet on the seats, etc is acceptable.
>regularly in his canteen at work told the cooks they were losers stuck
>in a dead-end job?
A friend told me the story of how he had the wrong meal delivered to him in a
restaurant. AFTER he had started eating the meal was taken away from him and
then delivered to the person who ordered it (he could recognise his
fork-marks in the food). Calling the staff of that restaurant losers would
be an understatement, I would have told them all to fuck off and walked out
without paying!
>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]
We do have standards of decency. Craig behaves in a decent fashion.
>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.
Unless they know little about what they talk about, think that they know a
lot, and try telling people who know much more than them how to do things.
--
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