Re: changing flavor of the linux world? was: craig sanders
On 2000-11-15 16:20, Jules Bean wrote:
>There seems to be an assumption here that whether or not you use the
>word 'fuck' and similar ones is an irrelevance. I don't agree that is
>necessarily is. Consider the two putative replies to a foolish
>question from a newbie:
>
>a) That question is clearly answered in the documentation; please go
>and read it.
>
>b) You fucking wanker! It's fucking losers like you, you never fucking
>read the docuemntation, that make this fucking project so fucking
>unrewarding to work on. Why don't you just turn to serving food in a
>fast food restaurant and never come back, since you're clearly not
>intelligent enough to use a computer?
>
>Both are sharp. They have similar real content. The second is a lot
>more offensive. If I received the first reply, I'd think "Oops, that
Answer B is what you will inevitably receive after receiving answer A to
many of your questions.
People who don't want to do any work and ask stupid questions repeatedly
deserve to get flamed. One example is the SERVER-LINUX mailing list. On
that list there are a lot of idiots who ask questions like "how do I setup
Red Hat" repeatedly. The list isn't about such things and after telling them
to read the manual a few times they have to be flamed.
>> >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...
>
>My (informal, subjective) measure of craig has him being (a) right on
>about 50-70% of arguments which I've followed him, and him being
>unnecessarily offensive on quite a few. (Not a very high percentage;
>most arguments don't degenerate. But when they do, craig sure flings
>the whatever...). Given that being right is, in many case, subjective
>(e.g. whether or not Darren handled the vote situation appropriately;
>that's a subjective judgement), you seem to be saying that Thomas
>should stop disagreeing with Craig. Doesn't quite seem like the right
>answer.
No, I think that he should stop being stupid.
Forwarding private email to a list as part of a dispute is stupid.
Asking us to protect him from people he has offended is stupid.
Whatever he did to offend Craig was probably quite stupid too!
>> >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.
>
>Maybe. Maybe not if there are other bystanders whom you'd offend with
>the language. In any case, your examples are about people actually
If someone complained about my using the word "fuck" after standing around
letting other people do criminal damage to public property (which is paid for
by my taxes) then I would tell them to fuck off too!
>'doing things' -- which gives me some sympathy. I find it hard to
>believe that such vituperation is ever justified against someone just
>because they hold a wron opinion.
Craig and I disagree about quite a few things. He doesn't flame me because I
don't do the following:
1) Ask questions that could have been easily answered from the man pages.
2) Claim to know things that I don't (if someone demonstrates that they know
a topic better than I and they have cause to believe that I am wrong then I
will usually believe them).
3) Argue about things that I haven't seen with someone who has seen them.
>> >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!
>
>Despite the fact that it was probably only one or two who colluded in
>the wrong-doing, and the rest may well have been hard-working, polite
>and intelligent?
Staff who work at a restaurant that breaks the health laws are guilty if they
don't report their employer.
>> >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.
>
>Well, obviously those are subjective. I disagree. I'm surprised at
>how many people seem to agree with you.
If a majority of people agreed with you then Craig would probably have
changed his behaviour.
>> >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.
>
>Certainly Thomas knows a lot, about a lot of things relevant to this
>project. I don't know how much he knows about the argument in
>question, since I haven't read it. I certainly feel I have reason to
>respect him.
I haven't seen the arguement in question. I don't know whether it was one of
those debian-devel flame-wars that I delete without reading or something
private between the two of them.
All that I have seen is Thomas attacking Craig without any clear sign of the
cause of the dispute.
>I think we drifted from my point, though. I don't feel it is /ever/
>acceptable for one member of debian to engage is such a powerful ad
>hominem attack against another. I'm not actually saying that I think
>any sanctions are remotely appropriate, but I do think a wrong was
>done.
What I saw was Craig responding to a public attack on his character. You
might suggest that he could have responded to the attack in a better fashion,
but hasn't everyone sent a "fuck you too" type message before?
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