Re: Question for Sam Hocevar [was: Nouvelles Affiches ?]
à titre d'information, au sujet de Sam, et comme ça tombe très bien (le mail
est tout chaud), jugez par vous-mêmes:
On Sunday 04 March 2007 12:49, Sam Hocevar wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 03, 2007, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > You seem to be a frequent contributor to a site associated with GNAA,
> > which is a trolling organization that has had past run-ins with Wikipedia
> > and other volunteer projects. Could you clarify, first, whether that's
> > actually true or whether it's just a case of mistaken identity?
>
> I don't know what site you are talking about. If you are talking
> about lastmeasure.com, I have never touched it and I don't even have any
> idea who hosts it or how it is managed.
>
> It is true however that I set up an SVN repository for that piece of
> free software. As far as I remember I only did the initial import, which
> hardly qualifies as "frequent contributor". I also forked it to create
> "softmeasure", a version of lastmeasure that had pictures of carebears
> and other plush animals instead of the other Internet memes. However
> juvenile that piece of software may be, I will not accept criticism
> about it until Debian stops distributing software that encourages
> stoning women and children, cursing homosexuals or enslaving daughters.
>
> On second thought, maybe the "site associated with GNAA" you are
> referring to is Slashdot. I feel bad for contributing to Slashdot, but
> you may notice that I posted three comments in 2006 and only one so far
> in 2007, so I'm pretty clean here as well.
>
> > If it is true, could you comment on the degree of your involvement with
> > GNAA? In other words, do you just find this one site, not related to
> > their other activities, interesting and have ignored the other things
> > they're doing? Do you think they're unfairly maligned? Did you not even
> > know who they were?
>
> I have not ignored the other things they're doing.
>
> I have approached the GNAA at a time when I was doing computer vision
> research about CAPTCHAs. I knew they had scripts, bots and open proxies
> to ruin Slashdot or other blog engines and I wanted to collect CAPTCHA
> samples, which they gave to me. For the record, I cracked most of these
> CAPTCHAs but never distributed my decoder (I set up a proof of concept
> web service but it had flood control and was never abused).
>
> I also approached professional spammers and other "black hat" hackers
> for the same reason and I do not think there is anything wrong with
> that. It is fascinating how they work and use their skills and there is
> much to learn from what they do (including in terms of protection or
> retaliation, of course).
>
> I stayed on the GNAA IRC channel when they became "interested" in
> Wikipedia, so as to keep an eye on their actions, and I think I managed
> pretty well to dissuade them from ruining Wikipedia. I have not taken
> part in any of their destructive actions or hate propaganda floods,
> which I find quite questionable (and are illegal where I live anyway).
>
> > More broadly, could you give your feelings on the impact of trolling,
> > attempts to shock and offend people, and similar forms of humor on
> > volunteer projects with a huge variety of participants? Do you think
> > that such humor would be appropriate on, say, Debian mailing lists or IRC
> > channels?
>
> Short answer: it's bad and no, it would not be appropriate.
>
> However I am well aware of the state of self-denial Debian is in. We
> are so terribly convinced that we are the best and/or that we are doing
> it in the best way that we are not accepting criticism. Please look at
> http://www.gnaa.us/pr.phtml?troll=gnaa-sarge and tell me there's not
> some truth in every sentence. Again, I am not advocating such offensive
> material, it's just that when I read it the first time I thought "wow,
> they pretty much got the point, we should try to suck less in this and
> that areas" instead of dismissing it as "trolling", and the project as a
> whole could help with more self-criticism.
>
> Regards,
Reply to: