of Sock Puppets and Straw Men

[Kris]

"David B. Held" <dheld at codelogicconsulting.com> wrote in ...
> Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
>> David B. Held wrote:
>>> I had a lot of help from my friends who led the way.  Obviously, I'm not 
>>> as sophisticated as them...still, I hope I made my point.
>>
>> What was your point?  That you are willing to post personal attacks using 
>> one of the lowest tricks in Usenet, forging your name as somebody else?
>
> Yes, to make a point, I was willing to do that.  And if you weren't 
> sophisticated enough to discover the real author for yourself, I was 
> prepared to out myself.  I was putting you in Janice's shoes, so you could 
> try walking a mile in them.  You only lasted about 5 minutes, so I fear 
> the point was lost on you.
>
>> "Reputations take a very long time to build, but are quite easily 
>> destroyed, and often by oneself"
>
> In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been working especially hard to win 
> friends or standing in the D community.  I've always been too loose with 
> my tongue to be a respected expert like Andrei or Walter; but on the other 
> hand, it gives me the freedom to say whatever I think is necessary, no 
> matter how unpopular.
>
>> [...]
>> I've already discussed the issue in numerous times.  I never endorsed any 
>> public accusation of sock puppetry -- quite the opposite.  I'll only add 
>> here that *everything* is a matter of uncertainty.  It's only a question 
>> of how much evidence you have.  This entire newsgroup could be the 
>> fabrication of one person.  Not very likely though.
>
> Well, your backpedaling and equivocation is pretty transparent, in my 
> book.  First you say:
>
>     "By the way, the charge that one of the posts following yours
>     was a sock puppet was legitimate."
>
> Here, there is no "misconstruing" going on.  You clearly said: "Somebody 
> accused you of creating a sock puppet, and that accusation was valid, not 
> baseless."  I don't think it takes a lawyer to read it that way. You made 
> it about as unambiguous as could be.  Then, you followed up with:
>
>     "It was the first thing that crossed my mind."
>
> Here, you say: "And I tend to agree with the accuser."  How do I draw that 
> conclusion?  Well, it's simple.  The first thing that crossed *my* mind 
> was: "Someone is playing a dirty trick on Janice, and then exploiting it." 
> Which means that if you had a different first impression, it must have 
> been because you had already decided that Janice was guilty until proven 
> innocent.  But you realized you had gone too far, so you decided to try to 
> smooth things over with a CYA clause:
>
>     "Doesn't mean you did it, but it's a valid suspicion."
>
> And here, you make the weakest equivocation possible, with the way you 
> followed up with a confirmation of your original claim: "Accusing Janice 
> of making sock puppets is 'valid'.  I declare so by fiat."  Umm...you 
> pretty much say: "I declare open season on Janice!  Anyone who wants to 
> accuse her of sock puppetry, lock & load your .30-06 and put on yer 
> huntin' gear!"
>
> If you look at what the "sock puppet" said:
>
>     "i love that - please release it to us all!
>     can't wait to get it for all the reasons you put forth."
>
> and:
>
>     "yup - i'd do that too"
>
> it seems just as likely, *if not more so*, that "Phango" was being 
> sarcastic and mocking Janice, in just the same way that I was with you. 
> Who in their right mind thinks we are gullible enough to buy the 
> endorsement of an anonymous poster with the fake domain name 
> "phangowant.com".  I mean, seriously!
>
> The very idea that someone would sit down and say to themselves: "Oooh...I 
> got a good idea...I'll post something flattering about myself via an 
> anonymous alias...what email address should I make up?  A real-sounding 
> name?  Nah, too obvious.  Oh, oh, I know!  Nobody will suspect a thing if 
> I use the domain name 'phangowant.com'!!!  Yes!!! It's a PERFECT PLAN!!!" 
> Clearly the email address "phango at phangowant.com" is transparent sarcasm. 
> It's insult enough to Janice *all by itself*.
>
> What makes your attack particularly heinous is that this was not enough 
> for you.  You had to twist the blade the other way by *accusing Janice of 
> the being the perpetrator of an anonymous attack on her*!  You want to 
> talk about low?!?  *That's* what I say is low, and what justified pulling 
> a little prank to make a dramatic point.  The fact that I have to spell 
> all this out is, frankly, quite tiresome and a little disturbing.
>
> I think Janice was treated particularly poorly by someone without the 
> balls to use their real identity, and then others who happened to disagree 
> with her smelled blood in the water and went in for the kill. If I have to 
> make a fool of myself to point this out, so be it.  I can live with that. 
> But don't try to gloss over what you pretty clearly said by equivocating 
> with your weasel words.  You have no moral high ground here, despite the 
> little escape route you think you made for yourself.  It's about as legit 
> as me saying:
>
>     "I accuse Jeff of being a big fat nincompoop!!!...possibly.
>     But there is some room for doubt, so don't get mad at me.  Oh,
>     and I don't endorse anyone calling Jeff a nincompoop, so that
>     makes what I said before OK.  This ad paid for by the committee
>     to re-elect David B. Held.  Hi, I'm David B. Held and I endorse
>     this message...to the extent that it cannot be 'misconstrued'
>     to mean something personally embarrassing."
>
> Umm...yeah.  I'm not going to offer any apologies, because I don't care if 
> people think I'm a jerk (and I fairly doubt that's a new sentiment, 
> anyhow).  But I do think Janice still deserves one more...
>
> Dave


Excellent! I don't spend much time on this ng anymore, but recently it's 
been because someone or other has been generating or perpetrating inaccurate 
information about Tango, or has been deriding the library and/or authors 
over some questionable issue. Some of that has reached the dubious level of 
fud-mongering. You may well disagree, yet that's my opinion of it. Knowing 
nothing of value about a particular subject will never stop certain people 
from mouthing off about it, but when they do so over Tango, I'll have 
something to say. Yes, I'm personally tired of hearing that Tango is somehow 
'amateurish' or 'petty' or whatever the other terms have been, since that 
reflects upon all the people involved (and there are many). Not to mention 
that the code and design itself is generally of exceptional quality and 
clarity -- notably more so than a number of well-known libraries.

So, like you, I don't give a rats-ass if my "reputation" is somehow sullied, 
burned or lost over my responses to posts that are "loaded" in this 
manner -- "reputations" are the folly of political poseurs and ego-centric 
fools. Far better to be judged by one's work instead, and there's lots of 
that in Tango, by many people. I suggest those naysayers or 
armchair-quarterbacks with a disposition to rant might perhaps use Tango for 
a while, and ask us or tell us about it in a manner that we can presumably 
respond appropriately to (IRC and tickets). Of course, some people just want 
to vent and have no intent to ask for help at all. I recall one recent 
ranter who adamantly refused to write a ticket for Tango, or discuss it with 
us on IRC, and nor did they even try to or even want to use the library. In 
that particular instance, there wasn't /even/ a tangible problem. The 
instructions go like this: Open packet. Sprinkle fud-crystals into five 
gallon bucket of water, mix well and disperse liberally.

As for this weird thing with the sock-puppet, I admit to being entirely 
bemused until you owned up to it. Then I wondered if that might be a 
double-blind post, but the one above does appear to be you. FWIW, it seems 
sad that anyone would attempt to manipulate or subvert the ng like that ... 
is it /really/ that important? You call that a 'prank', while I have to 
wonder if such behavior isn't grounded in malevolence instead. Trolling is 
bad enough, but what you claim to have done is surely several steps below? 
Yet, here you are chewing out Jeff N over some token semantic distinction. I 
don't get it. That does seem a bit hypocritical doesn't it? Why don't you 
have a go at me instead? Or, did you perhaps think JeffN was me?

Also, I will admit that I have wondered why you made that analogy between 
Boost and Tango, since your message appeared to be saying "Hey, the Tango 
guys say Yo! Put up or Shutup!" which really couldn't be further from the 
truth. Heck, there's even a long recent thread on toString vs toUtf8 in this 
regard. As I pointed out in a reply to your post, Tango is changing in order 
to have some measure of compatibility with phobos (which you no doubt know 
of) and, as a library, it was never intended to be compatible in the first 
place. This aspect was clearly noted in the text immediately above your 
post, so you could hardly miss that either. Both these aspects would tend to 
render the specific analogy worthless. Yet, you didn't bother to respond to 
my query, in order to clarify whether the message you were sending could be 
misconstrued. Thus, your post could be seen as something of a sly strawman, 
with mucho negativity directed towards Tango. I sure hope it wasn't intended 
as such, but now that I'm seeing this weird sock-puppet thing ...... heck, I 
sure /hope/ that was not the case?

To be clear: I'm not trying to take pot-shots at you, Dave. I'm just a bit 
concerned by these two things you're responsible for, and specifically 
because they are both related to Tango. Can you help me understand them 
better?