On Forum Moderation

[IntegratedDimensions]

On Saturday, 26 May 2018 at 20:13:15 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/26/2018 4:12 AM, Rubn wrote:
>> What about self moderation? If I make an unprofessional 
>> comment and want to delete it? Will this be allowed now? I 
>> guess it's more of a feature request.
>
> People have from time to time asked me to delete one of their 
> comments, which I have done if I could.
>
> Note that forum messages that get transmitted via the mailing 
> list cannot be unsent, nor can messages that people have 
> already retrieved from the NNTP server be deleted from their 
> machines, and I'm extremely reluctant to delete messages that 
> quote yours.
>
> Think of it like getting up in front of a group of people and 
> saying things. You can't unsay it.
>
> It's best to think before posting, and perhaps save your 
> postings in a draft folder before transmission, in case you 
> change your mind. In particular, be very cautious about posting 
> when you're angry. NNTP isn't amenable to take-backsies.
>
> Just like you can't take back an email after you hit 'send'.

How about the general egotistical mentalities that some of your 
friends here have where they talk down, are condescending, or 
wrongly interpret something and attack someone then when that 
person defends themselves the defender is the one criticized and 
reprimanded while the attacker is exculpated on all levels?

1. Your gang treats each other under a different set of rules 
than how you treat outsiders. Just because you are buddy buddy 
with someone doesn't mean you should make exceptions for the 
variation reasons that you do. Why? Because then it undermines 
any credibility you and your appointee's have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7t4At6S76M

2. Anyone that starts an attack is responsible for all outcomes. 
Cause and Effect, yet when someone defends themselves in 
response, even in excess, they are treated at fault.

This forums methods of policing is just like how police work. If 
you are a fellow gang member you get special perks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8



3. And if you don't REQUIRE fair and balanced treatment and hold 
your "cops" to a higher standard this is the kind of stuff that 
will happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJaAe7sYoCA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9fy4TM_HFg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ohy08umEgM


etc.

And for those imbeciles that think I'm equating forum behavior 
with police murdering people, think again. I am simply pointing 
out that when you don't hold your enforcers to the same or higher 
standard, for whatever reason, then things will only 
progressively get worse. I could have used the same analogies as 
someone not taking care of their car and how it would deteriorate 
over time. The cop analogy is more relevant since it is similar 
psychological behavior.


If you really care about providing professional forum then it 
requires the people you put in charge to act professional. This 
first requires them to be able to criticize themselves, none of 
which I have seen. It's very easy to judge other people but can 
they judge themselves?

Expecting someone to put up with the negative behaviors of others 
just because that behavior hasn't crossed some arbitrary line, 
but is still negative, is a sure fire way to end up with a 
dysfunctional system. Those people who only want to spread their 
disease of hate are very good at going up to the line but not 
crossing it.


Let me explain what happens:

1. Someone makes a post and asking for help, comments, etc.

2. Someone makes some type of comment where they attack in some 
way that person. I can point out several that have happened to me 
when I did not attack anyone or say anything that was negative to 
someone else. In one case I can point out where the person 
specifically said they attacked me because they said I was saying 
something they didn't like yet I actually did not say that at all.

3. Those people are then attacked as a defensive mechanism(A 
defense cannot exist without an attack and vise versa)

4. Some uppity person who wants to keep the forums clean then 
sides with the person he feels is in the right. If they are 
buddies then he will obviously side with his buddy rather than 
scold him and risk polluting that relationship. It is much easier 
to criticize and attack the person in the opposite corner. This 
was also done in that one specific case. The attacker and his 
buddies can justify any of their behavior by choosing things they 
do not like about the others. They never question their own 
behavior and therefor do realize what they say may contribute or 
even cause the other persons behavior.

5. The defender is then punished in some way while the real 
attackers are set free. This is called justice? This is called 
professionalism?


If you are going to choose people who are biased and cannot self 
analyze and criticize their own behavior then you are choosing a 
forum that will become more dysfunctional over time with more and 
more problems. These problems wouldn't exist or could at least be 
minimized if you did the right thing from the start.

Remember that not everyone behaves as you. I have always seen you 
act professional in all your posts, although you too are biased 
at least you put some effort in trying not to be. Not everyone 
around you is on that level and most are not even capable of such 
authoritative duties.

What I can tell you is that if you go after the defenders and 
ignore the attackers things will never get better. Defending ones 
position, how ever it occurs is not the source of the defense. 
Attacks occur first then defense. The problem is that ignorant 
people like to pretend that the defender was the attacker.

What I suggest is that a review process can be done and the first 
occurrence of someone attacking(trying to elicit a negative 
response towards a specific person) is the one found guilty. This 
is a forum about programming. It is quite easy to see when 
someone is trying to attack someone else.

For example, what I said about imbeciles above is not an attack. 
It is a true statement. Imbeciles will confuse metaphors and 
analogies. The statement was to 1. Point out that if someone did 
think I was equating police murdering people with forum 
moderation as if a ban was equivalent to a murder is an imbecile. 
It is factually not the case and makes no sense to equate it that 
way. Intelligent people do not make those sorts of errors. It is 
not to elicit a response from an imbecile that gets mad because 
they made that error and now have to defend themselves nor to 
attack them for being something they are.

If some specific imbecile gets mad and attacks me because they 
are mad at being called an imbecile, then what is the point? 
Should you get mad at being called a programmer? Of course not, 
it is something you are. Now, someone, imbecile or not, could 
decide to debate the truth of the statement, as maybe I am wrong, 
but that is not an attack.

People that are not imbeciles won't make the error and will 
ignore the paragraph because it is not applicable to them or they 
will also see a logical or factual error in it and will debate it 
but not attack. If they attack, then they too are an imbecile 
because they are denying a factual statement.

People do this sort of stuff all the time "C is better than D" 
and someone then comes along and either attacks them for it 
without any basis "You are an idiot! D is better than C" or "How 
are you measuring better to arrive at better(C) > better(D)?" 
which is not an attack but creating a meaningful discussion.



I will give you the most recent attack on me:

"On Saturday, 26 May 2018 at 01:11:39 UTC, crimaniak wrote:
> On Thursday, 24 May 2018 at 20:24:32 UTC, IntegratedDimensions 
> wrote:
>> I'm pretty much guaranteed that in C, t will be type TT due to 
>> the design(C goes with TT like bread with butter).
> ...
> 1) Your architecture is wrong, I recommend to rethink it.

Prove it genius! I recommend you rethink your absolutes without 
having a clue. Go back to SO, they need more Nazi's.

> 2) You still can deal with it using template mixins 
> https://dlang.org/spec/template-mixin.html

I've already said templates do not work. Time to rethink your 
answers, they are useless and you are not an authority, quick 
acting like one.
"

I bet you will decide with crimaniak:

This guy comes in and says "Your architecture is wrong". It is a 
statement which is provably invalid because it is impossible for 
him to judge my architecture without knowing it.

What kind of mentality does someone have to have to tell someone 
they are wrong without having any clue if they are wrong or not? 
In the previous discussion it was already pointed out that his 
second statement did not work.

The fact is, he really has no clue what he is talking about and 
his post is useless. There are only a few possibilities that this 
person can be:

1. An arrogant fool - He believes he is god and can make absolute 
statements about things because he knows all.

2. Someone that just likes to cause trouble - Just trying to 
elicit a response.

3. An imbecile - Can't blame these people to much but they do 
like to create a mess anywhere they go, but they are imbeciles.

4. Didn't like me from some previous post so just behaving as any 
of the above without really trying to be helpful.

5. Is actually right - which he's not since it was already proven 
that the methods suggested using templates requires N template 
parameters for every property. While this is possible in theory 
it is not practical or meaningful and hence not useful. But even 
if he were right, because maybe there is actually a better way to 
do what I am doing(as there is always a better way, in theory, he 
is then absolutely right... but then we are all wrong in 
everything we do... a completely useless point of view), he 
offers no actual technical solutions and just says to general 
statements which can just about be said in any scenario in D.

6 ... etc ...

So, these are the kinds of posts that occur.

I could go in the other post that I'm sure was the one that 
triggered this topic, to summarize:

"extend foreach to work on non-arrays:
Doesn't make any sense?

foreach(a; x)

if x is not an array then a = x and the loop reduces simply and 
function to the case it is not so their can be no harm.

It unifies the concepts so that one does not have to worry if x 
is an array or not and can offer no harm since when x is not an 
array everything simply reduces to an an alias of x."


2nd post:
"Neia Neutuladh:
You can already do this for any type you define:

class Foo
{
   auto iterate() { return only(this); }
   alias iterate this;
}

Can you give examples of code that is awkward today that would be 
simplified with your proposal? I don't expect people to give full 
cost-benefit analyses for every suggestion, but it'd be nice if 
you could at least mention some of the upsides."

3rd:
"meppl
on the otherhand some programmer might want to get informed buy 
an error-msg, if he accidentally used a non-iteratable variable 
for `foreach`-iteration. To avoid a silent bug"

4th
"aliak:

And then you can generalize this for any type

auto elseOnly(T)(T t) {
   import std.range: isInputRange;
   static if (isInputRange!T) {
     return t;
   } else  {
     import std.range: only;
     return only(t);
   }
}

foreach(i; 3.elseOnly) {
}

foreach(i; [1, 2, 3].elseOnly) {
}


Cheers
- Ali"


So far so good. Ali offers a great solution that works and best 
approximates the original desires. It is not a language solution 
of course but is almost nearly identical(a few extra chars for a 
powerful pattern, best one could hope for because language 
features take a long time to get implemented while that works 
now).

I then respond to Neia:

"The upside is that it is a composite pattern and does not 
require any extra code to use preexisting functionality. There is 
no downside, which is an upside.



foreach(a; x)
{
    // uses a

}

gets directly converted to

{
    // uses x
}

by a simple renaming/aliasing of a to x and so it cannot require 
any more issues than what already exists.

Your method requires one to have access to all type definitions, 
which is not the case.



I do not know why I would be required to specify a use case to 
justify the usability. Most things are not usable until they are 
invented. Most people did not know how useful the hammer would be 
until someone created it. You have to build it for them to come. 
I have my use cases which is why I came up with the idea in the 
first place. I needed a hammer but no one invented it. If I give 
you my use case then there would be two main outcomes: You 
attempt to find a workaround for the use case or claim that it is 
not applicable. These are the "I have a rock that should work as 
good as that hammer thingy you want" and "Hammers are useless".

If you can't find validity in the suggestion based on it's own 
inherent usefulness than the only way I can convince you is to 
provide examples that you actually find useful... that makes it 
difficult on my part and is not fair to me."

I didn't attack him in any way. I me not like my answer, but so.

Of course, his response was deleted from there which washes out 
all the evidence, how convenient:

He specifically states that I have an attitude because I'm 
demanding that the feature be implemented in the language and 
that I shouldn't go around demanding people do work for me. Now, 
he didn't say that in his first post.

Then Mike backs him um by not saying anything to him but getting 
on to me. I also ended up giving real examples and such of the 
use that some requested which was lost.


I'm sure you guys have logs of the pages so you can go back and 
see how it unfolded and make your own decision.

I doubt anything I have said would really be taken in to account 
anyways even though I have wasted minutes of my life to post this 
information to try and make this place a better. I, more than 
anyone here do not like the sort of shit that goes on which is 
why I raise so much hell when it does. If I don't then who will 
and who will stop these people that bring in their ego's and 
attitudes and make everything off topic?

You might not like my methods but your methods don't work. You 
may say I am the only trouble maker... that may or may not be 
true. I might just be the only one who opens my mouth the 
loudest. To sit back and ignore these people who bring in their 
attitudes and get pissed when their solution is not accepted or 
because they are not worshiped for being the gods they think they 
are is the problem. These people are the ones who have childish 
mentalities. You may think my use of cuss words is childish but I 
think it is childish to think cuss words are any different than 
any other word(Real adults don't play games like believing any 
word is taboo... as if shit is any worse than poo poo or fecal 
matter or fuck is any different than what it's definition is

     used alone or as a noun the fuck or a verb in various phrases 
to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, 
or simply for emphasis.

is childish).

Also, if you think all this squabbling really amounts to a heal 
of beans in the real world, your mistaken. If you really want to 
make this a better place you need to go after every child who 
wants to try and chop someones legs out from underneath them just 
so they can make themselves look better or feel more intelligent. 
Basically all this crap started because one person wanted pretend 
I was giving orders about implementing a feature so he would have 
an excuse to attack me because I thought I should listen to his 
self inflated expertise.

Probably the best scenario is to simply act professional yourself 
and to do exactly what was done: delete the offending posts. I 
really don't care if you delete my posts or, hell, even ban me. 
Given the amount of time that one simple post I made has wasted, 
it's not really worth it if this kinda of stuff happens often. 
What I would like to see is a real environment where people, not 
just me, can get the their questions answered without some 
egomaniac coming in and trying to derail it. After all, it was my 
topic(I created it)... I have not once went in to anyone else 
topic and tried to derail it by either attacking them for asking 
their question or act condescending or like an authority. NOT 
ONCE! I think that alone speaks for who is on the right side 
here. In fact, In those regards, I am very much like you and Mike 
Parker, Neia Neutuladh, and crimaniak are not. The difference is 
that when they do what they do you will roll over and ignore 
their behavior when I don't and I double down on it. If they are 
going to act the way they are their should be consequences, and 
as of yet, no one has give them.

I will explain one last time before I'm done with this:

1. You let these guys do what they do spreading their ignorance.

2. Most people do not respond or let their behavior go.

3. At random times people like me do not let it go and make a big 
deal out of it.

4. Then you see it as a problem because now it's in your face. 
You think 3 is the cause of the problems when it is really 2.

Same thing is happening with cops(to pick on cops, because it's 
fundamentally the same psychology going on). Most people think 
cops are great because they don't have any problem with them. 
When you do have a mildly bad experience with a cop you ignore 
it, just a few dollars in cost usually, after all, you are a law 
abiding citizen. But then there are 3. When people shoot cops 
because and 3. when Cops shoot citizens the cases when it boils 
over and 4. It is such a big deal no more pretending can take 
place.

It's a very complex mess, but the solution is to stop pretending 
the big events are the just isolated incidence and realize there 
is a more fundamental problem.

If it's not clear what is going on I can't help any more, I've 
done my best. Hopefully it is good enough to contribute to the 
real solution of the problem, if not, then so be it.

Have a good day! Seriously, I don't blame you one bit, not 
bitching at you in any way, just trying to make it clear that 
this is a more complex issue than you think and there are good 
and bad ways to try and solve it. Don't chose a bad way!