Ilias is Crazy -- a plea

ruby-talk
1

Ryan Davis wrote:

[some stuff]

Please stop responding to Ilias, he is crazy. If you stop talking to
him, he will go away.

If you don't believe me, check out this:

http://www.tfeb.org/lisp/mad-people.html

Especially:

Ilias is currently (17-Sep-2002) being almost entirely ignored and
is crying alone to himself, while trying to join in various threads.
With luck if this continues he will get bored and wander off to
annoy people in some other newsgroup. He is one of the most
malignant posters to cll in recent history - between 27-Aug-2002 and
24-Sep-2002 threads begin by him were about 1/4 of the articles in
cll.

Again, this man is insane, so please, please, please refrain from
replying to his posts, or in threads he starts.

If you would, please join us is fighting this problem. For more
details, see:

http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/IliasIsCrazy.html

Thank You

Please remove me from your "Ilias is Crazy" email list campaign. I did not sign up to ruby-talk to be bombarded with "political causes". Please respect the reply-to headers. All communications in regards to this topic will be redirected to ruby-talk until the rude practice of sending spam form e-mail ceases.

Thank you

···

--
J. Lambert

2

Jon A. Lambert wrote:

Please remove me from your "Ilias is Crazy" email list campaign.

This is not a list. It's a private mail you received and forwarded to a
public mailing list, without asking for the author's permission first.
This is considered very rude, according to every netiquette I know. If
you don't want to receive emails from Ryan just use your email filter,
instead of bothering every reader of ruby-talk with your misguided
"revenge".

   I did not sign up to ruby-talk to be bombarded with "political
causes". Please respect the reply-to headers. All communications in
regards to this topic will be redirected to ruby-talk until the rude
practice of sending spam form e-mail ceases.

Why did you subscribe to the list? To read postings from regulars and
experienced Ruby hackers like Ryan? If this is the case, you should stop
feeding the trolls, like you were advised in his email. Or will you only
be satisfied, if regulars like Ryan start to unsubscribe from ruby-talk,
because the signal-noise ratio gets too low and the email volume to high
for them to read through it?

The problems with trolls aren't the trolls themselves, but people like
you, that reply to them and feed their madness and their sadism. If you
really want to destroy this mailing list, you should continue with your
behaviour.

···

--
Florian Frank

3

Florian Frank wrote:

Jon A. Lambert wrote:

Please remove me from your "Ilias is Crazy" email list campaign.

This is not a list. It's a private mail you received and forwarded to a

<snip>

I think what might have been objected to (at least i would object to it) is any sort of implication that other people's decision about whether or not to respond to loons/trolls is not really a decision of their own conscience but can be forced upon them by other individuals -- including through the mechanism of (presumed) peer pressure.

Can we agree that experience shows that this situation *will* persist until virtually all people on this list decide (of their own accord, or because they don't mind giving in to peer pressure) that not feeding the trolls *is* the wisest course. I would like to suggest, though, that no one assume that this decision can (or should) be forced on anyone. Only, respectfully, suggested.

craig

4

Oh, yeah, this is a good way to stop a troll. Declare war, and then force everybody to pick a side. I know I come to mailing lists so I can engage in endless debates about who's being more rude.

Francis Hwang

···

On Apr 22, 2005, at 4:31 PM, Florian Frank wrote:

The problems with trolls aren't the trolls themselves, but people like
you, that reply to them and feed their madness and their sadism. If you
really want to destroy this mailing list, you should continue with your
behaviour.

5

Florian Frank wrote:

Jon A. Lambert wrote:

Please remove me from your "Ilias is Crazy" email list campaign.

This is not a list. It's a private mail you received and forwarded to
a public mailing list, without asking for the author's permission
first. This is considered very rude, according to every netiquette I
know.

I've already stated my position on this in my earlier post echoing Mr. Hodel's solicitations to black-list some poster to the list. I have no further comment other than to state it hasn't changed and I respectfully disagree.

Thank You

···

--
J. Lambert

6

There is a seeming dilemma here, but do not give in to fear. It may seem that, for a language that is growing, newbies will arrive faster than experienced readers will decide to ignore. So some of the more experienced readers may fear that the disinformation will persist. But since people new on a list will either ask a specific question or lurk, the damage is not as great as it might seem.

The very thing to do is to not fear. Do the opposite of that. It brought a smile to me to see the tail end of a thread started by an alleged troll degenerate into a bunch of good-natured nerdy Ruby language movie-reference jokes. Trolling is just a form of sadism that feeds on the fear of something we value being unjustly smeared. (And you can fill in the obvious connections to Star Wars and Harry Potter. Perhaps I should worry that these things pop into my mind so quickly.)

--Peter

(P.S. And then, after seeing the movie joke thread, I blow it by getting irate and going nuclear on somebody, in a very un-ruby-lang sort of way. Mea Culpa. Forgive me. I'm still growing up.)

···

On Apr 22, 2005, at 4:10 PM, craig duncan wrote:

Florian Frank wrote:

Jon A. Lambert wrote:

Please remove me from your "Ilias is Crazy" email list campaign.

This is not a list. It's a private mail you received and forwarded to a

<snip>

I think what might have been objected to (at least i would object to it) is any sort of implication that other people's decision about whether or not to respond to loons/trolls is not really a decision of their own conscience but can be forced upon them by other individuals -- including through the mechanism of (presumed) peer pressure.

Can we agree that experience shows that this situation *will* persist until virtually all people on this list decide (of their own accord, or because they don't mind giving in to peer pressure) that not feeding the trolls *is* the wisest course. I would like to suggest, though, that no one assume that this decision can (or should) be forced on anyone. Only, respectfully, suggested.

--
There's neither heaven nor hell, save what we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice, save what we grant each other.

7

craig duncan wrote:

I think what might have been objected to (at least i would object to it) is any sort of implication that other people's decision about whether or not to respond to loons/trolls is not really a decision of their own conscience but can be forced upon them by other individuals -- including through the mechanism of (presumed) peer pressure.

Can we agree that experience shows that this situation *will* persist until virtually all people on this list decide (of their own accord, or because they don't mind giving in to peer pressure) that not feeding the trolls *is* the wisest course. I would like to suggest, though, that no one assume that this decision can (or should) be forced on anyone. Only, respectfully, suggested.

Quite right. And I for one respectfully suggest it to all.

I also suggest that the person sending private emails re: this should
cease, as his efforts are understandable but may not be helping.

And likewise I suggest that the person responding publicly to those
private emails should stop, regardless of whether the other person
stops.

I hate sending emails to this list that don't even have the word
"Ruby" in them (oh, wait, there it is) or even a single line of
code such as x = nil (oh, wait, there it is).

Hal

8

We should head off all such debates by defining a particular person to be 'The Rudest.' I hereby volunteer to be the rudest person on this list. This means that by official fiat, no one can be more rude than me. Unfortunately, this is not setting the bar very high.

On a barely related note, my Lisp-er coworker was talking with me about inheritance in Smalltalk, Ruby, and Lisp. It turns out that in Common Lisp Object System, the superclass of Object is T, or their "true". In Smalltalk and Ruby, however, the superclass of Object is "nil."

Hence Lisp springs from "Truth." While Smalltalk and Ruby spring from the "void" or "nothingness." There is an eastern/western religion thing in there somewhere.

--Peter

···

On Apr 22, 2005, at 6:43 PM, Francis Hwang wrote:

Oh, yeah, this is a good way to stop a troll. Declare war, and then force everybody to pick a side. I know I come to mailing lists so I can engage in endless debates about who's being more rude.

--
There's neither heaven nor hell, save what we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice, save what we grant each other.

9

Suely the filters in gmail can accomodate any annoyance.

I'm sure anyone on this list who uses gmail has, like me an assload of
invites sitting around.

So If I may suggest, ask for a gmail account if you are bothered by trolling
types(I suspect I am assumed to be one), spend some time putting some
filters in a gmail account and relax some.

The comedian Bill Hicks had some nice theories. One I'm kind of partial to
is making marijuana not only legal but mandatory. We as a society are way
too uptight.

One mans troll is anothers entertainment.....

···

--
Thomas G. Willis
http://paperbackmusic.net

10

Francis Hwang wrote:

Oh, yeah, this is a good way to stop a troll.

You cannot "stop the troll". You can only stop replying to his troll
posts. You don't have to anything at all.

···

--
Florian Frank

11

>The problems with trolls aren't the trolls themselves, but people like
>you, that reply to them and feed their madness and their sadism. If you
>really want to destroy this mailing list, you should continue with your
>behaviour.

Oh, yeah, this is a good way to stop a troll. Declare war, and then
force everybody to pick a side. I know I come to mailing lists so I
can engage in endless debates about who's being more rude.

Me three.

···

* Francis Hwang (sera@fhwang.net) wrote:

On Apr 22, 2005, at 4:31 PM, Florian Frank wrote:

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

--
Paul Duncan <pabs@pablotron.org> pabs in #ruby-lang (OPN IRC)
http://www.pablotron.org/ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x82C29562

12

Quoting tom.willis@gmail.com, on Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 09:32:58AM +0900:

Suely the filters in gmail can accomodate any annoyance.

Can you "kill" an entire discussion thread in gmail, so that once you've
seen that you aren't interested in it, you can kill the entire thread
**and all future messages in that thread**?

That would be a killer feature, not just for the Ilias threads.

See, I don't just want to kill emails specifically from him, I want all
the other posters in that thread, too, but just for that thread.

Is gmail for me?

Sam

13

That's clever, I like it :slight_smile:

Douglas

···

On 4/23/05, Peter Suk <peter.kwangjun.suk@mac.com> wrote:

On a barely related note, my Lisp-er coworker was talking with me about
inheritance in Smalltalk, Ruby, and Lisp. It turns out that in Common
Lisp Object System, the superclass of Object is T, or their "true".

14

(P.S. And then, after seeing the movie joke thread, I blow it by
getting irate and going nuclear on somebody, in a very un-ruby-lang
sort of way. Mea Culpa. Forgive me. I'm still growing up.)

I didn't remember that. I was thinking my conceit at the
time was that at least it was phrases being described in
Ruby code, which although predominantly inviting of bad
puns, was at least stimulating whatever process of translation
needed to express them in Ruby. [Didn't get much more
involved than that before posting some atrocious puns of
my own, but gleefully. :slight_smile: ]

Regards,

Bill

15

In article <a14e2d1f7cab1bb1bc0b6a8798ea92b6@mac.com>,

···

Peter Suk <peter.kwangjun.suk@mac.com> wrote:

On a barely related note, my Lisp-er coworker was talking with me about
inheritance in Smalltalk, Ruby, and Lisp. It turns out that in Common
Lisp Object System, the superclass of Object is T, or their "true". In
Smalltalk and Ruby, however, the superclass of Object is "nil."

Hence Lisp springs from "Truth." While Smalltalk and Ruby spring from
the "void" or "nothingness." There is an eastern/western religion
thing in there somewhere.

"You can't handle the Truth!" - now a Lisp philosphy.

--
  -john

February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.

16

Hence Lisp springs from "Truth." While Smalltalk and Ruby spring from
the "void" or "nothingness." There is an eastern/western religion
thing in there somewhere.

Interesting - I must say I like the concept of descending
from Truth; whereas descending from nil seems to grant
each object the opportunity to speak for itself. Which I
also like. <grin>

Regards,

Bill

17

Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:

I hate sending emails to this list that don't even have the word
"Ruby" in them (oh, wait, there it is) or even a single line of
code such as x = nil (oh, wait, there it is).

Hal

Stick them into your .signature. :slight_smile:

···

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

18

Peter Suk <peter.kwangjun.suk@mac.com> writes:

Oh, yeah, this is a good way to stop a troll. Declare war, and then
force everybody to pick a side. I know I come to mailing lists so I
can engage in endless debates about who's being more rude.

We should head off all such debates by defining a particular person to
be 'The Rudest.' I hereby volunteer to be the rudest person on this
list. This means that by official fiat, no one can be more rude than
me. Unfortunately, this is not setting the bar very high.

On a barely related note, my Lisp-er coworker was talking with me
about inheritance in Smalltalk, Ruby, and Lisp. It turns out that in
Common Lisp Object System, the superclass of Object is T, or their
"true". In Smalltalk and Ruby, however, the superclass of Object is
"nil."

No. Object doesn't have a superclass, as much as Lisp's T doesnt have
a superclass. It is not nil, even if ***** may think that.

Also, CLOS doesn't have "Object", it uses T for that.

Hence Lisp springs from "Truth." While Smalltalk and Ruby spring from
the "void" or "nothingness." There is an eastern/western religion
thing in there somewhere.

Well, that's not entirely true... IIRC, Lisp's NIL is an own rootclass
too (or something different, as you can't inherit from it..., but it
is not derived from T), so you have T and NIL as "rootclasses",
whereas Smalltalk and Ruby have only one, ProtoObject and Object
respectively.

That said, Lisp's T and NIL could stand for yin and yang or whatever
you like. :slight_smile:

···

On Apr 22, 2005, at 6:43 PM, Francis Hwang wrote:

--Peter

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

19

<snip>

The very thing to do is to not fear. Do the opposite of that. It
brought a smile to me to see the tail end of a thread started by an
alleged troll degenerate into a bunch of good-natured nerdy Ruby
language movie-reference jokes. Trolling is just a form of sadism that
feeds on the fear of something we value being unjustly smeared. (And
you can fill in the obvious connections to Star Wars and Harry Potter.
Perhaps I should worry that these things pop into my mind so quickly.)

hey, I liked that too, this could also spin-off a funny game.

how many degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon is Ilias Lazaridis ?

20

Who knows, I haven't tried. As long as the subject line stays in tact
somewhat.

You can setup filters to automatically archive(which is what I do for news
groups/mailing lists) , so you never get an alert that you have new mail. I
can't imagine setting it up any other way for newsgroup subscriptions with
high traffic an a low signal to noise.

It's got a spell checker too, but you would never know it from reading my
stuff on a friday night.

The point is there's options that each individual can take without having to
force their standards on everyone else(like what I'm doing right now).

···

On 4/22/05, Sam Roberts <sroberts@uniserve.com> wrote:

Quoting tom.willis@gmail.com, on Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 09:32:58AM +0900:
> Suely the filters in gmail can accomodate any annoyance.

Can you "kill" an entire discussion thread in gmail, so that once you've
seen that you aren't interested in it, you can kill the entire thread
**and all future messages in that thread**?

That would be a killer feature, not just for the Ilias threads.

See, I don't just want to kill emails specifically from him, I want all
the other posters in that thread, too, but just for that thread.

Is gmail for me?

Sam

--
Thomas G. Willis
http://paperbackmusic.net