He soon started posting long tirades where he `proved' that the CL
standard requires various behaviour, while completely ignoring the
detailed rebuttals of his `proofs'.
(Sound familiar?)
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:
I'm a new Rubyist and new to this list (as of today) and I must say, that
first link in your email has me in stitches
Some people, eh?
Thanks for making my day!
(If this is a double post I apologies, I sent my first email from an address
that isn't subscribed to this list by accident and got an auto email
politely remind me of the fact. Not sure if it went through or not.)
As someone who has joined the lists only 5-6 months ago (and has not been exposed to
this nonsense), it's quite hard to resist the urge to point out when someone is always so very
wrong about so many things. I do worry a newcomer might see his posts and not realize it is
insanity. But I'll do my part, I'll bite my tongue.
> He soon started posting long tirades where he `proved' that the CL
> standard requires various behaviour, while completely ignoring the
> detailed rebuttals of his `proofs'.
(Sound familiar?)
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:
Apparently, his insanity (which I don't dispute) has resulted in some
legitimate improvements that have been accepted for Ruby 1.9.3, so I'm
not convinced that engaging him is without utility.
···
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@zenspider.com> wrote:
Again, this man is insane, so please, please, please refrain
from replying to his posts, or in threads he starts.
Here is what I suggest. Create a mail signature or reply template with
advice to ignore Ilias and no longer respond to him. *Every* time
someone responds to him, email that person with the standard response.
If enough people pick this up, and every time someone responds to
Ilias they get 10+ form letters asking them not to, it should do a
quick enough job of discouraging further threads.
I truly hope no one takes that advice. If I get 10+ of these things
spammed to my inbox because I tried to help someone, it's not Ilias who
will wind up on my blacklist, it's the spammers. Respond in thread
*once* if you must but spamming someones inbox for that is just
jack-assery. Especially considering the target of your animosity has
had 4 of 8 issues accepted (and 2 still being discussed, 1 which IMO is
a good idea).
As I've said previously, I don't like Ilias, but that doesn't mean that
nothing he has to say is valid or worth discussing. And if he really is
this bad, nature will run it's course and soon everyone will ignore him
naturally. It already seems like the Ilias stuff has dropped off
substantially.
Personally, I wish we could get MINSWAN(Matz is nice, so we are nice)
back as a community, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Spamming some poor soul for trying to answer a question is certainly not
nice.
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Sam Rose <moshersam@gmail.com> wrote:
(If this is a double post I apologies, I sent my first email from an
address
that isn't subscribed to this list by accident and got an auto email
politely remind me of the fact. Not sure if it went through or not.)
gmail for some reason or another shows 2 posts on your machine but one
to the comp.lang.ruby
It's weird. But rest assured it's not really double posting though it
gives the illusion that it is.
···
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Sam Rose <moshersam@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm a new Rubyist and new to this list (as of today) and I must say, that
first link in your email has me in stitches
Some people, eh?
Thanks for making my day!
(If this is a double post I apologies, I sent my first email from an address
that isn't subscribed to this list by accident and got an auto email
politely remind me of the fact. Not sure if it went through or not.)
He reported a "BARRIER" as the codepage issue with old non unicode
friendly 737 codepage (greek)
Beyond that, I see long threads about CORE and BARRIER stuff as
criticizer of Matz's OO implementation in Ruby and it's performance
trades.
Bet next thread will be how non-OO is using regexp matchers and $1
$2...
···
On Jun 10, 9:48 pm, Christopher Dicely <cmdic...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Ryan Davis <ryand-r...@zenspider.com> wrote:
> Again, this man is insane, so please, please, please refrain
> from replying to his posts, or in threads he starts.
Apparently, his insanity (which I don't dispute) has resulted in some
legitimate improvements that have been accepted for Ruby 1.9.3, so I'm
not convinced that engaging him is without utility.
Since this has escalated to giving the guy a thread with his name in
the title; would someone mind linking some of his more prolific
trolling. Any hijacked threads? Common trollish behavior such as
insult a person directly. T
his "Ilias is Crazy" is becoming bit trite. I also think it's a bit
arrogant to single out and ostracize someone. I don't know if this
person has mental issues or not. It also does not matter.
He definitely has an abrasive way of expressing himself but far be it
for me to judge him based on his lack of socialization.
Telling people not to respond to someone sounds like some sort of
elitist click or beginning of an association fallacy. It also proves a
lack of diplomacy, tolerance, and empathy from those imposing such a
ridiculous crusade.
I agree with the poster above if some silly auto-email "llias warning"
becomes tied to the sign-up or mail daemon I'd be extremely set back.
Something like that as well as this thread also reinforces the ad
hominem since you have issued a scarlet letter for the man.
From where I'm sitting he seems "Mostly Harmless".
Think about the community proverb: Matz is nice, so we are nice.
Matz does not alienate llias, So neither should I
Matz practices tolerance, So shall I
Matz is diplomatic, So am I
~Stu
···
From my observations this entails these idioms:
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:30 PM, Walton Hoops <me@waltonhoops.com> wrote:
Here is what I suggest. Create a mail signature or reply template with
advice to ignore Ilias and no longer respond to him. *Every* time
someone responds to him, email that person with the standard response.
If enough people pick this up, and every time someone responds to
Ilias they get 10+ form letters asking them not to, it should do a
quick enough job of discouraging further threads.
I truly hope no one takes that advice. If I get 10+ of these things
spammed to my inbox because I tried to help someone, it's not Ilias who
will wind up on my blacklist, it's the spammers. Respond in thread
*once* if you must but spamming someones inbox for that is just
jack-assery. Especially considering the target of your animosity has
had 4 of 8 issues accepted (and 2 still being discussed, 1 which IMO is
a good idea).
As I've said previously, I don't like Ilias, but that doesn't mean that
nothing he has to say is valid or worth discussing. And if he really is
this bad, nature will run it's course and soon everyone will ignore him
naturally. It already seems like the Ilias stuff has dropped off
substantially.
Personally, I wish we could get MINSWAN(Matz is nice, so we are nice)
back as a community, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Spamming some poor soul for trying to answer a question is certainly not
nice.
His pedantic OCD has pointed out some stale data on the bugtracker that's been stale for a long time without complaint. Verdict: inconsequential.
He pointed out that we didn't support a decrepit unicode-incompatible windows codepage for greek. Verdict: inconsequential.
He pointed out a bug in syck... something nobody actually maintains. Psych was made the default engine for 1.9.3... I don't think we've looked into the potential consequences for this enough (I've had to make changes to rubygems to get it to work properly with psych... I'm sure there are others). Verdict: no clue.
All in all, I think his positive contributions do very little to pay off the amount of negative consequences he brings to the table.
One of the reasons why MINSWAN works is by shaping our community. For example, we actively ban trolls in IRC to maintain the culture we want to have. We don't have such controls in this medium as it is a mailing-list bridged to both usenet and a web forum. This is why I suggest shunning instead. It works... but only if we work together to make it work. This is why it worked for comp.lang.lisp. They were smaller and it was easier for them to actively shun Ilias until he went away.
What we're dealing with here is the Pareto Principal. >90% of the noise (and trolling) is coming from <10% of the people. If we control them, we control the noise. The signal cleans up drastically after that.
MINSWAN doesn't mean blindly accepting every asshole who comes along. For some people, rationality and polite requests to change behavior just never work. For them, we should shun.
···
On Jun 10, 2011, at 18:48 , Christopher Dicely wrote:
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@zenspider.com> wrote:
Again, this man is insane, so please, please, please refrain
from replying to his posts, or in threads he starts.
Apparently, his insanity (which I don't dispute) has resulted in some
legitimate improvements that have been accepted for Ruby 1.9.3, so I'm
not convinced that engaging him is without utility.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like Ilias, for reasons that I suspect are
obvious. At the same time however, I feel like a lot of valid points
have been raised and not taken seriously on this list, purely because of
the source.
···
On 6/10/2011 9:40 PM, Luis Lavena wrote:
On Jun 10, 9:48 pm, Christopher Dicely <cmdic...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Ryan Davis <ryand-r...@zenspider.com> wrote:
Again, this man is insane, so please, please, please refrain
from replying to his posts, or in threads he starts.
Apparently, his insanity (which I don't dispute) has resulted in some
legitimate improvements that have been accepted for Ruby 1.9.3, so I'm
not convinced that engaging him is without utility.
Since this has escalated to giving the guy a thread with his name in the title; would someone mind linking some of his more prolific trolling. [...]
A lot of examples have been pointed out in this thread for recent cases. You can google for the older ones.
Telling people not to respond to someone sounds like some sort of
elitist click or beginning of an association fallacy. It also proves a
lack of diplomacy, tolerance, and empathy from those imposing such a
ridiculous crusade.
I'm merely trying to shape the traffic on this list in a way that creates the community we want to have (as described in another email I just sent, so I won't go into that further). In some cases, no amount of diplomacy, tolerance, or empathy will help. I believe this is one of them. I can respect that you don't appreciate my suggested method, but I don't think that having a community that we can participate in and enjoy is a ridiculous crusade.
Go back in the mailing list archives and see how much Ilias can destabilize this list if you don't believe me or in my methods. Comp.lang.lisp demonstrated that shunning Ilias worked for them. If you don't approve of shunning, suggest something better and show that it works.
Since this has escalated to giving the guy a thread with his name in
the title; would someone mind linking some of his more prolific
trolling. Any hijacked threads? Common trollish behavior such as
insult a person directly. T
He's insulted me pretty directly most of the time he's actually responded to
me. He's also made legal threats when people point out his trollish behavior.
I might tolerate these if he brought anything useful to the discussion, but
with him, it isn't a discussion. He'll blatantly ignore or strawman anything
he doesn't like, which means unless you present him with _precisely_ what he's
looking for (and he's usually looking for things which are at best nonsensical
and usually very bad ideas), don't expect him to read or understand your post.
He definitely has an abrasive way of expressing himself but far be it
for me to judge him based on his lack of socialization.
It's not just a lack of socialization, it's a complete unwillingness to learn.
That is, an unwillingness to learn much about Ruby (beyond his latest
"BARRIER"), or anything about basic etiquette. Indeed, these are exactly the
sort of things which he'll ignore as "offtopic".
I wouldn't judge someone for, say, top-posting, like you did here. But if I
pointed out that you really shouldn't top-post, and you should quote the
relevant parts rather than the entire email, I would hope you wouldn't respond
with "Quit being so unprofessional! It's my right to top-post! Anyone should
be able to see in five minutes that top-posting is correct! If you tell me
again, I'll sue!"
And that's toned down a bit from what we usually get from Ilias. Oh, I'm
sorry, not "sue", but "Here's a link to defamation laws, and I'll be forced to
'take action' if you know what I mean, wink wink, nod nod."
Telling people not to respond to someone sounds like some sort of
elitist click or beginning of an association fallacy. It also proves a
lack of diplomacy, tolerance, and empathy from those imposing such a
ridiculous crusade.
It's pragmatic, and it's based on his actions, not association.
I actually somewhat agree with you in that I'm likely to continue to respond
as I have the time. After all, every response is an opportunity for Ilias to
grow up.
But he's far from harmless. We're spending our time and energy dealing with
him, instead of people who actually have real problems and are willing to work
with us to solve them.
If he showed the slightest willingness to learn, if he "had time" to work with
us instead of against us, then replying to him would make sense, because he
would actually improve with each exchange. There's no reason that, even at
this point, he can't become a respected member of the community, someone who
actually does make a positive contribution.
But he's not interested in that.
Think about the community proverb: Matz is nice, so we are nice.
From my observations this entails these idioms:
Matz does not alienate llias, So neither should I
Matz practices tolerance, So shall I
Matz is diplomatic, So am I
Here's what Matz had to say:
Perhaps that is diplomatic, tolerant, and not alienating. If so, sure, I'd
love to see more responses like that -- but not as much as I wish people like
Matz didn't have to waste their time with people like Ilias.
In any case, it certainly didn't seem nice, nor does Ilias deserve nice at
this point. He's lucky people are still willing to tolerate him.
I wouldn't judge someone for, say, top-posting, like you did here. But if I
pointed out that you really shouldn't top-post, and you should quote the
relevant parts rather than the entire email, I would hope you wouldn't respond
with "Quit being so unprofessional! It's my right to top-post! Anyone should
be able to see in five minutes that top-posting is correct! If you tell me
again, I'll sue!"
It occurs to me his "take action" might involve reporting people to ISPs
for disagreeing with him, or something asinine like that.
But he's far from harmless. We're spending our time and energy dealing with
him, instead of people who actually have real problems and are willing to work
with us to solve them.
On the other hand, I got quick responses on a problem I brought up today
and, even though they ultimately didn't help with what I was trying to do
(get Sequel running), they were well-meaning and knowledgeable. The only
reason they didn't help is, I suspect, the stupidity of the platform on
which I'm trying to get things working.
I think the bigger danger than being too busy to help someone is someone
saying "Wow, a troll is running this mailing list. I won't even ask."
···
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 07:39:12AM +0900, David Masover wrote:
> I wouldn't judge someone for, say, top-posting, like you did here. But if
> I pointed out that you really shouldn't top-post, and you should quote
> the relevant parts rather than the entire email, I would hope you
> wouldn't respond with "Quit being so unprofessional! It's my right to
> top-post! Anyone should be able to see in five minutes that top-posting
> is correct! If you tell me again, I'll sue!"
It occurs to me his "take action" might involve reporting people to ISPs
for disagreeing with him, or something asinine like that.
That's not reasonable. He almost always says this immediately after citing
(and sometimes linking to) defamation laws. As poor as his communication
skills may be, I find it hard to believe that he didn't at least intend to
give the impression of a legal threat, which is functionally equivalent to
actually delivering a legal threat.
So, his comments about "taking action" are duck-typed as legal threats.
> But he's far from harmless. We're spending our time and energy dealing
> with him, instead of people who actually have real problems and are
> willing to work with us to solve them.
[...]
I think the bigger danger than being too busy to help someone is someone
saying "Wow, a troll is running this mailing list. I won't even ask."
That's a good point.
Of course, we also have to balance it against the impression that trolling is
tolerated. Worse, it's not obvious to an outsider that Ilias' blockers are
not, in fact, serious problems with Ruby (especially bad if the entire
community ignores serious blockers), but are a result of his own possibly-
deliberate misunderstanding.
I'm not sure what the balance is here. I'm starting to see the case for
ignoring him until he goes away.
···
On Saturday, June 11, 2011 05:55:20 PM Chad Perrin wrote:
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 07:39:12AM +0900, David Masover wrote:
My biggest concern at this point is that, in the midst of getting annoyed
at Ilias, otherwise productive people seem to have shorter fuses with
each other on this list than usual, too. I caught myself making a snarky
comment about code formatting yesterday -- but, sadly, did not catch
myself before sending the email.
