David B. Held wrote:
[SNIP]
Actually, I was being pragmatic. I would say the self-
appointed "moderators" of this *unmoderated* group are
the trolls. In fact, I would say that c.l.c++.m is better-
I had a hunch, so I have made a little search. According to Google you have
alltogether posted 88 articles to comp.lang.c++. Many of those is trolling
in this thread. Your first post appeares here end of October 2002 and most
of your posts starts to date from August 2003 - which seems to be the time
when your article with Andrei (whom is a friend to me) was about to appear
in CUJ. One cannot really forget the idea that it is some sort of
"comeback" or kinda (forgive me for saying that) marketing campaign to bring
your name to be known. IMO this is not the best way to do it.
Furthermore as Andrei is a very good friend to me and I find him a thinking
and balanced person I must admit that you must not be that completely broken
minded clever-S whom you seemed to be here. I base that on the fact that
Andrei writes articles with you and that you are a very active member of
Boost. So I must think that your "take it easy" approach on the questions
of being off-topic and your errors of answering the wrong post (thereby
implying your support to off-topic) was an honest mistake. I should have
taken it in that way at the first place, but unfortunately there are too way
many way too similar real trolls in here - lately.
As for the topic of off-topic. As you haven't been around comp.lang.c++ (at
least your contributions show that your sort-of everyday involvement started
only this August, approximately a month ago) I think you did not yet realize
how serious problem the off-topic posts and the off-topic threads growing
from them mean here. For me (for example) it is (n+1)*2 minues until
MicroSlow OutOfLuck XStress catches up the unread, but not displayed
(ignored) articles (n+1) times per day from these ignored threads. In
addition to this is the job of downloading, reading, redirecting etc. of
those, which can finally mean that my tired mind has not stamina left to
look at any code longer than 10 lines.
As for the mistake of the reply. Please - if I may suggest - if you want to
answer to someone: answer that post. Answering to a redirecting post with
an off-topic answer, especially from a name from CUJ, also (even if with a
smiley, even if it is a joke) with a "justification" that the topic is OK is
a bad thing to do. It implies that the one you answer to is the one who
redirected the post. It implies that you do not agree with the redirection.
It implies that - in a certain way - your statement was more to say:
everything is OK to be posted here, rather than giving help. And this will
serve as a Google-archived future precedent to every troll who wants to
justify discussing ActiveX programming here or how to compile the Linux
kernel.
As you are a CUJ published author you will really need to take more care
about what you say and do here. Your example (be it bad or good) and even
your mistakes will count a 100 times more than mine or any other regular
poster. While I understand that as an occasional guest here you do not feel
or see the unecessary pressure the off-topic posts and trolls put on this
newsgroup as regulars do, but please believe thos who are here daily for the
last n+3 years that it is pretty bad.
This post was intended as an apology and as an attempt to clear up
misunderstandings and hopefully put our future conversations into a more
moderated (pun intended) manner. I do not know you and you do not know me.
The reason I have revised my viewpoint is because I know Andrei worked with
you - and I know that this must mean something. That has helped me to
realize that I have based my judgement about your post on a partial truth
and therefore my first corrspondence was rather arrogant than friendly. And
that has highly contributed to our later heated discussion.
So I am sorry I have suspected bad intentions while there was only a
mistake. But please also you keep in mind that off-topic here is
(unfortunately) not a joke; replying to the one you intent your post to
helps to avoid misunderstanding and that since your name is know via CUJ you
can either help us regulars a lot with keeping this NG managable or worsen
our situation a lot.
Ps: As a lesson from this I am thinking about either cutting back on coffee
or my tongue. I think the coffee part is more cost effective and definitely
less pain.
