You can lead a horse to water... [LWN.net]

You can lead a horse to water...

Posted Feb 9, 2007 16:08 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026)
In reply to: Thanks for proving me right. by lysse
Parent article: Comparing Linux and Minix

Can you truly not comprehend that it's possible to be belligerent or offensive without also bullying? For example, I have never accused you of bullying me despite the now rather long trail of insults you have directed at me (and people you thought were me). That should have been a hint. Your charge of hypocrisy rests entirely on yet another misunderstanding from your end. I won't hold my breath waiting for you to own up to that. While you did "retract" one lazy and painfully obvious error you were careful to be uncivil about it so you've earned no sympathy.

Back to the merits, it's clear that you need to read grouch's comment one more time. He does, as you say, point out that copsewood got the names of the Gentoo and Debian distributions wrong. Doing so is not childish, even if people like mingo and you don't happen to care about the facts. But he also points out that copsewood is mistaken about the purpose of those distributions. Read it and see! That is a substantive misunderstanding and clearing it up is helpful. Nothing grouch writes amounts to an attack or even a comment on copsewood's character -- unlike mingo's comments about maturity and your speculation about self image.

Let's talk about the rules of discourse for a moment, since you brougt it up. There seems to be no universally accepted standard, but I'll tell you how I see things. Making abstract comments, as copsewood did, is quite reasonable. As long as it's an honest effort there's no shame if the results are not insightful. Commenting favorably on another comment is reasonable too but offering factual corrections or even alternative points of view is well within bounds. What isn't fair game is responding to people who are playing by the rules with emotional rants and unprovoked attacks on character. Those who do that, as mingo and you have, must abandon any reasonable expectation of civility from responses. Don't dish it out if you can't take it in.

Time will tell if you keep your promise to crawl back into whatever hole you came from. I won't miss you if you do, but I want you to know that after rereading my comments on this thread I stand by everything I've said. Putting it in terms of horse's arses, I've lead this one as close to the water of reason as I can. Whether to take a drink is entirely up to you.

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