It was fun... [LWN.net]

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 20:31 UTC (Thu) by jthill (subscriber, #56558)
In reply to: It was fun... by FlorianMueller
Parent article: Groklaw shutting down in May

Not many dog poisoners have the chutzpah to defend their act by pointing out what good steak they use to deliver the payload, and still fewer offer a blatantly poisoned steak as evidence. I suppose that could be called "courage", the quality of having one's heart in it.

to post comments

It was fun...

Posted Apr 14, 2011 21:32 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (8 responses)

This is what in the business we call an »ad hominem« attack. What happened in the cases cited by Florian also happened to various other people, some of which have spoken up in this discussion. It does not matter that it was Florian who actually went to the trouble of documenting PJ's suppression of undesired comments (»dog poisoner« or not), and he may even have had a personal axe to grind doing so; what does matter as far as I am concerned is that the suppression occurred at all, which is nothing to do with Florian personally.

Arguing that Groklaw is PJ's blog and she gets to do what she wants on it, including arranging for tricky and unusual methods of getting rid of comments she personally does not agree with, is fine by me. It's her privilege, and so far nobody is actually forced to read (or comment on) Groklaw. However, in my opinion, this alone disqualifies her as the candidate for immediate sainthood that many people apparently perceive her to be. It may be acceptable on a blog to completely remove comments which contain offensive language, but suppressing politely-worded comments whose content one does not like, in the manner that PJ demonstrably did in various cases, is not behaviour I personally would associate with the owner and operator of an award-winning blog extolling software freedom.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 2:34 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (7 responses)

Ad hominem is an attempt to reject or discredit what someone offers using something about the person offering it. An allegation may be accurate or inaccurate, flattering or insulting, relevant or pure idiotic noise. None of that will tell you whether it's ad hominem or not. My metaphor was accurate, insulting and relevant, but what makes an allegation ad hominem is the attempt to taint. If you're going to use strong language, please use it properly.

If you want to see the line between rebuke and ad hominem, step from my post to Mueller's link.

PJ deletes such attempts on sight as the work of trolls, and all your objections amount to is "sometimes she gets it wrong". Endlessly discussing whether any such decision is wrong would also achieve what the trolls were after.

So, therefore, what?

Also, please point out anyone angling to beatify PJ so we can properly mock them. She had a few years of genuine glory, not many people get that. But that's about all.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 6:49 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (6 responses)

PJ deletes such attempts on sight as the work of trolls, and all your objections amount to is "sometimes she gets it wrong". Endlessly discussing whether any such decision is wrong would also achieve what the trolls were after.

If the Groklaw definition of a troll is »somebody whose contributions PJ doesn't like«, you may even be right. However, if, for example, in the discussion of the Hercules virtual machine OS licensing/patent issue, the main developer of the actual software in question steps in and tries to present his side of what is factually being discussed, that is not what I would consider »trolling«. If anything, the Groklaw community should have been glad that Jay Maynard took time out of his undoubtedly busy schedule to contribute constructively (by correcting some apparent factual misconceptions on PJ's part) to the site. Instead he gets ejected, essentially because he disagrees with PJ on some things where to an outside observer it is painfully obvious that he is right and PJ is wrong. I wouldn't exactly describe this as »sometimes she gets it wrong«.

As far as »endless discussions« are concerned, I would much rather see a constructive discussion of the actual subject matter at hand than one about whether it was right or not to kick somebody off the site for purely personal reasons. In my opinion, the right thing for PJ to do after Jay Maynard corrected some of her factual errors would have been to apologise and thank him, then move the discussion along in the light of what she'd just learned. What Jay Maynard did was not »trolling«, and painting it as such just to bolster the notion that oh, PJ sometimes hits the wrong button, no big deal, please don't make a large issue of it since that would make PJ look bad, strikes me as disingenious. Kicking somebody off a site should be the very last thing one considers, and definitely not for constructive contributions to a factual discussion.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 11:00 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (5 responses)

IBM would have to be stark staring insane to license their OS for production use on an emulator -- particularly for use on an emulator being used as last-resort disaster backup. The sheer stupidity of what they were being asked to do is actually more ludicrous than the allegations made about their refusal to do it.

Mueller's /. post on the subject was my first contact with his work. I've learned to be suspicious of claims which, if true, would be outrageous, and this one (let alone his blog post, which reeks) had the smell of propaganda about it. So I read the letters. Yup. It's the tired old propagandist's recipe for leveraging confirmation bias: manufactured outrage and vile characterizations based on some more or less subtle misrepresentation, relying on the knowledge that most people when gulled into outrage stop thinking.

And this is just more of the same.

Did these forums get drained of legal knowledge when AllParadox & Marbux left or went silent so long ago? I'm really curious here. I feel like I'm in a dream where we're taking a test and everyone but me slept through all the classes.

Yeah. That's the closing paragraph of a post anent which Mueller devotes an entire section titled 'Baseless allegations of "personal attacks".' Right. Openly presuming a roomful of people are all ignorant posers is a constructive contribution, and following it immediately with "I'm really curious here" isn't going to set off anyone's "kick me, I'm a troll" alarm.

That's so brazen it's actually funny, in a "the other possible explanations are distinctly uncharitable, so I'll regard it as a first-rate sendup of people who've never seriously faced the question, who do you think you're fooling?" kind of way.

So anyway,

What Jay Maynard did was not »trolling«

So you say. The content of his reply on "Sunday, April 11 2010 @ 01:07 EDT" does not appear in Florian's link. In fact, I don't think there's anything of his in that document. Care to provide any evidence? No explanations, no characterization, no careful framing attempts. Just facts, thanks.

Because, as it stands, what been offered so far is most succinctly epitomized as a vast disparity between your public pronouncements and the actual evidence.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 19:17 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (4 responses)

IBM would have to be stark staring insane to license their OS for production use on an emulator -- particularly for use on an emulator being used as last-resort disaster backup. The sheer stupidity of what they were being asked to do is actually more ludicrous than the allegations made about their refusal to do it.

Whatever. I'm not opening that can of worms. Let me just state for the record that I believe (and have commented on LWN.net to that effect when the issue was ongoing) that as far as I am concerned IBM is perfectly free to license or not license their software to whoever they want. In my own personal opinion I don't think it would be any skin off IBM's nose for them to offer reasonably-priced no-support licenses to Hercules users (it's not as if people are queuing to replace their IBM z/OS mainframes with PCs) but that is neither here nor there.

Mueller's /. post on the subject was my first contact with his work […]

Please leave Florian Mueller out of this. My issue is with PJ's suppressing comments by and/or kicking out people she does not agree with, in general. It happened to me and various other people other than Florian Mueller. What Florian Mueller said or didn't say, on Groklaw, Slashdot, or anywhere else, is completely immaterial to the issue at hand.

Care to provide any evidence? [for Jay Maynard not »trolling« on Groklaw]

I just spent way too much time on Groklaw looking at comments on the original article dealing with the TurboHercules issue, and I have failed to see any comment of Jay Maynard's that could fairly be considered »trolling« In fact, given what various other participants in the discussion throw at him he comes across as unusually polite and level-headed (IMHO anyway). I would like to invite anybody who is interested enough in the issue to look at the same article and form their own opinion, lest I be accused of cherry-picking evidence. Ten minutes or so should be enough to get the gist of what is going on.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 21:12 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (3 responses)

kicking out people she does not agree with

Again with the gratuitous characterization, backed by nothing. Again.

Please leave Florian Mueller out of this.

You're the one cited his work as evidence. You get to live with the association.

comments on the original article

(1) that post is still there. (2) people there were treating him very gently. (3) I see him going on and on about "IBM's patent threats", as if IBM made any. They didn't, but he sure is determined to paint it that way.

If you kept on and on for days offering nothing but accusations on Groklaw as you're doing here, it's no wonder she started killfiling posts. It's just a matter of cleanliness.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 22:57 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

You're the one cited his work as evidence. You get to live with the association.

No I didn't. That was vonbrand. Go check. (Also I'm intrigued that you apparently expect me to point you to some comment of mine that PJ has canceled, as »evidence«. Duh. The whole point of PJ suppressing comments she doesn't agree with is so they're gone.)

Anyway, I'm out of this discussion. I gave up on Groklaw long ago and won't miss it at all; I don't need to waste even more of my life arguing with PJ's fan crew here on LWN.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 15, 2011 23:09 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (1 responses)

No I didn't.

Who do you think you're fooling?

it was Florian who actually went to the trouble of documenting

That's you, opening this conversation.

It was fun...

Posted Apr 16, 2011 9:18 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

That's you, opening this conversation.

Nope, that's me commenting on you commenting on Florian commenting on vonbrand, who pointed to Florian's comments. Hardly »opening this conversation«. You're also quoting me out of context.

And this is really the last you're going to hear from me in this discussion.