Being Unpopular Here

TopMind, please come down off that cross. We need to use the wood for something... --PhlIp

To beat me with ;-P

Just to clarify something for you, casting a line with a few provocative words (like 'typemania', 'smarty-only', and 'just bullshit') while hoping for someone to bite makes for a pretty clear case of Internet trolling ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet) ). If you're going to troll, you probably shouldn't admit to it.

{I've since reworded the passages of issue. --top}

I've been insulted up, down, and all around on these CS topics. Why are you ONLY calling me on it? Again, I see this as blatant bias. --top

I did not call you on it. You admitted to it. Besides, 'bias' is not a sin, so long as it is not 'prejudice'.

Let me restate that. You appear to be complaining about my unfriendly language, but not other participant's unfriendly language. It appears you are doing such because my IT-related content upsets you more than theirs does. (This seems to happen to me a lot, by the way.)

I suspect you imagine causation where the reality is correlation with a shared cause. I respond to your unfriendly language because I am in a conversation with you. I am in a conversation with you because we oppose one another on certain IT-related content, because you ask questions, etc. I do not consider myself to be in a conversation with others on this page, and so I will not respond to their unfriendly language unless they say something IT-related with which I feel some need to voice support or disagreement. I would need to feel especially strongly about another's language to butt into another conversation just to complain about it.

You involve yourself in a great many thread-mode conversations, and you often use provocative language and a confrontational interaction style. Those properties are sufficient to explain an unusually large share of complaints. You are probably right to suspect that some of it is IT-related, but I suspect you find yourself in ViolentAgreements often enough to verify it can't all be IT-related. And... ummm... it probably doesn't help that you sometimes treat people as if they were just different voices from an OOPer-heavy-typer-anti-toppie-mass. That makes a wonderful impression on those of us who didn't know you before - it certainly made for a first-impression I haven't forgotten.

Maybe I am somehow deceiving myself because my brain is as fscked up as some of you claim it is, but as I see it, my "insult rate" is roughly about 1/3 of those who I commonly debate with. Plus, its a personal rule of mine not to "draw first blood". Do I need to start documenting insults against me to prove this to you? A double-standard appears to be in place as revenge for attacking sacred cows, from my perspective. Also note that some of the identity problems would be solved if people simply used unique handles. I am not picky about the handles as long as they are unique within related topics. -top

To prove a double-standard you'd need to prove that those you debate with are statistically less likely to insult others they debate on a per-volume basis (e.g. per-sentence dialog). If you're up to that rather herculean task, and you really feel like wading through poison rather than doing something productive, then go for it. (But, personally, even the thought of actively searching for such negative energy is enough to make me feel slightly ill.) Anyhow, by my intuition from statistics (which taught me long ago to take any initial intuition and turn it on its head to see if it falls apart) is that you're experiencing the common psychological phenomenon known as 'confirmation bias'. In simple terms: you notice or remember insults more often when they're directed towards you... especially since you're consistently involved in your own debates.

A similar bias might also apply to those who've had their sacred-cows attacked by me. I'd rather avoid doing insult-accounting, but if I need to do such to avoid being banned or what-not, I'll do it. --top

Oh, you don't need to worry about being banned. All the WikiSteward?s already left.

Maybe this explains our differences in badness ratio perception:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4227673/Three-cups-of-brewed-coffee-a-day-triples-risk-of-hallucinations.html

If one finds oneself standing all alone, one must ask if they believe in what they are standing for. And, if the answer is yes, then remember that standing all alone as an island unto oneself and weathering the storm, makes you stronger and stronger the longer the storm. It is many times a necessary position to be in, and one that is envied by the weak and vociferous.

In reality, being an island in the storm slowly eats away at the very best parts of you until all that remains is hard, unfertile soil. But, if you are an optimist, I suppose you can view this as "I'm getting harder and harder, stronger and stronger."

You think you're unpopular, ha! Monsieur Nomad is unpopular.