Pissed Off And Extremely Angry

Now bloody livid.

Today (2006/08/16) I returned briefly to tidy up a few pages and continue to withdraw gracefully. I spent tens of minutes removing my name, removing references to dead pages, and generally leaving the content in a better state.

Here's what followed on WikiLinkStructureAnalysis.

 Date and time       Actual data from http://c2.com/cgi/posts?WikiLinkStructureAnalysis 
 =============       ==================================================================
 2006-08-16 05:15:50 1155726950 83.104.25.51 PissedOffAndAngry? 52 7267-8485 
 2006-08-16 10:08:05 1155744485 213.42.2.21 proxy1.emirates.net.ae 53 8460-7267 
 2006-08-16 10:08:48 1155744528 195.188.152.10 webcache.blueyonder.co.uk 54 7267-8460
 2006-08-16 10:09:30 1155744570 195.188.152.10 webcache.blueyonder.co.uk 55 8460-8460 
 2006-08-16 10:09:55 1155744595 195.188.152.10 webcache.blueyonder.co.uk 56 8460-8460

Clear evidence of multiple edits, a practice specifically prohibited.

The same pattern is being repeated on other pages:

First my change is reverted through a proxy, then one or more trivial edits are made to hide the initial reversion.

Then to add insult to injury, 195.188.152.10 set their UserName to PissedOffAndExtremelyAngry and deleted this page, resulting the the page being deleted without requiring a seconder.

1155746271 83.104.25.51 PissedOffAndExtremelyAngry 1 1511 1155746364 195.188.152.10 PissedOffAndExtremelyAngry (deleted) 2 6

Complete waste of time this place - Nomad Rules. Let your edits please the all seeing, all knowing and all powerful Nomad.

On FundamentalFlaw, Nomad deleted my questioning him about the police and then had the gall to show me giving him unqualified thanks. -- Eliz

And he keeps deleting this page without bothering to keep this complaint from EW.

Editing wiki pages doesn't seem to be working in this corner of the web. If you're involved, please feel free to drop me a private email to aphieX2e@t8o.org.

That is a temporary address, I'll disable it in a week or two. If you need guidelines and promises on sending me mail: I promise to read up to four hundred words per day per person; I will reply when I feel I can help; I will keep your message private and delete your mail and any reply from my system after reading and possibly replying.
I can't change the way wiki works, I don't claim to have any answers, wisdom or enlightenment. I can only offer listening, advice and another voice on these pages. I just what wikizens do here. Sometimes the advice is good, the rest tends towards bitbucket as time passes.
I know I wasn't here when it all happened, I just wandered back in. I'm neutral, I have no axe to grind, none of my work has been damaged. -- MatthewAstley

[disagreement settled by both concerned, and now being deleted]

It's OK. I am reacting to a long history of people showing up suddenly in the midst of community problems and trying to take a fair and balanced view towards both sides, without realizing that it's a situation where one individual (RA was one of the biggest offenders in past years) is being antisocial and trying to hijack the wiki, and the rest of the community is simply trying to deal with that.

In such situations, it is highly inappropriate to apply the usual standards ("there's two sides to everything, it takes two to tango, can't we all just get along, there's no need for rudeness, probably both sides have made mistakes", etc), because by that point, all such things have been tried, and failed, already. We are at that point (actually, way past that point) currently, and you need to do whatever is needed to discover the history on this before you can expect to make any informed comments/advice/feedback. -- DougMerritt

Isn't it the case that the very name of this page contains inappropriate language? Also, wasn't it primarily EditWars conducted against RA that drove him away? Without them, he'd still be here.

DavidLiu, you are banned -- and this comment of yours is an excellent illustration of why you shouldn't come back. It's the sort of comment that tends to reduce all readers to utter speechless shock and wonderment as to whether you are insane, deeply retarded, completely evil, or all of the above.

He didn't write that. Had he done so, his ban must have expired or been revoked (or "gone soft").

RA was not driven away, we couldn't get rid of him for the longest time, until Ward finally implemented both HardBans and the steward system. -- DougMerritt

RA has admitted on another site that he went away of his own accord because of opposition here. A ban helped, but he made some posts despite it.

Early in 2006, Colin wrote the following paragraph in relation to his BinarySearch coding challenge:

I will now insist that you adhere strictly to all the conditions. Email your code to the address specified, in the format specified, and I'll run it through the system properly. I'm not going to take time to extract it from here, change the HTML to text, top and tail it with the omitted code, run it through the tests by hand, compile the results, and then post them here. It doesn't interest me.

In FundamentalFlaw, Colin wrote in August:

After repeatedly ignoring my requests to submit code according to the original terms, I finally said that I wouldn't engage you anymore until you did.

Clearly, Colin misquoted himself, since his insistence on the original terms (i.e., email) said nothing about ceasing engagement. Hence, Colin's objection (repeated below) was unfounded.

I would appreciate an exact reference to that, since I believe I have not subtly misquoted myself. Such an exact reference would allow me to make a definitive statement as to my current thoughts and opinions. I think, however, that you have incorrectly attributed someone else's words to me.

Not surprisingly, Colin's definitive statement on the above never materialized.

Firstly, I no longer read things here avidly, so it's not surprising that I haven't replied since I haven't until now seen your edit.
- The edit you refer to was recent and during your night, so it's unremarkable that you hadn't seen it until a few hours later.
Secondly, you appear to be quoting selectively. In several other places, both before and after the piece you quote, I said I would no longer engage with you. It is those places I was referencing, not the one you quote.
- That reply is non-specific. Your assertion was very specific - "I finally said that I wouldn't engage you anymore until you did." The word "finally" rules out earlier statements, and the phrase "until you did" rules out all other places, since your specific insistence on an email occurred only once. Moreover, you had previously read your own words and replied "I think, however, that you have incorrectly attributed someone else's words to me." Obviously, that assessment was totally wrong (and presumably unresearched).
Thirdly, my definitive statement is this: I will no longer engage with you unless I feel it necessary to defend myself against explicit or implicit attacks.
- You stated you needed an exact reference (even though your words had already been quoted to you on the same page) in order to allow you to make a specific statement. Obviously, the statement above doesn't require any such reference and therefore isn't the definitive statement that you were referring to when you asked for the reference.
Finally, I have put the separator below because it appeared from your edit, inserted above Matthew's text, that Matthew was giving you thanks. You might give more attention to how your edits appear, since this appeared unethical.
- The previous explanation was carefully enclosed in square brackets specifically to show that it was unrelated to Matthew's text; the separator you've used was deliberately omitted so as not to separate Matthew's reply from the earlier text he was replying to.

Nomad - I just don't care. I don't care how carefully you placed your square brackets, it still looked like Matthew was thanking you, not her. Your inability to see that suggests that what has previously been considered unethical editing is just incompetence. I've moved Elizabeth's comment down so Matthew is clearly replying to her.

As stated, that was seen. Moving the comment was another option, but that doesn't mean the option chosen was unethical.

But to be honest, I just don't care. Engaging in discussion, argument, debate, or exchange with you just turns my brain to cheese. It seems everything I do on this wiki ends up in an argument with you, and I just no longer care.

Let me add this. I will continue to withdraw, and I will continue, as a part of that, to edit in such a way as I think improves the wiki. Exchanges such as this do nothing to enhance the wiki, so if it seems appropriate, I will delete them as and when I find them.

No doubt you will put them back. Fine. I no longer care. I will have done what I think improves the wiki. If you think it's important to have the last word and the final triumph, and if you think that's more important than technical content, fine. Carry on. After all, it's now your wiki.

In other words, you no longer care to deny that you misquoted yourself. You fail to see that this particular misquote goes to the heart of your specific objections that appeared to be what triggered your key decision in late May.

Nope. In other words, I no longer care to reply to your barratry.

Nevertheless, that reason comes conveniently just when your earlier mistakes have been explained in detail and made obvious even to those who haven't checked all the contexts.

AnonIsStillBanned. Please drop it or take it to the WikiWikiWebMessageBoard.

A brief expansion of my above complaint. A few months ago, Colin decided to remove himself from Wiki because of the way Nomad had edited an altercation between them regarding the BinarySearchCodingChallenge?. I didn't witness the editing, but I believed Colin's account of it. On Aug 18 or 19, 2006, on FundamentalFlaw, Nomad deleted my questioning him about the police and then had the gall to show me giving him unqualified thanks. Now, like Colin, I know first hand how it feels to watch your own words get mangled to make the mangler look better. -- ElizabethWiethoff

(Most of reply deleted by author about a week later. Mention of ExampleStuffInMouth, FooDash and WaltzingWithMyTilde.)

The problem was not "minor changes to signed text" "by a third party," but UnethicalEditing by an involved party during a hot conversation, sort of explained by the "ThreadMode deletion" and "Biased refactoring" sections on that page. -- Eliz

I understand the difference and I know it's a hot issue just now. I haven't noticed any UnethicalEditing, but haven't gone looking for it. I wanted to start somewhere else - if we had a new recommendation for editors, "always mark the signature when editing any signed text, even for minute changes", would this reduce that one source of friction? It could be a minor thing but it's a sore point now. -- MatthewAstley

Matthew, apparently you missed out on the interchange right here on this page between me and Anon on Aug 23, in which Anon repeatedly deleted some of my words and finally replaced the entire conversation with '[Quibbling deleted. For clarity, "or expired" added to avoid petty dispute.]' I suggest you study all the NewRecentChanges diffs for this PissedOffAndExtremelyAngry page before that interchange, and his incremental deletion of it, is lost. The thrust of the so-called "quibbling" was my reminding him over and over that he's banned. With your being away, you probably don't realize that Anon was banned months ago. The fact remains that AnonIsStillBanned. The real problem around here is that Anon refuses to leave and our technical measures against him are inadequate to keep him away. -- ElizabethWiethoff (* see below)

That reminding served no purpose, as it bore no relation to the point of debate, and constituted an EditWar in its own right.

[I read] the NewRecentChanges (not for all pages), I did see the EditWar on this page but hadn't yet come up with anything constructive to say about it. [...] -- MatthewAstley

[...] I believe [even though it's only a guideline or suggestion] once DeleteOnceRestoreOnce goes out the window, the gloves are off and it's an EditWar - any notion of ethics is, very sadly, left outside... [...] -- MatthewAstley, revised after reading replies

See, in particular, an individual's attempts to remove his name (as in RightToLeave) and Anon's restoration of it, apparently purely to annoy that individual. -- DaveVoorhis

Matthew, I want to apologize. I was extremely testy a few days ago on account of Anon. I was really losing my marbles for a while. I even started seeing DavidLiu around every corner. In my distress, I thought of you as a well-meaning but clueless buttinsky when I wrote the asterisked paragraph above. I no longer have a "position" to share with you about UnethicalEditing, and I'm sick of thinking about the recent Anon war. -- ElizabethWiethoff

Transient comments: sorry about the delay in replying, I was away for the bank holiday. @EW: No worries, testiness passed me by this time (and when it doesn't, that's a sign I need a WikiHoliday?); I'm glad you've found some calm; maybe it had to GetWorseBeforeGettingBetter?? @any: For the small business of shrinking this corner of this page in a graceful way, I'd like to collect a few bullet points, find a more suitable home for them and delete the source comments here. -- MatthewAstley

Can we try a small BulletCollectorRefactoring please? I think it may produce some useful signal and reduce the noise. I'll be grateful if all editors would stick to that recipe, because I'd like to know whether the recipe is of any use. -- MatthewAstley (all quiet so far)

DeleteOnceRestoreOnce
- the page stands only as a suggestion
- using it (or its absence) as an axiom or for justification is, at least, premature
- the page itself needs some work to make this clearer
- opinions on its importance vary
AttackThePointNotThePerson?
- an important part of a civilised discussion
- possibly related to DeleteInsults
- some consider it an implicit part of GoodStyle
UnethicalEditing and EditWars
- we have far more examples of these than anyone wants
- ExampleStuffInMouth, FooDash and WaltzingWithMyTilde suggested to help ease small conflicts caused by minor changes to signed text
- the likely usefulness of attempting to debug the problem, in order to make it go away, is so far unknown
- such debugging will go nowhere if the problem recurses, in the form of another war
- currently (2006-08-31) some people feel that such debugging is PickingAtScabs, so it may be best to wait for some healing
CoolingOffPeriod
- Someone made a request to consider this
- Cooling off followed later

[Copied from AnonIsStillBanned as a gift ClueByFour for Matthew:]

Matthew, you are merely demonstrating that you still haven't familiarized yourself with the background on all of this, and as a result, your take on things can't be anything other than naive at best; you completely lack context. As it happens, a further result is that your comments above are actually inflammatory again, despite your apparently good-natured intentions.

If you care enough to comment, kindly care enough to figure out the context first. There is still plenty of relevant material here to study that sheds light on such, if you go to the trouble.

As it stands, comments such as yours give the impression of 100% adding to the problem, rather than assisting with a solution. They are, amongst other issues, quite unsympathetic to the victimized. -- DougMerritt

[Quibbling deleted. For clarity, "or expired" added to avoid petty dispute.]