Top Noise Filter

Please, Ward, can we have a filter for Wiki that routes all pages having any kind of reference to top into the bit bucket? Yeah, this page would make it there as well, but can we have that filter? Please? Pretty please?

Create a new category. CategoryHereBeTopDragons?? --top

If he upsets too many more people, he may find his content being removed.

eHemlock?

I dissent from the view expressed on this page. There are some discussions being pursued on some of the pages here. They can easily be identified via RecentChanges and their topics. Those who want to can join in and those who don't can visit other pages. -- JohnFletcher

"Those who want can join in" - God knows I have tried. Unfortunately, every time I have thrown anything in, Top has replied with, at best, a non-sequitur, and usually an implicit insult. Never, in any of the splat he has left all over this wiki, have I seen from him a direct, logical response to any point. -- ChaunceyGardiner

{As much as I enjoy doing it, debating with Top is like trying to stab a marble with a fork.}

Maybe a fork is not TheRightToolForTheJob. -t

[ Although I agree that -top is often "over the top", I think the level of personal nastiness against him is even more "over the top"! I have read at least 10 times more verbal abuse directed at him than I have seen with his signature attached. At least he is man enough to put him name to his posts which I haven't seen from many of his detractors. He has rightly called these people cowards for this and I would have to agree with that point. -- DavidClarkd ]

{How is Top "man enough to put him [sic] name to his posts"? Do you think "Top" is his real name?}

[His real name is [[redacted]] but what matters more is that he relates all his posts together with his "tag" and doesn't try to hide. -- DavidClarkd ]

[I didn't remove his real name and put in 'redacted'. If you did this -top then you should be ashamed of yourself.]
I did it. Are double-brackets a reserved pseudo-handle? I don't understand. -t
{"Outing" Top by revealing his RealName is a gross intrusion into his privacy and a Wiki faux pas. Shame! If he wishes to use his RealName, that's entirely up to him, not you.}
There is a big debate about RealNames somewhere around here that covers such issues. The main reason for a "good" handle is clarity of statements and context. Being a "man" or "identity morality" is a much smaller issue in my opinion. The more "global" the handle the better. Topic-specific handles are fine by me as long as cross-topic changes don't cause confusion. -t
[I read that this wiki encourages people to use their RealNamesPlease. If a person doesn't have the guts to sign their real name to their comments then don't comment. Hiding behind anonymity just makes people say stupid things without consequence. -- DavidClarkd]
{Though, notably, using your RealName doesn't seem to have stopped you.}

{All my posts on a given topic are related by a consistent font style -- e.g., italics or plain -- and/or surrounding text with {}s, []s and (rarely) <>s. The participants in a discussion typically sort out their "voices" at the beginning. Note how my posts here are all surrounded by {}s, and I've edited yours to surround them with []s, thus giving us consistent but different "voices" for the purpose of this discussion.}

{I've seen little to no "verbal abuse directed at him" in recent threads. At worst, the debates are sometimes heated, but they rarely descend to insults. It was a different story a few years ago, but Top (I suspect he'll agree) gave as good as he got. For what it's worth, my name is DaveVoorhis, and my contributions on this page (which are few) are shown in curly braces. I believe leaving posts unsigned encourages them to be regarded purely on their own textual merits, without the colouration of ego or prior history. Debate, discourse, description and discussion should consider ideas, not identities.}

[Dave, I just found a rant that says "I'd rather make a living licking bus-depot toilet seats than use it (ExBase) to write another business application". It goes on to note "My implementation of it, the RelProject". This disrespectful rant was obviously you. If you are also the author of all the other "over the top" garbage heaped on developers who (in their thousands) usefully made business applications in ExBase products, then you are quite contemptible. -- DavidClarkd]

{Absolutely that's me, and I stand by it. Support for ExBase should be cause for immediate termination of employment, at least. ExBase was an abomination, promulgated by un-professionals. The only thing "contemptible" here is that you lack appropriate scorn for it.}

[ This is the last response you will get from me, intentionally. You aren't a professional and aren't worthy of 1 second more of my time. -- DavidClarkd ]

{Thanks for playing, g'bye.}

[I have emailed you personally remember. I think untagged comments should be facts or explanation rather than personal opinion. I think all personal opinion should be signed. I don't have a problem debating the merits of any language or system but I object to professional programmers (including -top) being abused by anonymous posters. You will have to decide yourself if that includes you. There are many languages I would never use (with good reasons I believe) but I wouldn't call professional programmers in those languages names. That is exactly what happened on the ExBase page when I said it had many merits. -- DavidClarkd]

{There are many languages I would never use, but which I would also never denigrate their users or consider them unprofessional. For ExBase, however, I make an exception.}

I suggest Xbase-related material be moved to ExBaseRant. Note that many of the highest praises and kudos I have ever received came from xBase projects. Good memories. Maybe it's a WriteOnlyLanguage, but sometimes being productive, fast, and cheap trumps the cross-developer-training/reading issue. -t
{I have no objection to moving the ExBase banter to ExBaseRant. I'll just add that I think there's something rather sad about the fact that your "highest praises and kudos I have ever received came from xBase projects". It's sad like that lazy, overweight, middle-aged gas-pump attendant who wistfully remembers his high-school football-hero achievements as the best days of his life. Surely, as a programmer, you've evolved with the industry? ExBase did a job in its day, but the industry has moved on and made better tools. I can create a custom business system -- say, a billing system -- using (for example) Java or C# or RubyOnRails or some PHP framework or even MS-Access and an off-the-shelf SQL DBMS, in far less time and with far less frustration and effort than it would ever have taken in ExBase (even at its best using Visual FoxPro) and the end result will be dramatically more reliable, scalable, robust, user-friendly, powerful, and will generate more re-usable components for the next project. If that isn't the case for you, what have you been doing for the last twenty-five years since the decline of ExBase?}
You seem to be confusing UI features with language features. I will tentatively agree that ExBase was not strong at the UI side, but not every project is UI-intensive. (Plus, most UI's in web apps are driven by the HtmlStack, not the app language.) Just because ExBase tripped you and your like-minded buddies up, does not mean it's summarily bad. -t
{No, I clearly distinguish UI features from language features, and in every ExBase incarnation, both were bad. ExBase didn't "trip us up", we simply built a superior product, kept it to ourselves and eliminated our competition, which enabled me to emigrate to another country and retire into academia. So, we didn't let ExBase "trip us up", as it apparently did our competitors.}
That's purely anecdotal claims. My anecdote is that when I was an xBase contractor, many organizations said something like, "ExBase does certain jobs well, but it's falling out of style because it's not SQL-based, not OO enough, and has an immature GUI, and we are afraid we won't be able to recruit developers for it." Ironically, it was generally VB and MS-Access that were its main competitor, and those two tools are royal pieces of crap in terms of elegance and reliability. (I believe you implied C++ was a main competitor, which does not jive with my experience at all. Customers were almost always migrating their xBase to VB and Access, with PowerBuilder, Paradox, and Delphi distant seconds.) Your experience with it appears to be based on a single specific product category or niche. I used it for a wide variety of projects. Further, if it didn't fall out of style, many of its weaknesses would be fixed or shored up via new R&D spending. Faddism made its demise a self-fulfilling prophecy.
{What makes you think my experience of ExBase was a single specific product category or niche? I used it for a wide variety of projects, and it was awful. Fortunately, because it was awful, it was relatively easy to build tools that could exceed its performance, exceed its capabilities, and reduce time-to-deployment of scalable projects.}
It's not an "enterprise" language/tool. That's not news. It was optimized for certain flavors and sizes of projects. Go outside of that, and life gets more difficult.
{Who said anything about "enterprise"? In short, anything it could do, a systems programmer could make something that would do it better.}
Systems programmers often have no sense of proportion regarding user needs and would probably over-engineer some parts and under-engineer others, and use techniques that a new maintenance programmer would likely scratch their head over. Their sense of "good" software is based on a remote world view. They become systems programmers for a reason: usually because they don't like the messy grey requirements world of cubicle-ware.

For the record, I'm MartinShobe?. I pretty much agree with DaveVoorhis here. I will also add that when I developed the habit of not signing, this place was much more active and included a number of people who would try to clean up the discussions. I found that signing tended to discourage this cleanup. So I also don't sign to indicate that I'm open to others changing (or even removing) what I've written as long as they keep the meaning the same.

[That is good but see my comment above about signing opinion. There are ways to debate an issue without talking down to the other person or using Logical Fallacies . Perhaps if people wrote more politely and tried to see the other person's POV, the discourse would be more productive. I am not saying it was you Dave but do think the quote "Never, in any of the splat he has left all over this wiki, have I seen from him a direct, logical response" is "no verbal abuse directed at him"? -- DavidClarkd]

{I said "little to no". Most recent pages have no verbal abuse directed at him. This one has a little.}

Re: "Never, in any of the splat he has left all over this wiki, have I seen from him a direct, logical response"

I'm a little offended by that because I consider myself a highly logical person. Perhaps your question had no logical response, at least not known to man. I do believe software engineering is mostly about WetWare, and the human mind is currently a gray science. "Logic" in the strict sense is not always TheRightToolForTheJob when dealing with WetWare, unfortunately. Many want software engineering to be about rigorous and definitive science and math so much so that they inject false rigor into the discipline, using ArgumentByElegance or false canons instead. (See DisciplineEnvy.) (I moved material regarding speculative motivation estimates to TopOnWhyTopIsHated. Material below may not reflect this move.) --top

We can see how logical Top is right here. His defense of being a logical person is an AdHominem.

Note that containing an AdHominem attack does not also preclude the existence of other logical and/or evidence-based material. A false dichotomy appears to have been used or implied there. It implies my response only contains an AdHominem. I'd suggest reworking that sentence. -t
What dichotomy?
"If the content contains AdHominem, then it does not contain logic." It can have both. I thought that was pretty clear. What made it not clear in my writing above?
Where did I indicate that an argument couldn't have both?
There are two parts to my statement, and you only addressed the second part, as if the whole thing was about the motivation of my detractors (AKA "AdHominem attacks").
How does that indicate that an argument couldn't have both? (As for the rest, the first statement is probably true, but it's irrelevant. Whether or not you are offended by the statement doesn't change the truth of that disputed claim. The second is doesn't appear to be related to what you responded to as no mention was made of questions. The third is probably true, but irrelevant. Your beliefs don't change the truth of the disputed claim. The fourth is definitely true but irrelevant. What it takes to convince people in general doesn't change the truth of the disputed claim. Happy now?)
What "questions"? What are 3rd and 4th here? Please clarify. My reply may CONTAIN an AH attack, but that is NOT the same as BEING ("is") an AH attack. Your reply is thus either misleading, incomplete, and/or poorly written. As written, it appears to say my reply is ONLY an AH attack. Out of clarity, fairness, and politeness, I'm politely asking you to rework that statement. -t
Your the one who brought up "questions". I simply pointed out that there weren't any in mentioned in what you were responding to. Anyway, as per standard English rules, they would be the third and fourth statements. Your reply definitely contains an AdHominem, and under standard parlance, that makes your argument an AdHominem (especially since that's the majority of the argument. Even your other irrelevancies appear to be aimed at setting up the AdHominem.) Anyway, my statement clearly says nothing about whatever other problems there might be with your statement, so I still see no reason to change it.
Perhaps your argument is that material that generally contains sufficient quantity of AdHominem attacks, regardless of other material it may also contain, should be banned/deleted/hidden/etc? If so, the rules you are applying are not clear to the the reader. Comments on whether I agree or not with such a rule may come later, depending the subject's established importance. It's not clear to me whether this is about bad logic or AdHominem attacks or rudeness or all of them. (Note I make it a point to never start the rudeness. It's usually the other guy who starts it.) -t
No, my statement is aimed only at what you said. I've not said anything here about whether or not anything should be banned, deleted, etc.
Even if it's merely a complaint, it's poorly written and misleading and rude.
Since you can't seem to find an actual problem with it, I doubt it.
Sorry, I don't see a clear problem with it. I invited you to present representative 3 specimens of my alleged sinful text, below, so we have something more specific to analyze. So, do you want to do "content science" or kvetch about kvetching some more like we are doing here?
If you don't see a clear problem with it, why are you saying it's poorly written? Anyway, you've created more than 3 on this page since we started our discussion.
I meant my defense, not your writing. "His defense of being a logical person is an AdHominem." -- is technically wrong. My response ("defense") HAS an AdHominem statement, but *is* not an AdHominem statement. Containing such a statement does not meant it "is" such a statement. HAS != IS. Change "is" to "contains" and I'll stop complaining about it.
That complaint was already dealt with where I said, "Your reply definitely contains an AdHominem, and under standard parlance, that makes your argument an AdHominem". I still see no reason to change it.
That's a bit of a stretch, but English is readily abused and abusable, I will concede. The issue was "logic". Technically, AHA won't change the presence or absence of logic such that it can easily give the impression that I ONLY gave an AHA, and no logic. Otherwise, the presence or absence of AHA would be moot to a question of the presence of logic.
Um... I think you're a little confused. AdHominems don't indicate whether or not logic is present, so they give the impression that logic isn't present? How is that supposed to work? Do you routinely use things that don't indicate something as indicators for something? It seems decidedly odd to me.
The way YOU worded it, that's what it implies. It's not a property of the word AdHominem itself, it's a property of your poor, misleading writing. I know you probably disagree, but I've already learned you have an abnormal, uncommon, unnatural, and biased sense of English and meaning.
No. You had to add another assumption. That if something is one thing, it couldn't be anything else. That's false under the normal workings of English. In any case, by sentence count, your response was 67% AdHominem, and 17% setup for the AdHominem, 8% irrelevant, and 8% unsupported denial. I think categorizing the argument as being an AdHominem is fair.
The topic was logic, which is orthogonal to AdHominem. Here's a realistic potential reader mental paraphrasing of the conversation:
- 1. Top presents no logic
- 2. (My response with info about logic AND an AdHominem)
- 3. Yip, see Top's "logic" is an AdHominem attack.
I still contend it's misleading (and has an easy fix). And I disagree with your count, but I'm tired of arguing over arguing.
The study of fallacies, of which AdHominem is an example, is a part of logic, so how is it orthogonal? As for your paraphrase, you did include some information about logic. However, it wasn't relevant to the surrounding text except as a lead-in to the AdHominem. As for fixing my statement, it's indeed trivial to fix since it doesn't need fixing.
Whether AdHominem is a fallacy is irrelevant here. Your summary assessment implies addressing logic is not there (regardless of what else may be included). And it is relevant because I explained why I often don't use logic to defend many of my statements about tool superiority: logic is often not the correct tool to measure WetWare absorption.
Whether AdHominem is a fallacy is relevant to what I responded to since you were trying to say that AdHominem and logic were orthogonal. Anyway, you now appear to be admitting that the original poster was right, your responses aren't logical.
Rational, yes. Logical, maybe not. Matching wet-ware is not necessarily about "traditional" logic. Anyhow, without contextual specimens to examine, I can only guess the nature of the original complaint. Details are missing.
If you know your responses aren't logical, why were you offended when someone pointed out that your responses aren't logical?
It's made to appear that my responses are also irrational. It depends on what we are calling "logical" (i.e. definition of "logical"). Anyhow, I'd rather address the specifics of applying logic or not applying logic (if appropriate) at each specific location of the alleged sin or "bad argument". We are arguing over excessively expansive generalities here such that we'll likely get nowhere. The devil's in the details.
If your complaint was, "It's made to appear that my responses are also irrational.", why didn't you say so in the first place?

I replied to something that was an AdHominem attack, I would note. GoldenRule anyone? Plus, the question frequently comes up in these discussions, "how can so many academics be wrong?" The explanation I offer requires giving a motivational model of their behavior, which can be viewed as an AdHominem attack (and perhaps "is", depending on the definition one uses). If somebody devotes a lot of time and attention to something, it's human nature to "protect" the value of that time and attention, often in irrational ways, regardless of whether you are an academic or not. Humans are humans. It's often seen in the scientific world that proponents of a theory are intense defenders of their own theory, even when such theories later turn out to be wrong.

Some claim various "negative" models of my motivation also, such that I'm allegedly a "post-graduate flunky" who lashes out at academia as revenge over a negative experience in college. If such is true, I'm not consciously aware of such motivation. I try to call things as I see them, but admit that hidden human bias may be sneaking in somehow somewhere. I'm only human, just like you. Complaints about my content and my counter-claims don't appear to be backed by solid textual and clear-cut listable logic evidence though, but rather a form of "if you were smart like me, you'd just see that you are wrong". The specific and explicit train of logic doesn't have to be document-able to some, and to me, this is stupid. "You'll just feeeeeel it if you get smart enough" is bullshit. Fuck feelings, write it down in ItemizedClearLogic! --top

And now we see that Top doesn't know what an AdHominem is, thus providing us with more evidence of how logical Top is. (Hint: what you replied to is the claim under discussion.)

Whether it's technically AdHominem or not is perhaps debatable (for another day), but it is rude, nevertheless, because it contains no specifics and no links. "Top is always bad and dumb and illogical" style of argument is clearly FlameBait to most. "X always does Y" is generally considered unfriendly criticism, and vague to boot.

Its rudeness isn't relevant to either the main topic, where it was the reason someone wanted a way to filter you out, or this subtopic, which is about whether or not it's a true statement. On the other hand, whether or not it's an AdHominem is relevant to the topic at hand, and I see no reason to wait to discuss it. It's certainly not an AdHominem in this subtopic as it's the claim under discussion. In relation to the main topic, it's also not an AdHominem, since being able to filter out illogical nonsense is a perfectly valid request. As such, it's relevant to the main topic. There's also no need to support such a statement until challenged. Luckily for ChaunceyGardiner, you seem intent on providing the evidence to support the statement yourself.

Solve "illogical nonsense" by using ItemizedClearLogic to defeat it. If you truly have a good solid case, and not just nuanced opinion, then it should be easy to use a form of ItemizedClearLogic to slaughter my alleged false logic. Use your allegedly powerful well-educated brain to trash the hell out of my logic. If I am as wrong as you claim, slaughtering my statements that way should be child's play. Bring it on! (And the accusation as stated is rude. I see no reason to distinguish between rudeness via AdHominem attacks versus other rudeness techniques.) -t

Your ItemizedClearLogic is, itself, illogical nonsense. The rest of it has been done. BTW, the reason to distinguish between AdHominem and rudeness, is that something that is rude might be relevant. AdHominems are never relevant.

If you feel vague round-about scattered obtuse logic is "better" than ItemizedClearLogic, then we'll have to disagree on that. Most WikiZens I'm sure will find that an odd stance. And AdHominem statements, I as interpret the term, can be on-topic. If the pattern of writing behavior is the subject of discourse, then speculations about the motivation and psychology of the author is on-topic. Granted, it may also be rude and uncomfortable, but sometimes categories overlap. Others have (rudely) speculated on my motivations without complaints from others. I smell a double-standard. If broken-taillight-syndrome is happening (explained in TopOnWhyTopIsHated), then the motivations of the accuser matter and are on-topic.

Now that's a FalseDichotomy. There are certainly other options besides "vague round-about scattered obtuse logic" and the inane ItemizedClearLogic. AdHominems, even when on-topic, are still not relevant. That's still true even when "broken taillight syndrome" is happening.

Please elaborate on both. If a claim is based on "logic", then it should be reducible to ItemizedClearLogic. There's no excuse, other than sloth.

I don't use ItemizedClearLogic because it's just extra work that doesn't add anything to the discourse. I notice that you don't use it either, which makes your insistence on it a double-standard.

"It's extra work" is fucking copout. I didn't claim something was "clearly and logically better/canonized". I already explained that WetWare is the software engineering bottleneck, and that's not subject to traditional logic, but is more of pattern analysis (of human activity) at this stage in IT history because we haven't scientifically tamed the human mind yet. The primary purpose of software is to communicate with other humans. -t

What reason do I have for performing the extra work? (The rest of your response doesn't appear to have any connection to our current discussion.)

You spent about 40 printed pages on the "values" debate. Wouldn't it be quicker to consolidate your logical arguments and citations and linkages between them rather than sprinkle bits and piece all over like a rat with diarrhea?

I stuck in a comment here and there. But for the most part, that wasn't me.

I see, you guys are playing the bad-cop/bad-cop pairing routine on me. (A variation of good-cop/bad-cop, but instead both are assholes.)
That's neither true nor relevant.

Re: "extra work" -- IF YOU DON'T WISH TO TAKE THE TIME TO PRESENT EVIDENCE PROPERLY, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN about people not accepting your claims, damned Prima Donna. At the very least, you admitted you could do more to improve the clarity of your argument. --top

Since ItemizedClearLogic has nothing whatsoever to do with presenting evidence properly, I don't see the point. I also don't see an admission that I could do more to improve the clarity of my argument.

Do you want to do things your pet way OR be understood?

That's another FalseDichotomy.

Go ahead and believe that.

Thank you for letting me believe something true.

Re: "Never, in any of the splat he has left all over this wiki, have I seen from him a direct, logical response"

How about you pick 3 solid examples of me doing this. That's fair. General "always do X" accusations like that are not detailed enough to be useful and helpful other than establishing that somebody doesn't like my content. And it's rude.

Maybe you just unrealistically want simple answers to non-simple questions. -t

Comment on WetWare moved to WetWare. (as suggested)

I propose it's the same cabal of 3 university friends who bitch about my content and style. The chance of more than 3 people also being all non-signers is too small of a probability. It's merely social intimidation taking place here, disguised as a grass-root effort to "cleanse the world of Top". It's not my fault you wasted all that time studying ComputerScience looking for the secret equation when the real bottleneck issue turns out to be WetWare. Man up and accept your mistake instead of project the wasted decades into me. Get therapy so that you stop harassing me, stubborn rigid fools! Don't make your personal problems mine also, you sorry asshats! -t

{Correlating IP addresses with geographical locations suggests it's more than 3, but there's no organised effort (or if there is, nobody invited me), and at least one of us who argues with you the most is also quickest to defend your presence. I find debating with you to be amusing. If the world were cleansed of you, I'd have to seek equivalent amusement elsewhere, and I'd rather not.}

I was communicating with a very alien mind to try to understand how the alien's mind works. However, if the alien is only interested is toying with the examiner out of boredom and amusement, then the examiner will never get anywhere. It seems you value amusement over clarity. Explains a hell of lot. QED. Now ship off, Vague One. -t

{In finding debates with you amusing, I have never deliberately sacrificed clarity for amusement. Clarity and amusement are orthogonal. I assume you find debating with us to be just as amusing. Otherwise, why do you do it?}

[May I nuke this page yet?]

Fine by me.

There are some confessions in here I'd like to keep and link if possible. How about append it to an existing "Top rant" page such as ObjectiveEvidenceAgainstTopDiscussion, ShouldTopBeBanned, or IsTopTheNewRichardKulisz. -t

CategoryRant, CategoryEducation, CategoryMetaDiscussion

JanuaryFourteen