Hermit
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Consider Your Verdict
« on: 2002-04-22 13:32:20 » |
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[David 1]
[eugen 2]
[Hermit 3]
[Hermit 3] Ladies and gentlemen, Extropians, the evidence and arguments required to make a determination are provided below. I invite the Extropians to examine this document. When finished, please reply to the Poll. The results of this poll may tell us something about Eugene, something about the Hermit, or something about Extropians. I use as primary support, a response written, but not sent in reply to Eugen's letter: "client-side empty eyesockets the wave of the future? Reply 10",eugen @leitl.org, 2002-04-22 00:44:47
<snip>
[eugen 2] Hermit was selling his markup as the best thing since sliced bread, so I went and picked apart what I saw.
[Hermit 3] To determine the truth factor of the above concatenated assertions, Eugen merely has to point out where, prior to his post on the Church of Virus, the following occured- Where did "Hermit" sell "his markup"?
- Where did Hermit claim "Hermitish markup" as "his mark-up"?
- Where did Hermit claim that "his markup" was "the best thing" and for what?
[Hermit 3] And it might help if Eugen could establish where he "picked apart" what he saw"?
[David 1] I'm extremely disappointed that Eugen has chosen the Extropian mailing list to insult and belittle another online community and their chosen style of communication. Especially a community that shares many goals, values and members, not to mention webserver and disk space, with the Extropians.
[eugen 2] This is a complete misinterpretation of what has happened.
[Hermit 3] Let me quote the last paragraph from the first post by Eugen which garnered a negative reply - a message which Eugen describes as "still pretty civil": "there seems to be a steady decline in discussion quality....this forum seems to be affected in an especially bad way. I wonder if the medium is partly to be blamed."
[Hermit 3] Is this what Extropians regard as being "pretty civil"? Is David's statement in any way "a complete misinterpretation" of Eugen's statement?
[eugen 2] I was curious about the CoV (after all, it's the second largest community on <http://forum.javien.com/index.php> ), subscribed, and hung around. I then observed what is imo (sic) a bizarre form of markup, and commented on it.
“Re:virus: politics test/mix Reply #5”, eugen @leitl.org, 2002-04-16 21:52:03”,
[Hermit 3] This is what Eugen said in the middle of another discussion on the Church of Virus without bothering to snip the original discussion: "Any reason why the quoting on most posts here is broken? (And the lines are overlong to boot)?" Bear in mind that he had never posted before. This was his first post to the CoV.
[eugen 2] Here's what Hermit replied
“Re:virus: politics test/mix Reply #9”, hermit, 2002-04-17 10:20:08”,
[Hermit 3] It is worth reading, I quoted the relevant RFCs for email directly and suggested that a mail client which is not at least RFC 821/822 compliant is broken.
[eugen 2] here's my reply to that, which is still pretty civil “Re:virus: politics test/mix Reply #10”, eugen @leitl.org, 2002-04-17 18:25:04”,
[Hermit 3] I invite Extropians to decide for themselves what "pretty civil" includes: - "This is a compleat (sic) bullshit...If you want to be pseudoelitist (sic)..." - "pretty civil"? Or attempted insult?
- "Your lines are overlong" - He had just been cited the relevant standard (RFC811) which determines that lines shall be 1000 characters or less. This is intelligent?
- "Um, if you need that many RFC refs for your argument, there's something wrong with your argument." -This is an argument?
- "My mail client is not broken. Your assumption is." - Another luminous argument?
- "It would, except it doesn't. Because discussions ..." - So now I am a liar? "pretty civil"?
- "If you base your assumption on ludicrously broken arguments no wonder you arrive at a system that is badly usable via legacy systems." - so based on Eugene's unsupported assertions my arguments are "ludicrously broken" and the chosen system (with some thousand plus users "badly broken")? And this is "pretty civil"?
- And now, his chef d oeuvre (also quoted above): "there seems to be a steady decline in discussion quality....this forum seems to be affected in an especially bad way. I wonder if the medium is partly to be blamed." "pretty civil"?
[eugen 2] What Hermit wrote back in his second reply (and which is perfectly ad hominem, a behaviour (sic) which he strangely enough accuses me of using first) made me realize he's hopeless: “Re:virus: politics test/mix Reply #11”, hermit, 2002-04-18 04:00:52”,
[Hermit 3] Was the response he received justified?
[Hermit 3] Despite this, I ended my response with, “In that spirit, may I offer you a “klue” or two? Don’t attack people who offer friendly advice when you don’t know enough about a topic to give a valid opinion. Consider getting an updated mail client. Read the mark-up guide. Make a few posts from the BBS to learn what the mark-up format looks like. Try it a while. Look at the discussions on the suggestions list where some of this was discussed. And don’t try to stop others from attempting to improve the world simply because you are unable to cope with change. You anguished appeals appear to others as being distinctly Luddite in nature? Is this really the perception of yourself that you wish to impress upon the world?” This appeared to upset Eugene – as he then left, appending “Good-bye” to another unsnipped post, before he had time to see the responses to this which might have indicated to him that he was alone in his conclusions.
[eugen 2] (irrational in his evaluation of his own brainchild -- which was validated by his subsequent responses to this list) and left the virus list. I don't have the time to argue about broken markup using broken markup against a person incapable of evaluating his markup rationally.
[Hermit 3] Does this look reasonable to anyone here? The difficulty Eugene has is that this assertion depends on his mistaken concept that “Hermitish mark-up” is my “brainchild” because otherwise it fails through lack of support. As the introduction to the document itself states:Author’s notes for revision: 2.1B
It has come to my attention that I gave some bad advice in the first proposal for this FAQ in the making. The formatting I suggested, conflicts with the embedding of virus messages in some web mail systems. So without further ado, here is revision II of the FAQ in the making, which also extends and enhances the format based on the suggestions and contributions of others, allows the material to be posted directly and safely to embedded pages, and permits the easy translation to HTML in environments which support this.
In addition, the message numbering system has now been simplified, to allow easier tracking of complex threads, and a message index added to the head of a thread for the same reason. [Hermit 3] In other words, “Hermitish mark-up” is the product of a collaborative effort. This now leads Eugen to the patently untenable situation of asserting that I am advocating a system because it is my brainchild when it is not. So now the primary support for the claim that I am irrational vanishes; aside from Eugen’s further assertion that my responses to his insults – see above and below, were irrational. I would suggest that Eugen has failed to sustain his claims, and has again overstepped the bounds of good manners and prudence.
[eugen 2] I then asked for comments on the Hermitish markup on this list here,
[Hermit 3] For the first time Eugen now omits a link.
” client-side empty eyesockets the wave of the future?”, eugen @leitl.org, 2002-04-20, 06:37:51. I suggest that Eugen was dismayed by his rout on the Church of Virus – where nobody was left in any doubt of his utter defeat, and posted on the ExI BBS in the hope of finding supporters.
Quote:I've had a gander at the virus@ folks over at lucifer, and saw adherence to what struck me as bizarrely wrong design. Could someone else please comment on:
FAQ: Hermitish Mark-up v. 2.1
<snip>
I'm curious as to whether such media find acceptance, especially among newcomers (given that horrendous UIs such as two-thumb entry of SMS messages catched (sic) on bigtime (sic) very little can surprise me), and what kind of communities they form. Anyone in the know? |
[Hermit 3] Is there any doubt about the extreme use of prejudicial language evinced here?
[eugen 2] because I was interested whether users pick up and use what I perceive as brokenness. Needless to say, this is a genuine question.
[Hermit 3] But what Eugen now asserts was a “genuine question” is the thing which he has already stated that he has decided. I leave the reader to determine for themselves the honesty of his assertion.
[eugen 2] I don't understand why people interprete (sic) a comment on communication form as a personal attack, or attack on a movement. (I still don't know what CoV is all about, mostly because markup and arguments about markup were in the way).
[Hermit 3] Eugen left vast numbers of people on the Church of Virus and on Extropy in no doubt that his tone and intent was hostile and malicious. I would suggest that the evidence of his own words, repeated here, suggest that one would need to be extremely disingenuous to accept Eugen’s claims that this is all a mistake.
[Hermit 3] In addition, from his above claim, it seems that Eugen did not visit our current archives or FAQs (where is the content), did not visit, or did not comprehend the introductory home pages, and did not attempt to comply with normal behavior (sniping, not barging in on threads, lurking long enough to understand protocol before posting) which twelve year old children have proved competent to master. I would argue that this does not speak well to his competence or rationality.
[David 1] If anyone else shares my disappointment please speak up.
[eugen 2] David, I perceive that you also consider my remarks to be directed personally at you. This was at all not intended. Perhaps my mode of communication is intrinsically inflammatory, which is certainly not my intention. You're doing great work, keeping the ExI inftrastructure afloat, which is not mentioned nearly enough.
[Hermit 3] Suggests that napalm was never so effective at ignition.
[eugen 2] Ran out of time now, but this should do.
[Hermit 3] Eugen had enough time to make his assertions, is it fair to ask why he does not have the time to support them?
[Hermit 3] I would also remind Extropians that I have challenged Eugen to support one of his assertions:
Quote:| Eugen made one interesting assertion - "It's obvious why: people's visual systems are rather hardwired, and legibility is measurable in objective benchmarks. Because people are not computers there's most assuredly a strong coupling between data and presentation." |
In the following words:
Quote:| I do not disagree with this. I love "objective benchmarks" - they dispense with so many needless arguments. I simply query Eugen's assertion as to what legibility consists of. Perhaps he would care to support his arguments by sharing his "objective benchmarks" and explaining how he used them to draw the conclusions he is asserting here? Or is Eugen simply saying that "legibility is measurable in objective benchmarks" but not claiming that he has used them to reach the conclusion that the morass {of conventional quoting} is preferable to "Hermitish quotation"? In which case, why did he bring up "objective benchmarks"? To garner some spurious credibility? Certainly, speaking for myself, I find discussions where a paragraph begins "[eugen 3] Blah-blah-blah" far easier to comprehend than one where each line is prefixed with "> > > > > Blah-blah-blah." But no doubt the "objective benchmarks" are going to persuade me how very wrong I am. |
[Hermit 3] I invite Extropians to draw a conclusion from the fact that Eugen has proved unwilling or unable to reply.
[Hermit 3] Naturally, if Eugen’s claims can be substantiated, if he is correct that I am "irrational" and "hopeless", then I am hopelessly in the wrong and will of course provide Eugen a public apology. Is it fair to request that if the verdict goes the other way that Eugen apologize to me? Hopefully the Extropians will determine the answer to this conundrum.
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