Hi! This is the first time I make use of my "use Perl" web-log. I'm doing it in order to raise an issue I encountered with the Perl IRC world. If you participate in IRC discussions in Perl-related channels, please help spread the word, or if you are knowledgeable enough comment below or contact me.
My IRC reputation in the Perl-related channels has become tarnished lately, I don't know exactly why, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it. The first time I encountered it was on January 22 this year. I logged in to irc.perl.org and joined #perl in order to look for Mark Fowler (of the Perl Advent Calendar). There someone named sungo said "rindolf: [that's my nick] are you who i think you are.", and shortly afterward banned me from the channel. I tried to talk with him, (using a dedicated /msg talk channel), but he told me that he doesn't want to explain his actions to me, and that I shouldn't /msg him.
Two days ago, I joined irc.perl.org again, and wanted to ask a question in #perl. (about CPAN smoking). The ban was still there. So I joined #poe and asked if the ban could be lifted. Eventually it was, and I was able to get the help I needed and then just stayed there without doing anything. When sungo logged on a few hours later, and noticed I was there, he banned me again.
Now today, I logged into FreeNode's #perl, and Jonathan Scott Duff (a.k.a PerlJam), told me:
"For the past several days now your name has come up on the other #perls quite a bit (usually in phrases like "If that rindolf guy shows up, I'll kick+ban him!" or "make sure rindolf is banned" etc.) What did you do that's got people up in arms against you again?"
And I honestly don't know. In the last days, I've hanged out mostly in FreeNode, Moznet, and GimpNet, (with a couple of logins to irc.perl.org and to OFTC). I did not mis-behave, and was not impolite or a troll. What caused that?
I realize I wrote some essays in the past that evoked antagonism from some parts of the Perl community. However that was quite a long time ago (the Critique of Perl 6 was published 6 months ago), and I did not brought them into discussions in the IRC unless I was asked about them first. I also contributed some code, documentation and help to perl, and open-source in general, so my karma cannot be entirely negative.
Can anyone bring any evidence as to why I am mistreated this way, with no fault of my own? Something is fishy here.
Re:Answers
Shlomi Fish on 2005-04-06T19:34:51
"Because you have crazy ideas and express them crazily."
Well, regardless of the validity of this statement, I don't think expressing crazy ideas in a crazy manner, should bring irrational IRC bans. The only thing that warrants an IRC ban is IRC misbehaviour. And I never misbehaved.
Is the Perl community such that rejects people who think differently than the rest, and express their different opinions? I happen to know I'm not the only one who agreed with what I expressed in my essays. That shouldn't warrant an IRC ban, by some IRC authority.
"no one can explain sungo's actions. Not even sungo."
Then what business does he have being an IRC operator? An administrator should be rational enough that his actions would be explainable.
Re:Answers
pudge on 2005-04-06T19:42:44
I don't think expressing crazy ideas in a crazy manner, should bring irrational IRC bans.
I agree entirely. But you're talking about sungo here, so reason is irrelevant.
Is the Perl community such that rejects people who think differently than the rest, and express their different opinions?
If by "reject" you mean "ban," you're referring to the actions of one person, not the Perl community; as the question presumes a state which does not exist, no answer is possible, except for the perhaps unfulfilling "no."
Then what business does he have being an IRC operator?
Are you new to IRC? Being +o is not based on merit, it's based on popularity and politics and machine ownership and other such things.
Re:Answers
Shlomi Fish on 2005-04-06T20:01:19
Well, first I apologize for generalizing to the Perl community. And then - regarding sungo - ok I understand now. But it doesn't explain how it propagated to other #perl's in other networks, just because sungo banned me (and noone knew about it).Re:Answers
petdance on 2005-04-07T05:56:24
You're ignoring the issues here, and focusing on sungo and IRC.Your real problem is that you don't listen to what people say, and are not interested in conversing with anyone. You're an output-only data stream.
You disagree with the way some things are in Perl 5, so you start waving a flag about how you're going to fork Perl into a new language named after yourself.
You come in and say "The Camel Book should be given away!" and people explain why that won't happen, and that's not good enough for you.
You say things like Perl 6 sucks, and gripe and complain, and then do nothing about it.
People have explained this to you in this very thread, and you ignore what people have said and latch on to "sungo's a meanie!"
Open up your ears.
Do something more than gripe.
LISTEN.
Re:Answers
brian_d_foy on 2005-04-06T19:49:37
Be careful with that "Perl community". It's not just IRC (or use.perl, or whatever). It's not as if we all agree on everything, or anything. Pudge, for instance, is a fascist republican gun-lover who likes the Red Sox, and I'm not. Still, he lets me post on use.perl.Re:Answers
jdavidb on 2005-04-07T18:08:52
Pudge, for instance, is a fascist republican gun-lover who likes the Red Sox, and I'm not.
See, and I'm a fascist republican pacifist gun-lover and gun-hater who couldn't care less about the Red Sox.
Still, he lets me post on use.perl.
Sometimes I wonder if my outlook is the closest to pudge's, or the furthest away.
:) Re:Answers
TeeJay on 2005-04-07T10:26:50
Crazy ideas are fineI've read some of shlomi fish's essays about why perl sucks so badly.
No wonder few people welcome him. I doubt I'd be welcome at a meeting of pro-software patent laywers and MEP's right now. But I don't expect them to like or welcome me.
Of course when I bitched about them it was based on informed opinion and what I have seen in practice and I got of my arse and did something useful (lobby my politicians join and contribute to ffii mailing list debates and correspondance with the UKPO)
Shlomi - perhaps you could take back the many insults and rants you have made and apologise before you whine and whinge some more.
Re:Answers
Shlomi Fish on 2005-04-09T19:17:23
Well, I revised some of my original opinions (or at least the impressions they commonly left from the "Usability of the Perl World to Newcomers" essay in the year and some later conclusion. As for the Perl 6 Critique - it was not directed at anyone personally, but rather at the Perl 6-related activity, which I predicted to accomplish little good. I realize I may have stepped on the nerves of some people, but this was my opinion and I still stand by it.
If I have ever offended anyone unjustly (in regards to Perl or otherwise) - I apologize.
P.S: none of my essays say that Perl "sucks so badly". In fact, one of my essays says precisely the opposite. My essays instead criticized several undesirable aspects of the Perl world, and gave better alternatives.
However, I think we are missing the point. What difference does it make what opinions I expressed as long as my IRC behaviour is perfectly acceptable, and I don't step on anyone nerves on the IRC?
Re:Answers
schwern on 2005-04-10T07:27:23
However, I think we are missing the point. What difference does it make what opinions I expressed as long as my IRC behaviour is perfectly acceptable, and I don't step on anyone nerves on the IRC?Because irc.perl.org/#perl is populated with the folks whose nerves you've already stepped on.
There's a reason why autrijus put #perl6 on irc.freenode.org. They're a lot more forgiving over there.
Re:You don't need IRC
milardj on 2005-04-06T19:33:55
Someone gets banned because they are not liked? It's one thing if the guy is trolling/argumentive/continually OT (and I realize he can be accused of all of these in other forums)... but because he's not liked? Re:You don't need IRC
Shlomi Fish on 2005-04-06T19:39:25
"If you want to talk to Mark Fowler, you could have simply gotten his contact information from"
Mark Fowler's contact information says he has an E-mail address, and also can be reached by IRC on irc.perl.org and more rarely on AIM. The issue was that I wrote several E-mails to him for which I did not receive a reply, and wanted to find out if he received them and what he thought about them. So I needed to find an interactive way to talk to him, and IRC was my best choice.
Re:You don't need IRC
brian_d_foy on 2005-04-06T19:42:18
You get banned from IRC and people don't answer your emails...
Perhaps you should solve that problem first.:) Re:You don't need IRC
Shlomi Fish on 2005-04-06T19:57:16
People usually answer my E-mails - that's not the problem. Fowler had a good reason for not answering my E-mails, and I was able to talk to him on IRC a couple of times, and get updated. That's not a problem either.
To understand irc.perl.org and #perl (THE #perl not just A #perl) you must know something of the history of #perl.
#perl started out on EFNet, at the time the largest, most popular, most unregulated IRC network with over 40,000 users on at any time. #perl was very popular. There were regulars. There were folks who strolled in asking questions. Some of them were interesting questions, some of them were FAQs. Some were grateful, some were dicks, some were whiners. The regulars got sick of answering the FAQs (this is how purl was born) over and over again and started kicking people out if they didn't read and follow the topic. This generated ill will. #perl got attacked. A lot. We had a few takeover attempts a week. We devised an elaborate botnet to defend the channel and befriended IRC ops to help us get the channel back when it was lost.
Finally a bunch of the regulars decided it wasn't fair to hold #perl on the most popular network for their own social club, because that's what #perl is. So we left EFNet and started our own, MagNET. Once off EFNet we didn't have to worry about helping newbies, answering FAQs, defending against channel takeovers, maintaining the ban list... we could be a bunch of elitist, arrogant jerks talking about whatever amused us without worrying about offending someone who just happened to walk in or feeling any obligation to answer Perl questions.
#perl remains a social club. We like to have somewhere to go where we can hang out and not have to work. Folks that want a more serious, technical #perl can go to any of the other popular networks... EFNet, DALnet and freenode to name three. And they do, a lot of the #perl regulars hang out on another network as well.
Point is, #perl is not "the Perl community" its our little social club that's tried to isolate itself (I'm not sure adding irc.perl.org to MagNET was such a hot idea). We answer Perl questions when we feel like it. Its not a nice place. Whether you think that's a good idea or not, too bad! We run the network on our machines. You've got aaaaaall those other public networks to find acceptance in.
As to why you were banned... well, part of it is just sungo, and he runs the machines. I would have waited until you shoved your foot in your mouth again, but I don't entirely disagree with it. Let's call it a preemptive ban based on past behavior. Your ideas are arrogant, ignorant and you don't appear to learn from your mistakes. And worst of all you don't produce anywhere near the amount of perl patches to match the amount of dust you kick up. Signal-to-noise ratio very low. You've dug your hole and saying "Oh, the last moronic thing I said was six months ago" ain't gonna get you very far.
"Usability" of the Perl Online World for Newcomers
Critique of Where Perl 6 is Heading
We just don't want to hear about it. And we know that, or something like it, is going to come up. You've established a pattern. So we banned you. And we can do that, because its our own little corner of the Internet. #perl's corner, not Perl's. If you want fair and rational there's #perl on EFNet, DALnet and freenode.
And that's why you were banned.
Re:A brief history of #perl and why you were banne
Alias on 2005-04-08T04:33:31
Signal to noise pretty much covers it.
Hell, _I_ make a hell of a lot of noise too, and I don't like a lot of what Perl 6 could end up with as well, and last time I checked sungo and I had each other on/ignore, but I tend to also produce a lot of signal on the topics I care about, so I'm tolerated a lot more :) My "Signal"
Shlomi Fish on 2005-04-09T19:37:44
I'm not exactly entirely void of positive contributions to the Perl community and Open Source community in general, you know. Here are some, to mention a few:
- Perl Beginners' Site
- Perl for Perl Newbies - a series introducing Perl to beginners.
- LM-Solve - a Logic Mazes Solver
- Quad-Pres - a tool for creating HTML presentations
- HTML::Widgets::NavMenu - a CPAN module for maintaining navigation menus and site flow.
- WWW::Form - while not being its original author, I helped get it rid of bugs, and add features and tests.
- SVN-RaWeb-Light - a lightweight WWW interface for Subversion.
- LMLM - a list of mailing lists manager
- Devel-LineTrace
- HTML-Links-Localize
- Solving Puzzles with LM-Solve - an article for Perl.com
- The second batch of Lightning Articles at Perl.com contained a lightning article by me.
All of this is not including any not-particularly-Perl related open-source contributions, either projected by me or that I contributed to.
I was also very helpful in helping people with their problems in Mailing Lists, the IRC and other forums. So I deserve some credit for that. I'm an active member of Israel.PM, and also sometimes helped organize some events, or gave presentations there.
Even if I expressed some controversial ideas, I don't bring them up on the IRC, and I behave perfectly well there. If sungo want to put me on his
/ignore list, I wouldn't mind, but banning from MAG-Net's #perl prevents me from talking to other people, and prevents other people from being able to talk to me, which is rude and unjustified. No-one should enforce his private whims or dislikes on the general public. Re:My "Signal"
schwern on 2005-04-10T07:37:04
If sungo want to put me on his/ignore list, I wouldn't mind, but banning from MAG-Net's #perl prevents me from talking to other people, and prevents other people from being able to talk to me, which is rude and unjustified. No-one should enforce his private whims or dislikes on the general public. You're really not getting it. MAGnet #perl is not the general public. Nobody's preventing anyone from talking to you, there's other channels, other networks and other means. We hang out there because we want to, sungo and all. MAGnet #perl isn't even particularly about PERL! Its a social club, get it? Whinging about it isn't going to get you in, in fact you're just burying yourself deeper.
Freenode is the kinder, gentler IRC server.
Thought the record should be set straight there, and that might help you understand a bit more....16:31 < Masque> karma for shlomi
16:31 < purl> shlomi has karma of -20
Schlomi, don't you have a mother or someone who could explain why it was a really dumb idea to post that whine? I mean, these boys have few social skills but you make even Uri and Randal look almost mature. Not to beat on you, but son, you're old enough to know better. No, I am not going to be the one to explain it to you. What were you expecting from a community with a long, long history of assholes and whiners? Helpful, nice people are rare.
As for the rest of you dumb assholes, some things just never change do they? Years pass, you marry, you get that house in the suburbs and you have kids and yet, online you still behave like the dumb little boys who found someone to kick and will do so at every available opportunity. And it's not just IRC. Even dogs are smarter since they will either kill it or ignore it.
And still you wonder why women don't bother hanging around.
Re:jesus christ on a pogo stick
Masque on 2005-04-07T19:06:12
So, wait. Did you just call the opers dogs?Even dogs are smarter since they will either kill it or ignore it.Re:jesus christ on a pogo stick
Oloryn on 2005-04-08T05:04:09
So, wait. Did you just call the opers dogs?Even dogs are smarter since they will either kill it or ignore it.By using my vast powers of english-language parsing, I determine that in fact she *didn't* call the opers dogs.
She called them dumber than dogs
Re:jesus christ on a pogo stick
pudge on 2005-04-07T19:08:06
some things just never change do they?
Have you changed?Re:jesus christ on a pogo stick
hfb on 2005-04-07T20:37:28
Yes. I find a lot less time for anything perl related anymore. For some reason, after all these years and investment of time, I still piss my time away being the one of the few who will at least say something in the midst of a school shooting on the short bus as a pointless exercise. Clearly, I haven't changed enough.
