A reminder: the author of this Journal is known over at Perlmonks.org as Intrepid.
There is a haunting going on over at Perlmonks.org, and I thought I should say something about it, although what effect my doing so could have on the situation, I do not know.
A former participant at Perlmonks named himself with the decidely odd
handle "Wassercrats" and proceeded to become an active poster in the
Perlmonks community. During his rather brief period of activity there
(in 2004), he did not endear himself to the general user community by
posting nodes such as It has occured to me both this evening and at other times in the past
that "Wassercrats" haunts Perlmonks with a tenacity that bears noting
for its cautionary import.
"Wassercrats" left Perlmonks in a cloud of acrimony and a stench of
bitterness. He became more and more defiant over the course of his
history there, "shouting" much invective against the wall of community opinion
that was his subjective experience at Perlmonks. That written invective
(much of which is now, to my understanding, in nodes that have been
put "away" by editorial staff) always seemed to be calculated to make
those reading more inclined to regard him with contempt, rather than
to win friends or even make people slightly more inclined to tolerate
him.
However, I myself was present at times late in "Wassercrats" brief
tenure when I witnessed him in the Chatterbox behaving in a mild,
friendly and jovial manner with those present, or attempting to (I'd
add in explanation that although I have been a participant at Perlmonks
since only shortly after its unveiling, I have taken periods of varying
duration "off" and had not been attentive continuously for this
accounted timespan). I noticed with a considerable degree of personal
discomfort that his attempts to enjoy chatting amiably with others
were met with a constant rebuff of attacks and mean-spirited put-downs,
attempts to pull him back into past disputes, and similar bad-intentioned
attempts at emotional manipulation on the part of nearly every Chatterbox-monk
who was reacting to his presence in any way.
I was personally disconcerted by the degree of antagonism shown a
person who was, in my perception, clearly weary of being at odds
with an entire user community and longing for a little simple company
... but I was even more disturbed by the fact that not one speaker
at a time, but several in tandem were exibiting this aggressive
hostility. It simply wasn't possible to witness without there being
a vision of a bunch of little boys standing around a single skinny
(or overweight) kid taunting and throwing things at him.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that a considerably number of
persons at Perlmonks, manyof them still regulars there, behaved in
a really despicable fashion towards "Wassercrats". His penchant for
self-promotion, for making broad characterizations of the Perlmonks
community, his abrasive, confrontational style, his attempts to
"critique" the Perl language and its cultural conventions without
establishing any "cred" for himself first: yes, all these things
made his poor reception inevitable. But these alone do not
excuse a part of a community of people for becoming a mob
and behaving in the manner that they did.
I hope the knowledgable reader will forgive my doing a brief bit
of tangential prose at this point. I am afraid that the extremely
underdeveloped ethical sense of some of the potential readers of
this journal make it seem necessary to me.
In the study of human social history and literature, the study of
the mind and of symbol and metaphor throughout known human history,
we come upon a phenomenon which has come to be known (in English)
as the scapegoat. A scapegoat is a person who is made to
suffer by a village or community; and whose being made a sacrifice
by that community somehow sooths the anxieties or fears of the
mass of members of that community. The part of the word that is "goat"
readily summons to mind the image of domesticated livestock being
tied to a post and killed with a sharp knife or a dull club.
"Wassercrats" was a scapegoat. The "Monks" over there at Perlmonks
who became thirsty to see his blood (which is to say, in the
non-metaphorical sense, to quit ever using Perlmonks again,
preferably accompanied by a parting blast of hurt and anger - all
my readers have seen such a "flame-out" and know what I am describing)
... these folks became inebriated
with one of the most ancient and malevolent of humanity's intoxicants:
the drive to "kill" the most self-despised flaws in one's own inner/spiritual/moral
being (one's "heart") by "killing" an external symbol of those flaws.
Make no mistake abut it. "Wassercrats" failings were no different
in kind from those of many other Perlmonks; they only differed in the
degree to which they were flagrantly expressed. I witness the same
mental warts surfacing on a daily basis (during a bad week), now
that Wassercrats is long "dead": the premature arrogance of those
who have learned half or 3/4 of what there is to know about some
computer technology, but speak as if they know it all; the utter
ruthlessless in the ego of those who feel challenged on a technical
point (causing them to try any argumentative ploy they think will
work, displaying no regard for whether the truth is being
forgotten in the process); the inability to self-reflect and see
with any clarity that something is clouding their perceptions of
others' intent or meaning. Wassercrats displayed all these foibles
to such an absurdly exaggerated degree that he allowed the onlookers
at Perlmonks to fall under the completely deluded miscomprehension
that they themselves were completely or even mostly free of them.
There are those who may read this entry with no thought other than
how to discourage anything remotely like it from issuing forth
from my not-so-nimble fingers in the future, or how to provoke
(if given the chance) a reaction from me that they think, in a
calculating sense, would lessen my credibility as a witness and
describer of this little morality tale from Perlmonk's recent
past. Those are the people who are in fact not only haunted by
the ghost of Wassercrats, but truly possessed by it.
Those who are most quick to feel a prickle of self-doubt upon
reading this, maybe a touch of shame, are the ones least in need
of entertaining the company of such feelings for any length of time.
Arrogance is apparently widely misunderstood amongst the part of
the Perlmonks community which I've come to know as "the thick-headed
lot." Arrogance is understood as a deceiver in the Buddhist traditions,
those traditions which have made a systematic and thorough
investigation of the different phenomena of human conciousness for
a very long time. Arrogance causes itself to disappear from the
sight of those afflicted by it, so that it can do its chosen work
of undermining the perceptual accuracy as well as the moral standing
of those under its sway. It is a huge blind spot right in front of
the faces of the afflicted, that they cannot see at all. The reason
that Arrogance possesses this capability and manifests this
function in human conciousness is that it is quite vulnerable to
human volition, free will and genuine intellect when it begins to
be exposed. There is no more effective way to raise the ire of
the truly arrogance-bespelled person than to sharply point out
the malfunction in their conciousnesss at this time, that is
being caused by the dominance of Arrogance. The outlashings
of rage (sometimes hot but often cold) that are often witnessed are
the flailings of the threatened disease - they are the infection in the
ego of the afflicted person expressing its urgent need to, beyond all else, avoid
having its name spoken aloud, its existence recognized to its
host and victim.
Arrogance is not merely a minor character defect of the overly-confident
or the perpetually insecure. It is actually a serious, self-perpetuating, chronic
illness that undermines the health of the victim's relationships
with those around him. Many people can smell the rot of that
infection on the afflicted person from a long way off (and avoid
the bearer like they would a plague carrier). Those who are themselves fairly
to severely afflicted cannot, however, in many cases;
they instead often band together for mutual protection, for the
cover that membership in a group provides to them.
Wassercrats provided a part of the Perlmonks community a chance to
project upon a person (in whose defense it was clear that no voices would be raised) ...
that group pathology that plagues the intellectually self-congratulatory
and socially insecure. The irony abounds, because some of the Perlmonks
I know from the Chatterbox are Gay, some are lifelong-overweight, some
have speech impediments or learning disabilities, some belong to
ethnic minorities: this is a group of people that taken in toto
really ought to have known better and done better. Not all
Perlmonks are "geeks" (and surely not all are "nerds": some are married
to beautiful spouses, some are beautiful themselves - some are beauty
pageant queens!) ... but after all it *does* take a different
sort of person to land in a job administrating a UNIX system all day
long, or writing code until 4am every morning, or working hard enough
to grasp what's up with polymorphic inheritance or lexical closures
;-) ... a person who is a bit out of the ordinary, anyway.
To those readers from Perlmonks who still mention Wassercrats with a sneer
of prideful contempt, as I saw tonight, I'd just like to remind you that
you really ought to be seriously and non-transiently
ASHAMED of yourselves. When you speak Wassercrat's name, you ought
do so in hushed tones, and with eyes cast downwards. You may be a Perlmonk
now, but the need for you to be a human being is going to last a lot longer.
You need to disengage your overfed head for a moment and engage your malnourished
gut. No victory was accomplished for or by anyone when Wassercrats
left under those conditions.
Wassercrats got expelled.
At some point, the tribe members had had enough. There's no formal mechanism for excommunication, as there is with some tribes, so the closest thing is to provide appropriate XP voting and followups, especially linking to similar past behavior, so that tribal juniors can be brought up to speed on the status.
Maybe in your ideal world, tribes don't exist. Maybe you got shut out of the cliques to which you wanted in school. But on this planet, tribes exist, and without them, we wouldn't have made it this far, right or wrong as that may be.
The actions around Wassercrats are justified by tribal behavior in reaction to Wassercrats own behavior. This is not prejudice. This is judgement, as a protection of the greater whole. I went back and forth on it, and finally decided that a comment this interesting really required a reply - so at the risk of appearing to merely be trying to get the last word It's a reasonable notion and certainly intelligently put forth: that (paraphr) "Perlmonks is a tribe and the tribe expelled Wassercrats". After thinking about the proposal for a bit I realized with a bit of a start that I sensed ESR (Eric Raymond, for those readers who aren't Merlyn, etc) To a conditional degree I could agree with some of the points made, but I've not changed my mind on the whole. I think that the notion that Perlmonks is a tribe is more an act of creative imagination on your part than an objective reality. I have a lot of respect for that kind of creative imagination, though! It can have to power to reshape reality. But in my perception there is really nothing convincingly identifiable about Perlmonks that would support this.
The only tribe in sight for me is the Hacker tribe. Perlmonks lacks a coherency of viewpoint and uniformity of attitudes sufficient to consider it any sort of "tribe". Some, many, of the Perlmonks are certainly in the Hacker tribe. Some are not - there are Sysadmins (just for example) who basically just like hanging around for the company and the distraction it affords them (and the occasional help with Perl, sure), but aren't really "on fire" to absorb Perl and eat, breath and dream Perl.
I think ESR wrote that hackers are a tribe. I have found myself in full agreement with nearly everything else I have ever read that Eric Raymond has written. I only somewhat agree with this (I don't think it's anything more than a metaphor, and not the only one available), but in any case I especially don't agree that Perlmonks is a separate, special tribe. I think it's a place where some of the hacker tribe is hanging out at present. I think it's also a great many different things to a great many different Monks, and that's my point. It isn't seen by people within it in a uniform, coherent manner.
I also think that it's worth pointing out that "tribalism" is near the root of many of the most desperate and intransigent problems in today's world. Mankind seriously needs to outgrow tribalism, which has become a thing like an appendix is to the modern human anatomy. I'm more happy if Perlmonks isn't a tribe and doesn't become one.
For the sake of readers I need to reiterate the two points in the summary paragraph of my journal entry, as well. I wrote that
Merlyn, if you are a tribal elder at Perlmonks, you are a damn crappy one - like an absentee father. I say this with the utmost affection. I like it fine if you are "just" a wise old Perl hacker who drops in from time to time and drops "perls" of Perl wisdom on us struggling hopefuls.
There's a bit of real illness going on over at Perlmonks, and there really isn't anything like a tribal leadership that will deal with it. It's ill and wrong when people gloat over what happened to Wassercrats.
It was no victory that Wassercrats was forced to leave by whatever means were directed towards that end. It would have been victory if the Perlmonks community had collectively been able to, through patient explanation and convincing, cause Wassercrats to adjust his ideas and attitudes so that adequate congruence with the community's sensibilities and goals could be achieved. I cannot say that I know that Wassercrats should not have been forced out: that's not what my journal says, and I clarify here: maybe it was necessary. But it was at the very best unfortunate and sad, and nobody should ever GLOAT over it.
I'm very clear that monks, like many other parts of the Perl community, and to a lesser extent, the Perl community as a whole, exhibits all the symptoms of classical tribalism.
To not understand that, and worse, to deny that, leads to disappointment.
Yeah. It's you. Wake up and smell your own hypocrisy.
There were a few people who defended me on the message board, and Chatterbox wasn't as big a problem as you describe. I wasn't exactly expelled. Someone "considered" one of my posts in violation of the guidelines, and some monks who just barely were able to vote on it voted to "reap" it. Most of the higher monks recognized the injustice, and there was even a suggestion to repost my reaped post. A new rule was created to help prevent such unjust reaping in the future. I still said I was leaving. Then I was asked to suggest a solution that would satisfy me. I think I gave a few reasons for me wanting to leave anyway, and I left. So, in defense of Perlmonks, there are a good number of good monks, even if most of them think I'm wrong about technical matters, and there are a good number of bad ones. Basically, I left because I didn't like the ratio much, or the way things worked.
The main problem was people's reaction my programming habits, such as not using strict. I would simply post code without strict and be attacked and I'd defend myself in a far more civilized manner than the ways of my attackers. Shortly before I left, I had a fairly civil debate--maybe the first civil one--about one of my programming habits, which ended with me agreeing that one of the benefits of using the conventional (at least to the perlmonks) method (might have been about using strict) might help me, but I think I made good points about the downside, which I honestly thought might outweigh the overall benefit of doing it the perlmonk way.
Shortly after I left (I still read some posts), someone posted about experienced programmers he'd worked with who used one of my methods that the monks attacked me for. I didn't care enough to read the replies.
It would be nice if this message board thing populated the subject field for you.
Oh, and you know the new alternating background color in Chatterbox? I had that idea over a year ago. If Castaway still records Chatterbox conversations, she can look it up.
It really wouldn't surprise me in the least to discover that YOU are really Wassercrats, Intrepid. You both have a very hard time fitting in with large groups of people. First this post and then the person who is the subject appears. Arrogance for all your talk is simply a matter of perception. The ghost hid behind the guest id and posted material he would not back up. When challenged he (or could I say you?) would simply ignore it as being biased towards O'Reilly, the Perlmonks tribe, or Merlyn. The Ghost was trolling for attention. That is why he (or is it you?) did it. It's all about being polite. You treat people well and they tend to treat you well. The ghost has issues and I find it surprising that you defend his baseless actions and outright falsehoods.
Which isn't to say I didn't feel it -- I did -- but I didn't feel great about feeling that sick glee. I didn't. I felt bad about the fact that Wassercrats seems to have categorized some significant concepts under headings like philosophy and psychology and has just decided to hate them, and I felt bad about not being able to converse with a fellow human.
The first one is arguably Wassercrat's problem to solve, not mine. The second, however -- I have thought long and hard on it. I have come to the conclusion that it was not a happy thing, nor a sad thing. It just happens. Clique behavior is biologically based and almost inescapable. Doesn't make it right; doesn't make it happy. Does make it essentially unavoidable if you want to function in the human world. Moreover, nobody from PM has ever punched me, threatened to punch me, or been anything less than genial (or, at the very least, tolerant of my questions).
And me? I want to function in the human world. I'm willing to accept that questions irritate people sometimes; I'm willing to accept that I may someday offend someone without intending to, and may well apologize even though I didn't feel I intended to do wrong.
It's not a question of going against the group or going with the group. No group is so powerful that all the choices you have to make are controlled by it.
The question is really whether an individual is willing to examine cases like this more carefully and pick the things they want and let the things that are less important go.
I just wanted to remind you that if you don't like Perlmonks, you are more than welcome to do the same.
Does this count as an apology? Because that's about the only apology i have for the likes of you, troll.
Did it ever occur to you that you tend to do this more often than really anybody else?
The big question is, who are you? I mean, why are you being such a big baby? You can't be for real. You have to be taking the piss man. I mean, do you really think that anybody who reads you homenode actually believes you? Guess again.
Oh, and this isn't defacement as much as you claim it. All you have to do is reply and retort. Kinda hard to refute the truth though, isn't it? Thank you so much!
Apparently, you do not understand tribalism
merlyn on 2005-10-19T13:55:35
Perlmonks is a tribe. I am not ashamed of that, because admission to this particular tribe is freely granted, and explusion requires a demonstrated systematic blatent disregard for sense and sensibility, and unwillingness to just "get" what the tribe is about.
Re:Apparently, you do not understand tribalism
somian on 2005-10-19T17:02:12
and
and in the context of last evening's Chatterbox conversation, my certain "sense" was that "Wassercrats" was being held as a threat over someone else currently present, and that as on a couple previous occasions, there was an unmistakable sense of gloating conveyed.
Re:Apparently, you do not understand tribalism
merlyn on 2005-10-20T19:10:37
Then be unhappy. I think your denial of this point is what causes your grief about the results.
Re:Apparently, you still don't understand ...
jeffa on 2005-12-08T14:51:49
Says Intrepid: "There's a bit of real illness going on over at Perlmonks"
Haunted?
dws on 2005-10-19T17:43:44
I was unaware of being haunted, other than by the ghost of Perl6 Future.
Re: Perlmonks Haunted by the Ghost of Wassercrats
Wassercrats on 2005-10-25T15:10:34
Ghosts?
jeffa on 2005-10-26T20:17:03
Ya knowInteresting
Marza on 2006-03-04T23:46:01
Humanity Inclusive
chaoticset on 2006-03-12T07:24:01
At least we have found the only flawed humans on Earth; they all frequent Perlmonks, and felt a sick glee when Wassercrats left!
just a reminder
jeffa on 2006-03-28T17:49:19
""Wassercrats" left Perlmonks in a cloud of acrimony and a stench of bitterness."
couple of questions
jeffa on 2006-06-19T19:37:32
On your homenode at Perlmonks, you mention "In plain language: Don't expect to act like a <expletive> in the cb and have it just magically disappear."
