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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I think this means I won

At the most recent Chicago Alt.NET meeting (Sergio posted about it here), I was talking with various people when someone (I think it was Aaron) mentioned that Scott Bellware had issued a tweet/twit/whateveritscalled at some point that I be drummed out of Alt.NET and have all of my blog comments deleted.  And apparently I had a number or something attached to it.

Since I hate Twitter (to me, it is the 'web 2.0' version of IRC...when I first got online in the late 90s, I made the mistake of going to a philosophy IRC and tried to, you know, talk about philosophy...IIRC (not to be confused with IRC), the members knew nothing about philosophy, wanted nothing to do with discussing it, and wanted instead to talk about getting laid...sort of similarly, the first time I heard about Twitter, I logged on and found tweets/twats/whatever along the lines of 'I like cheese'...okay, that's nice, goodbye), I had not known this.

Using various search tools, though he had changed his twitter name, I was able to find the following:

"alt.net community craven behavior : unwillingness to kick jdn to the curb"

and

"when will the alt.net community just kick jdn off the lists and just delete his blog comments"

Scott has always been the most morally bankrupt members of the alt.NET community.  The great thing about this is that his lack of stature has caused him to do things that actually help the greater community at large.  Since his blog is offline, I can't link to it, but the most important thing to him has been to say things like "Hey, look at the the things I've done for the community, like my DevTeach sessions, and my work at organizing Alt.NET OpenSpaces conferences", etc.  All of which is true.  He does it (apparently) because he is an insecure gloryhound, but since the end result is a positive for the community, that's fine.

Anyway, besides all that, his twoots/twatters/whatever are not quite sources of pride, but pretty close.  He's always been incapable of debating serious points.

In a similar vein, people like Jeremy Miller and Chad Myers are always pretty quick to descend to insults when they aren't agreed with (Chad I understand, Jeremy I don't...my first encounter with him was when he responded to a question about how to sell Agile on a fixed bid project with a 4-5 paragraph response that was above and beyond what I expected, really very detailed).  They really seem to think that when I disagree with them that I'm just trolling. 

If I wanted to troll someone, I would login to a Washington Capitals website and ask about trading Ovechkin for Sundin or something (if you don't follow the NHL, just accept that this would be a stupid suggestion).

On a vaguely related note, the EF team asked for input on how to implement POCO in v2.  Not surprisingly, none of the 'thought leaders' of Alt.NET decided to contribute.  They were all hot and bothered about creating the 'No-Confidence' vote, but when given the opportunity to contribute by the EF team...loud silence.  Not surprising.

So, anyway, people can delete what they want to delete, if they want.  I extend an open invitation to anyone who wants to do a podcast or anything like that.  I won't hide in the weeds or call for things to be deleted. 

posted @ Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:19 PM | Feedback (17)
Anonymous Blog Comments

This is something that comes up quite a bit on certain blogs, especially with Alt.NET types (before he (un)fortunately (unfortunately because he was the source of a wealth of unintentional humor, fortunately because his blogs were usually stupid), Scott Bellware was a typical example, Chad Myers is a current example if only because he's open and honest about it, to his credit), but I finally remembered to make a public note about it.

Some people seem to think that the value of a comment on a blog posting is related to whether or not it is anonymous.  There is an obvious reason for this.

If, to use an example, Ayende makes a comment about some topic concerning programming, the natural tendency of anyone who knows him and follows what he blogs/comments about is to assume that he is right, or at least to give extra credence to what he says because it is said by Ayende.

If, to use an example, jdn makes a comment about some topic concerning programming, the natural tendency of anyone (or at least, anyone within Alt.NET) who knows him and follows what he blogs/comments about is to assume that he is wrong, or at least to give lesser credence to what he says because it is said by jdn.

This is a natural psychological fact.  It is also right up there on the list of Logic 101 Fallacies. 

The truth/validity/coherence (all different things) of a statement is, logically, completely disconnected from the person who makes the statement.  There is no debate about this, by the way.  It is very hard sometimes to reconcile the nature of human psychology and the facts of logic.  If I have a question about a topic concerning programming, I will, naturally, give more credence to something Ayende says than something some anonymous person says.  It is still a logical fallacy to do so.  Similarly, to take into account the anonymity of a blog comment (or lack thereof) is a logical fallacy.

posted @ Tuesday, August 19, 2008 7:39 PM | Feedback (9)