From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: alt.config
Subject: now batting: Bill Davidsen! (was Re: No, don't)
Followup-To: poster
Date: 22 Jan 1993 06:08:44 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	<JBW.93Jan20201737@bigbird.bu.edu> <2240@blue.cis.pitt.edu>
	<1993Jan21.171216.4480@crd.ge.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pit-manager.mit.edu
In-reply-to: davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM's message of 21 Jan 93 17:12:16 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.171216.4480@crd.ge.com> davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) writes:

     IMHO

Isn't it amazing what people are willing to say about other people on
the Usenet?  I wonder how many people really do, as the "A Primer on
How to Work With the Usenet Community" posting in
news.announce.newusers says, "Never Forget that the Person on the
Other Side is Human."  Certainly, *I'd* never say anything, on the
Usenet or otherwise, like what Mr. Davidsen has seen fit to assert
about me, without knowing the person about whom I was talking a heck
of a lot better than Mr. Davidsen knows me.

And it's all a "humble opinion."  Quite frankly, Mr. Davidsen, anyone
with the least bit of humility wouldn't baselessly insult people with
in a Usenet newsgroup.  I don't see anything "humble" about your words
at all.

   JK lacks (a)

[i.e., a sense of humor -- jik]

Mr. Davidsen, on what exactly do you base your opinion that I lack a
sense of humor?  Have you ever told me a joke at which I failed to
laugh, even though you were just positively it was funny?  Have I ever
told you a joke that you didn't find funny?  Have you interviewed my
friends about my sense of humor?  Have you bugged my apartment in
order to find out which jokes I laugh at when Jay and Dave are doing
their monologues?

It seems that this discussion has turned into the "alt.config let's
pick on jik party."  From a discussion of a new newsgroup to benefit
"alt" into a discussion of whether or not I have a sense of humor.
Or, as Jef put it, a discussion of whether or not I am
"anus-clenching."  Come on, people, isn't there anyone else whose
sensibilities I have offended who wants to take this opportunity to
take cheap shots at me?  Surely Jef Poskanzer, Peter van der Linden,
Terry what's-his-name and Bill Davidsen aren't the *only* people whose
toes I've stepped on!  Step right up!  Throw a pie at jik!  What are
you waiting for?

I haven't seen this many bullies crawl out of the woodwork to pick on
me since I was the shortest person in my fourth-grade class.  Gee,
thanks for bringing back those memories, guys.

   and is also sometimes deficient in (c) "moderator
   should work at getting the job done, not play roadblock and look for
   excuses to reject stuff because of some tiny deviation from the
   guidelines." The are *guidelines* not written in stone by a deity!

Mr. Davidsen, since you have never submitted a posting to me for
approval for news.answers, I would like to know what basis you have
for your opinion about my job as news.answers moderator or my
application of the news.answers guidelines.  Have you interviewed
people who *have* submitted postings to news.answers?  Have you *read*
the guidelines in question?  And how, exactly, do you know that I have
never allowed "some tiny deviation" from them (in fact, I have, on
quite a number of occasions)?

After seeing Mr. Davidsen's posting, I became curious about exactly
why he would have it in for me, so I went searching through my E-mail
archives to find out.  I found several exchanges of E-mail between him
and me:

1. He posted a message asking where to get the source code for bash.
   I responded with an E-mail message explaining that "Bash is
   available on all the GNU archive sites, including prep.ai.mit.edu,"
   and referring him to my FAQ posting about locating source code.
   (May 10, 1991)

2. After someone flooded the net with a large number of inappropriate,
   forged postings from an account that had been broken into, the
   account in question was disabled, and someone posted a message
   telling people to flame at the account in question or its
   postmaster, I posted a message saying:

   >The postmaster at gatech has been notified about the problem, and
   >the account has been disabled, and the .forward file that was
   >doing the forged posting of E-mail has been removed.  Sending mail
   >to xxx, or to his postmaster, will no longer do any good; the
   >problem has been fixed.

   Mr. Davidsen sent me an E-mail message saying, "Until the person
   who did it has been found and prevented from net access, the
   problem is not really fixed."

   I sent him a response saying, "That's true.  But I have no say in
   whether or not they go to any effort to find the guy who did it.
   The specific problem of this specific account is fixed." (August
   19, 1992)

3. Mr. Davidsen posted a non-source posting to alt.sources.  I sent
   him a canned reply that I use when I see such postings.

   He responded with a message saying, "Please take me off your
   mailing list."

   I responded, "What `mailing list?'  You posted a message
   inappropriately in alt.sources, and I sent you a message about it.
   There is no `mailing list.'"

   He responded, "Since some host revectors some .d groups it doesn't
   carry to the base group, since I can't control that I see no reason
   to be yammered at by the self proclaimed net.police.  Any further
   messages of that type will result in the request to remove me from
   you [sic] mailing list being posted to the net in the group where
   it offends you most.

   "I didn't post to the wrong group, [sic] if you have no real life
   to take up your time please try to track down sites which have
   groups aliased, or doing [sic] net statistics, or whatever."

   I accepted his claim that he had, in fact, posted to the correct
   newsgroup, but that his message was "revectored" into a different
   newsgroup, and investigated it by contacting all of the sites
   between his and mine in the Path line of his article.  In fact, all
   of them carried both alt.sources.d and alt.sources, and his article
   had not been "revectored," it had been posted in alt.sources
   incorrectly by him.  Furthermore, when I asked him why there was a
   "Followup-To: alt.sources" line in his posting, he claimed that he
   didn't put it there and that one of the sites between his and mine
   must have done so, despite the fact that I could find no evidence
   of this.

   I will omit the rest of this exchange.  Suffice it to say that I
   told him exactly what I thought of his threats and insults, and he
   continued to be rude. (April 28, 1992)

4. On the same day, I pointed out to him that the path line of his
   posting ended in "yeti!davidsen", despite the fact that "yeti" is a
   valid UUCP host other than the one from which he was posting.  He
   wrote back and told me that such a path line is legal, because
   sites aren't supposed to do "path short-cutting."  I read the
   relevant RFCs and responded that he was correct that de jure, the
   RFCs allowed it, but that they also said that such a path line was
   discouraged and all new sites should endeavor to place only FQDNs
   or valid UUCP sites in path lines.  He never responded to that
   final message.

5. Someone posted in comp.unix.shell a message that is answered in the
   UNIX FAQ.  Mr. Davidsen posted a response; in his response, he said
   that he wondered if it belonged in comp.unix.shell.  I responded,
   "No, it doesn't belong in comp.unix.shell, since it is answered in
   the FAQ postings and therefore shouldn't have been posted at all."

   He responded, "Why do you think I would be familiar with the
   contents of every FAQ on earth?  I was trying to be helpful, rather
   than politically correct.  You should try doing something helpful
   to someone sometime, instead of playing net.god and telling people
   they don't post in the right group."

   I responded:

   >   Why do you think I would be familiar with the contents of every
   >   FAQ on earth?
   >
   >I think you should be familiar with the FAQ postings for the
   >newsgroups in which you post.  Nothing more, nothing less.
   >
   >   I was trying to be helpful, rather than politically correct.
   >
   >I can't imagine how the issue of not wasting unnecessary Usenet
   >bandwidth can in any way be compared to being "politically
   >correct."  The FAQs exist so that the questions answered in them
   >will (ideally) not be posted, and (somewhat less ideally) not
   >answered on the net if they *are* posted.  Ignoring them and
   >posting answers to questions that are answered in them defeats
   >that purpose, wastes resources and lowers the signal-to-noise
   >ratio in the newsgroup.
   >
   >   You should try doing something helpful to someone sometime,
   >   instead of playing net.god and telling people they don't post
   >   in the right group.
   >
   >Thank you for your "advice," but I am quite sure that I have done
   >quite a few things RE the Usenet that are "helpful to someone
   >sometime."  Maintaining 12 FAQ postings, moderating a newsgroup,
   >running one of the most-used ftp archives/mail server on the
   >Usenet, and offering to do vote counting for any Usenet vote-taker
   >who needs it all strike me as being "helpful to someone sometime."
   >Not to mention reading and answering questions in quite a few
   >different newsgroups, and writing the answers to several of the
   >questions in the comp.unix.questions FAQ postings.

   (May 15, 1992)

In summary, I don't think any of the messages I sent to Mr. Davidsen
were inappropriate, and I think that in all cases, he was a hell of a
lot more "lacking in tact, rigid, and unwilling ... to admit being
wrong, or even that he might be wrong" (Mr. Davidsen's words, about
me) than I was.

   some of his postings and personal mail are
   arrogant, condescending, pompous and argumentative. He sometimes lacks
   the social skills which would make things go smoothly.

Well, since the only personal mail from me you've seen is mail to you,
you've got a marvelously small sample from which to judge.  Perhaps
you bring out the best in me (although I can't imagine why, given what
you wrote to me in the E-mail I quoted above, which anyone can see is
certainly not "arrogant, condescending, pompous and argumentative",
eh?).

   As it is, his
   technical execution of the job is acceptable, and no one seems ready to
   step forward and do the work both competently and pleasantly.

As I pointed out above, I am very curious about the basis of your
judgement of the quality of my "technical execution of the job."

Do you assert that reading the sour grapes from the two people whose
attempts at participating in news.answers ended less than happily for
those involved is enough of a basis to make this distinction?  Did you
perhaps forget about the 632 postings currently being successfully
posted to news.answers quite happily by their maintainers?  As opposed
to the 3 that aren't because of the two people mentioned above (Jef
has 2 FAQs that he withdrew from news.answers after his spat).

I don't know about you, but I think that 632:3 is a pretty good ratio.

     I think it's too bad that a person who's contribution to the net (and
   I'm not denying there is one) is bureaucratic would not expend a little
   effort to assist someone who contributes code, expertise, and
   organizational skill to the net.

I think that the people who will attest to the vast amounts of effort
I have expended to assist people on the Usenet far outnumber the
people like you.

ObConfig: How about alt.fan.jik?  It's clearly needed.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens                                         jik@MIT.Edu
Aktis, Inc.                                 Moderator,    *.answers
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