Talk:Eric S. Raymond/Archive 2

message: I like throwing digital pies at ESR as much as the next person, but that "Surprised by Cock" article is just stupid.  If I make a similar parody of Martin Luther King, or George Bush can I link to it from there pages?  I suggest removing that link, but I can't think of a policy that could govern when links should be left, and when they should stay.  It's not informative, and not very creative.  For whatever reason, if someone wants to remove it, there'd be no argument from me. --Gronky 19:34, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Surprised by Cock" 

message: I've removed the "Parodies" section.  Some troll keeps adding links to gay smut or stupid stories that have ESR's name stuck in them.  These articles are not sources of info about ESR, so I've removed them.  They wouldn't stand on the pages for Martin Luther King, or George Bush so they shouldn't stand here.  Note, the smut was originally being added by someone with IP 64.110.74.244 - before vandalising the ESR page, that IP regularly vandalised the Michael Moore page, and in the last hour or so he's moved to vandalising the Richard Stallman page - although he's changing his IP now (he's used 24.214.217.95, 65.110.54.92 and 151.202.154.243).  The links are mostly to articles written by one person, so it could be that person trying to popularise their pages.  I don't know if it's a pity to remove the link to trollse.cx, it was mildly funny, but not that great really. --Gronky 03:11, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "Parodies" Section 

message: I can't find any reference backing up the claim that ESR is commonly or notably referred to as "Arrogant Gas Baron".  All Google turns up is the usual suspects promulgating their half-assed trolls on the usual sites, and copies of what may or may not be an old forgery from linux-kernel.  I trimmed the paragraph to its factual core to avoid feeding the egos of the trolls any more than necessary. --Saucepan 03:43, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Arrogant Gas Baron" 

message: The problem with categories is that it's impossible to annotate the entries. On what grounds do we conclude that ESR is a Wikipedian? The existence of User:Eric S. Raymond?
I went to the trouble of (manually!) checking this, and indeed, ESR has had a whopping 20 edits over 4 days, to various articles of obvious interest to him (not to belittle these edits, of course, it's not as if this IP has an enormous track record). Obviously, he might also have made some anonymous ones.
Since I presume the category isn't going to be turned into a list anytime soon (although I think that would be the best long-term solution), we should at least have a link or trivia note or whatever that establishes his Wikipedianity; the contributions list if we have to, even if this is hideous; a public/private quote, off-handed remark, blog entry or whatever else would be preferable. If we're going to have this category, we should at least be unambiguous about it. If people ask "yeah, but how do you know that ESR really edits on Wikipedia?" we should be able to answer them, and if at all possible, not by pointing at our intestines. Category entries should in theory be indisputable, meaning that the article should make it obvious why this category applies.
Either that, or this category (as I said) just shouldn't exist. Make it an annotated list on Meta or something. This is of service only to us, not to our readers. And who gets first priority? Thaaaat's right. I mean, if I created User:Richard Stallman or User:Linus Torvalds and added a few insightful comments to the GNU/Linux naming controversy, that wouldn't prove much of anything now, would it? :-) --82.92.119.11 23:00, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Verifiability of the Wikipedian category 

message: Let me just state right off the bat that I'm no fan of ESR, in fact I think he's a complete loon, and yet this article is basically a hatchet-job.  
The fact is that he's done some very good things for the free software movement, while taking the full force of RMS and all of his fans in a Massive Snit on many occasions, and this article reads like slashdot sniping.  Either make it objective, or nominate it for removal, already.  The links to the messages on his dispute with Bruce Perens completely ignore Perens' provocation of ESR, and make it look like ESR came uncorked for no reason.
:I think he's fantastic, his The Art of Unix Programming, [Art of Unix Programming] is the reason I first installed Linux. I agree that the article is biased. The reasons I think this are:
:1. The criticism section is twice as long as the achievements section - this is a man who has written 3 books, contributed to at least 3 major open source projects, and widely publicised open source programming. It seems to indicate that a vocal minority don't like him, and the page is treated as a vehicle for criticism.
:2. We are treated to a 7 line dissection of a joke that Raymond made to a recruiter (paragraph 3), with the payoff that this "is typical of what many of Raymond's critics find disagreeable." Who exactly is this relevant to? Dilaudid 00:55, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased?  Oh, yes! 

message: I got here by accident - I never heard of this person before,
however, still from what i've seen this entry seems biased.
The current text referring to "shut up and show the code" makes it seem as if in this
article ESR is disparaging the programming ability of Richard Stallman.
However, when I looked at the article he is in fact doing the complete 
opposite, and is praising Stallman's programming and disparaging 
his talking.
It seems misleading to me. 
Also, if you say there he claimed to be more of a programmer than he is, 
you should substantiate this.
I agree.  He makes a point of praising Stallman's coding and only disagrees with his tactics.
The previous wording completely misrepresented the essay.  I changed the article to reflect this
but somebody changed it back to the original.  However, they did somewhat take the misrepresentation
into account by leaving in the phrase about the disagreement being over tactics.  What's left still
doesn't work as it now implies that esr disparaged stallman and the paragraph's intent is muddled 
by the concession. Sprewell 10:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  bias 

message: As it stands now, I think the criticism section looks pretty good.  With a guy like this, I think you really need to cite *everything*, and make sure that people's opinions don't get stated as fact.  So long as that's done (which I think is currently true), it's probably all good.
That said, I'd like to ask why things that ESR does get considered volatile, when comparable behavior by comparable people goes unnoticed.  I'm not saying that, if this is truly how the world reacts, Wikipedia shouldn't note it --- but rather, Wikipedia might want to note that this is exceptional to ESR.
Consider the case of Cory Doctorow.  He's an EFF guy, very much in favor of relaxing copyrights, and yet I don't see accusations of "selling out" (or somesuch) because he gave a talk at Microsoft.
Likewise, why isn't there any mention that Richard Stallman has been called insane, arrogant, abrasive, etc.  A cursory google will reveal plenty of accusations of that nature.  He also doesn't seem to be getting in trouble for his political activities, which certainly seem to be on a scale comparable to ESR's.
What I'm saying is that, it probably is true that Cory and RMS simply haven't created notable friction with the New Age of Intellectual Property folks (yeah, that's straight outta my ass) by these actions.  Likewise, it makes sense that their actions don't get mentioned as doing such on their Wikipedia pages.  But if ESR can do essentially the same things, yet enflame The World, I think his Wikipedia page ought to note that, for whatever reason, he seems to get judged at a higher standard than his contemporaries (for lack of a superior phraseology).  --Ninjadroid 18:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consistency of Standards 

message: I have no personal disagreement with the material added to the "Criticism" section, I just feel its flamebait and is counter to where the direction the article was heading, which was in avoidance of flame wars on the article, and on this discussion page.  The addition of headings and an introduction to the section aren't improvements worth keeping either.  The edits made were so broad that it isn't conducive to review by others who follow and contribute to the article's edits.
Further, the article "Take My Job, Please!" was written 7 years ago as a response not to all these criticisms but in the context of ESR v. RMS, which was better expressed in the previous edit. --132.198.104.164 15:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought it was in a very unclear state before.  It contained a lot of dated information, and his more recent controversies were lost in a sea of references to things from 1999.  I tried to give it more emphasis on more current information.  I'll admit that it is not very balanced, but I found what it was before to not be an accurate reflection of what a critic would say.  – Andyluciano 01:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I toned down some bits.  Perhaps more needs to be done.  I will say this format (breaking down the varied criticism into sections) is much more readable than it was before. – Andyluciano 01:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Andyluciano "Criticism" section edits 

message: ESR doesn't say he supports this.  He says he supports a policy that his opponents will characterize as "deliberate cultural genocide."  Any version to the contrary is deliberately misleading and POV, especially if it removes the context of his argument. -- FRCP11 13:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FRCP11, your version is a far better and clearer description of his views. There is no doubt that he supports a campaign of imperialism to civilise the Moslem world -- it's a fair reading of his blog entry. We can spend all day arguing over what his exact wording re: cultural genocide meant. - Motor (talk) 13:25, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Deliberate cultural genocide"