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Shlomi Fish (918)

Shlomi Fish
  shlomif@iglu.org.il
http://www.shlomifish.org/
AOL IM: ShlomiFish (Add Buddy, Send Message)
Yahoo! ID: shlomif2 (Add User, Send Message)
Jabber: ShlomiFish@jabber.org
I'm a hacker of Perl, C, Shell, and occasionally other languages. Perl is my favourite language by far. I'm a member of the Israeli Perl Mongers, and contribute to and advocate open-source technologies. Technorati Profile [technorati.com]

Journal of Shlomi Fish (918)

Wednesday April 06, 2005
12:53 PM

Why the Bad IRC Treatment?

[ #24040 ]

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.


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  • My IRC reputation in the Perl-related channels has become tarnished lately

    It's not merely lately.

    I don't know exactly why

    Because you have crazy ideas and express them crazily.

    As to why you were banned, I can't say, but no one can explain sungo's actions. Not even sungo.
    • "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 warran
      • 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
        • 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).
          • 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.

            --

            --
            xoa

      • 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.

        • 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. :)

          --
          J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
    • Crazy ideas are fine

      I'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 UK

      --

      @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
      print reverse @JAPH;

      • 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 [berlios.de]. 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

        • 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.

  • It appears that people don't like you. I don't know why your surprised at this, because it's been apparent for months. I don't even know you and we haven't talked personally, but even I know people don't like you.

    If you want to talk to Mark Fowler, you could have simply gotten his contact information from the bottom of the Perl Advent Calendar page (where it says "contact the webmaster").

    • 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?

    • "If you want to talk to Mark Fowler, you could have simply gotten his contact information from"

      Mark Fowler's contact information [2shortplanks.com] 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.

  • 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

    • 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 [cpan.org] I [cpan.org] tend [cpan.org] to [cpan.org] also [cpan.org] produce [cpan.org] a [cpan.org] lot [cpan.org] of [cpan.org] signal [cpan.org] on [cpan.org] the [cpan.org] topics [cpan.org] I [cpan.org] care [cpan.org] about [cpan.org], so I'm tolerated a lot more :)

      • 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:

        • 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

  • I really didn't want to get involved with this, but I feel that one item needs to be addressed. You state, "my karma cannot be completely negative." Well, see, in #perl, that's actually quite untrue:
    16:31 < Masque> karma for shlomi
    16:31 < purl> shlomi has karma of -20
    Thought the record should be set straight there, and that might help you understand a bit more....

  • 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

    • Even dogs are smarter since they will either kill it or ignore it.
      So, wait. Did you just call the opers dogs?
      • Even dogs are smarter since they will either kill it or ignore it.
        So, wait. Did you just call the opers dogs?

        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

    • some things just never change do they?

      Have you changed?
      • 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.
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