I came to remember your handle after you posted When do we change our replies?. Frankly, my reaction to that node (and much of the thread) was mostly surprise. I still don't feel empathy for those expressing strong feelings on either side of "all this pointless factionalism for and against it" (as BrowserUk put it, following that bit with "is far more damaging to this place than the odd lazy bugger being gifted a few lines of code"). And I'll paraphrase chromatic next: When BrowserUk, chromatic, and I agree about something, that's no small feat.

(I finally saw something I could contribute to that thread that I considered mostly a call for moderation, though rather more specific than just that.)

Around that time, I saw you say something (perhaps in chatter, since I don't now see it in that thread) that I mostly recall as a strong expression of a rather fanatical devotion to the PerlMonks site along with something very close to this line you did include in that thread:

I want to ensure that I am fit for the community as a whole

I'm quite happy that many people find something to like about PerlMonks. There is a lot I like about it. But fanaticism is something that my experience says is mostly worthy of suspicion.

So, at that point, I had a very strong sense of "stevieb is trying way too hard". But I also wasn't seeing any truly troubling behavior from you. So I expected the shine would start to wear off for you and you would calm down a bit and settle in to a more relaxed perspective about PerlMonks.

Some time later, I noticed your Re^5: Proposal: eliminate down-votes, which I reproduce here in its entirety:

fwiw, I love your 'stand-up-ed-ness' and blatant honesty. Goes without saying that it is awesome knowing that you can back up everything you say with fact. Kudos bro.

And that was when I really started to worry. Taking up the role of fanatical devotee to a particular participant was a much more troubling step, I felt.

Your assessment is clearly not true of any participant here. I don't believe it is true of any person. Everybody has some beliefs and expresses some opinions that they can't back up with fact.

Your expression of a rather starkly black-and-white interpretation (to my eye) was both startling and disconcerting. But pairing that with such a powerful approval for the rather disruptive behavior of "blatant honesty", made it worse.

I happen to know of some rather choice counter-examples to your thesis. But you'll find such for anybody who has written as much as BrowserUk (I also know of rather choice bad examples written by me, for example).

I briefly contemplated replying to that node of yours with such counter-examples. But BrowserUk doesn't deserve me dragging up embarrassing examples from history, especially since it is significantly in the minority of his history at PerlMonks.

But that node wasn't a problem in itself either. And I didn't see anything useful I could do at that point anyway.

But now we get to where you have actually started to become disruptive.

I am posting this reply in this location mostly due to this line you wrote above:

Update: you can downvote everything I do, but I'll just remind you of this.

I find that line richly ironic. I fear you may come to find it ironic as well.

In the thread you reference (if statement confusion), sundialsvc4 brought up a point that I believe has some merit, but had the bad sense to do so in such an over-the-top manner that the primary result was to make the point nearly impossible to defend. And so the point was (naturally) repeatedly countered.

Now, I concur with what I suspect is a majority of monks (ignoring those who don't really care all that much, which is probably the real and much larger majority) that sundialsvc4's reply is seriously flawed.

I believe that is the node that finally prompted your near-rant above. But I would not characterize that reply as unfair, nor uncalled-for, nor unjustified, nor ridiculous, nor harmful to the community. Had the reply simply avoided the over-the-top-ness, it wouldn't even be close to any of those. It would then be close to the middle of PerlMonk's wheelhouse.

I suppose that adopting a fanatical devotion to "you must show code" might get you one fan. But I much prefer discussing code with people who can talk about code and aren't just limited to talking in code.

For me, that richness of discussion is a big part of why I hang out at PerlMonks and not at stackoverflow.

Escalating a rather polite but over-the-top comment into "Psychological 'warfare'?" and a very over-the-top root node is exactly the kind of thing that PerlMonks needs less of, please.

But we aren't to the worst parts yet.

I was actually the most disappointed when I read, in Re^4: if statement confusion:

and more importantly... do you realize who you're putting down?

Perhaps you should re-read some of the writing of this person who you feel mere mortals must not deign to disagree with? Many instances of such at PerlMonks include this phrase: "Examine what is said, not who speaks".

This is such a classic mistake that it has its own Latin name. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody is wrong some of the time. Most certainly, nobody should be above being told "You make a very valid point, but I think you carry the logic too far".

Then you follow this up with a rather silly accusation that ends with the rather ironic "Making yourself look worse homie"? There's a separate Latin name for that mistake as well.

So, going back to:

Update: you can downvote everything I do, but I'll just remind you of this.

I hope it never comes to someone having to remind you of either of those two replies of yours in that thread.

Rather than defiant denial of the downvotes being cast against your "blatant honesty", I urge you: Learn from your downvotes, just like sundialsvc4 doesn't.

To be clear, I am not trying to argue that you should lose all respect for BrowserUk. That would be a silly argument. I find BrowserUk to be worthy of quite a bit of respect. And I think you would be well served to let some of his actions serve as examples for you to possibly emulate. (:

Make your next fanatical devotion be toward moderation (and not in the sense of "approving nodes") and calm. Or figure out how to give up this cycle of fanatical devotions.

BTW, you should take some time to click the "Need help?" link that is included on most pages and to then read up on how to link to nodes without making links that "log people out". ;)