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In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est

by Discipulus (Canon)
on May 30, 2019 at 08:30 UTC ( [id://11100711]=monkdiscuss: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

-Camerlengo: "BrowserUk!"
-BrowserUk: ...

-Camerlengo: "BrowserUk!"
-BrowserUk: ...

-Camerlengo: "BrowserUk!"
-BrowserUk: ...

-Camerlengo: Vere Papa mortuus est

The above is the cerimony that happens when a pope dies. I put this to add a bit of fun in a not fun at all situation.

BrowserUk left the monastery definitevely erasing all his contributions(*): this is a big loss for me and the whole perl community.

He was known as a very smart programmer, with a vaste background and experience in various fields. He was one of the best I saw in parallel perl programming, a C expert, very good in creating algorithms, looking toward efficiency and quality, always with a scientific approach.

By other hand he was not such a "leg of a saint" as we in Eataly say to describe, ironically, someone that is not a saint at all. He was irascibile a with a "hot blood", easy to be provoked, sometimes rude, also very rude and also toward monks and nuns who not deserved rudeness at all.

A fistufull of us (yes of us! We are a community so I'm not going to say: " a fistufull of you ") took the habit to highligth his caracterial edges instead of smooting them or, even better, ignoring them. I'm not saying we are expected to be psychological support community (the word is a bit strong but you understood what I mean) nor that we killed the pope. Maybe this was already his intention.

What I'm saying is that I beg you all, we all, for the future to try to suck the best from each others not the worst. I'm a terrible guy if I want (ask to my wife.. ;) but I try to do my best for you, daily and if I feel my hands itching I go away for ten minutes or more until I'm in a better disposition.

If Mozart was an asshole, what to do? "Please Wolfy play for me" or "Damn asshole, psychopathic go to hell!" I have no doubts here, nor you I hope. Most of the times the situation is more shaded but our beahviour will make the difference.

This is my view of a community. We have to share our best part not the worst one. When someone irritate you you must repeat what Virgilio told to Dante, as a mantra: Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa

One part of myself is seriously angry today: I've lost a lot of good software examples in fields where I still need a lot of practice. I suffered this damage only due to misfortune? Or someone of us has a part, if little, in this?

Hoping this is the last of this kind of death i beg you to consider how to act here, a sancta sanctorum of perl coders.

My best wishes to you all.

L*

PS as noted by haukex contributions are not (at least not completely) removed. The above does not change very much. Anyway we will loose future contributions.

*L

There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by footpad (Abbot) on May 30, 2019 at 13:42 UTC

    I'm very happy to see a thread like this, especially one calling for restraint and self-reflection.

    I've been a little surprised at (and concerned by) the...intensity I've seen over the past couple of weeks, as well as earlier posts.

    Here are some behaviors that we should avoid moving forward:

    • Name calling and personal attacks in posts
    • Revenge-consideration
    • Troll-baiting
    • Accusations of trolling from initiates
    • Highlighting past mistakes
    • Arrogance toward ignorance
    • and so on...

    If this behavior doesn't stop, membership will continue to decline, reputation will be even harder to earn, and (most importantly) the quality, depth, and availability of Perl knowledge will continue to erode.

    And I get that there's a history. That feelings are hurt and that tempers are hot. Someone started it. Someone might "get away with" something they probably shouldn't. So what? Unless you're a member of a certain group, your tools are: votes, /msg, and nodes. Focus on the code and let the rest go.

    (I'm not calling anyone out here; I'm highlighting non-inclusive behaviors. If you need to self-reflect, then for parsing's sake, do so. We can do better. We should do better. And we must do better if the Monastery is to survive.)

    So what to do instead? How about:

    • Treat each node as the first node.
    • Vote the node, not the person.
    • Assume that, more often than not, a low quality post indicates a lack of knowledge rather than trollish intentions.
    • Recall Hanlon's Razor. (Look it up if you need to.)
    • Recall Sturgeon's Law. (Ibid)
    • Do not feed the trolls. Do not become a troll, even as an example.
    • Lead by becoming the behavior you wish to see in others.

    It may, indeed, be possible to restore the original of the edited nodes. Even if it is possible, repairs are going to take time. Nearly 3000 nodes were affected and each one will need to be touched by hand in order to be cleaned up.

    This isn't the first time things have gone awry and it likely won't be the last. However, we can all contribute to lowering the heat and keeping things as tranquil as possible. Please, for the love of Camel, let's collaborate more than we compete. Regardless of our individual circumstances, backgrounds, or personalities, we all share a fondness and interest in Perl. Let's try to encourage the best from each other, rather than bring out the worst.

    In a world where trolling has become mainstream, our best defense is to actively demonstrate the spirit of TIMTOWDI.

    Be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you emit.

    This is your community. Help make it a better, more helpful place.

    --f

    P.S. I moved the thread to PMD, which is where it belongs. Force of habit; sorry. (I forgot I no longer have keys to the broom closet.)

      I agree with a lot of your post, however:

      • Highlighting past mistakes

      Highlighting past mistakes isn't necessarily a bad thing to do. Some of our worst offenders here continually post the same nonsense responses, which the uninitiated (those asking for help) would take at face value, despite them having been educated/proven wrong many, many times. Having spoken to some people at TPCiG last year about this sort of behaviour in communities, including Gloria & Larry Wall (yes Your Mother, I know...), this sort of behaviour is just not tolerated elsewhere, along with many of the other bad behaviours you list. They all went down the road of taking action. Personally I think that failure to exclude repeat offenders is more damaging to the site and the wider perl community than any gains from just letting people continually exhibit bad behaviour. There are other examples where I believe highlighting past mistakes is appropriate, for example along the lines of 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.'.

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by trippledubs (Deacon) on May 30, 2019 at 13:05 UTC

    Yes, I feel sad. It almost feels selfish to lament the loss of future posts, I guess the sad part is that the Monastery lost appeal to him. Hopefully momentarily, it's hard to break a habit that long formed. There was always a feeling of righteousness for not sacrificing technical excellence at the altar of political correctness. In my first question to Perlmonks, everyone was answering wrong except BrowserUK and I became hooked.

    Took a long time and my own maturation and reflection and bad mistakes on my part to see all the other more temperate emulation worthy talent that exists here. You call it 'Bringing about the best in others' I think Your Mother has called it "Grace" and Corion flatly says stop cussing and keep the site family friendly. Skill and temperance can exist together, but if you HAD to pick one quality over the other (and you don't), I would pick skill! Bye BrowserUK + Good Luck!!

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by Gavin (Archbishop) on May 30, 2019 at 08:42 UTC

    A Very sad loss,I for one will miss him, he was a great help to me when I lost someone very close to me.

    I do hope he changes his mind and comes back.

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by bliako (Monsignor) on May 30, 2019 at 09:31 UTC

    Discipulus you speak my feeling exactly.

    (that's why I suggested coding challenges a few days ago, tension is too much, challenges too few: Re: Coding challenges to PM)

    Edit: I don't think it's important to find who started it, who's fault it is (if anyone). It does not interest me.

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by haukex (Archbishop) on May 30, 2019 at 09:28 UTC
Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by holli (Abbot) on May 30, 2019 at 11:18 UTC
    His nodes are still there apparently. Someone locked his account. At least that's what his homenode says. I wonder who that was? Because that's a power he didn't have. No, I'm thinking there was some behind the scenes shouting and one of the gods kicked him.


    holli

    You can lead your users to water, but alas, you cannot drown them.
      he started editing all his nodes to say "Removed by author", several thousand of them

      It may be that The Lord had mercy and decided in his incomprehensible wisdom that all this enormous know-how must not disappear. At least I hope so. Best regards, Karl

      «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

      perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

        It may be that The Lord had mercy
        Please. She has nothing to do with that. And if she had, she'd also be responsible for the drama in the first place. Why is it you christians always attribute the good things to god but not the bad things? You're like the mother who thanks god her child survived the surgery when she should thank the surgeon, the guy who invented the anaesthetic and the children working in the chinese scalpel factory. I really really despise such behaviour. Give credit where it is due.


        holli

        You can lead your users to water, but alas, you cannot drown them.
Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by morgon (Priest) on May 30, 2019 at 22:37 UTC
    A great loss for this site.

    He knew (as far as I could tell) what he was talking about.

    A truly sad loss...

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by hippo (Bishop) on May 30, 2019 at 10:18 UTC
    One part of myself is seriously angry today: I've lost a lot of good software examples in fields where I still need a lot of practice.

    Very little is ever truly lost. Consider a trip to The WayBack Machine to find the gems you seek, if you know the nodes. Alas SuperSearch won't help you locate content which is no more, of course.

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by nikosv (Deacon) on May 30, 2019 at 20:37 UTC
    I guess he had his reasons to leave,but deleting his threads is not cool;it's like burying a treasure trove and throwing the map away.
    Saying that,is there a way that you can download an offline copy of perlmonks, like the way you do with Wikipedia?
    Something like this would certainly be a solution to this kind of problem.
    Then having got an offline copy, aside for disaster recovery, could also be handy in some occasions.
Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on May 30, 2019 at 21:09 UTC

    Just to remember. I learned much from this man. Best regards, Karl

    «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

    perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'Help

Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by 1nickt (Canon) on May 30, 2019 at 14:16 UTC

    Meh. He's not the first and won't be the last to leave in a huff: Abigail-II was a greater loss in the same category, IMHO, as Abigail has broader expertise than does BrowserUk.

    I think trippledubs nailed the issue in his post discussing the gradient between "don't offend anybody, above all" and "don't care at all about offending somebody". People fall on different points on that spectrum. As you know, I am quick to speak out forcefully against others who I feel are bullies or freeloaders, and that's offensive to lots of people and I get downvoted heavily for it ... but for me, so far, that's OK and I can live with the dynamic tension trippledubs refers to.

    BrowserUk had less tolerance for the tension, and I guess when he said of a fellow senior Monk "It BS like this and morons like you that make this place not worth the time any more", he meant it. So he split. Whatever. That's cool. That's his choice and one must assume he is doing what he feels is best for him.

    Petulantly trying to delete the posts he contributed to the Monastery is a different thing altogether. That's really sociopathic, and I can think of only one other Monk who wanted to do that. Just the latest similarity between BrowserUk and his great nemesis, if you ask me.


    The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

      BrowserUk had the twin problem of being very smart, probably among the smartest here, but not smart enough to justify his level of arrogance. His abuse of fellow monks, even when he correctly diagnosed them as being less smart than himself, though he wasn't batting 1000 on that, earned him far too many upvotes, and when the downvotes did outnumber the upvotes, he arrogantly assumed the voters were also dumb enough to be ignored. He should have been booted ages ago as his toxicity far outweighed his educational value.

        He wasn't that arrogant, he just had the problem to admit once he was wrong, and that's when he went parabolic with his childish wrath and starting to damage the monastery. And his fanboys cheered with up votes.

        He wasn't that intelligent either, like many of us he had his field of expertise. He was just very dedicated to fill that niche, because he loved the monastery.

        Anyway this whole thread is annoying, neither is he dead nor does he deserve this amount of character assassination. Without this thread he would have at least a chance to think it over and silently come back.

        He would probably diagnose that a bunch of mediocre monks are using the opportunity to show off. And he would be right.

        The whole pope thing is a farce anyway.

        - a dissident

      A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by dsheroh (Monsignor) on May 30, 2019 at 14:09 UTC
    This is the first I've heard of BrowserUK's departure, and the news saddens me. Has he left a (public) statement anywhere regarding his reason(s) for leaving or for removing his past contributions?
Re: In praise for a better community -- Vere papa mortuus est
by harangzsolt33 (Chaplain) on Jun 08, 2019 at 04:03 UTC
    I didn't know that when a perlmonk closes his account or deletes his/her account, then all of the posts made by that person are deleted automatically. That's kind of a bad design. The posts should not go away! The user should have the ability to remove them BEFORE he deletes his account. But if he doesn't, then the posts should stay.
      I didn't know that when a perlmonk closes his account or deletes his/her account, then all of the posts made by that person are deleted automatically.

      They aren't.

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