I don't see anyone coming to your defense.  Do you?

  Why do you think that you are _not_ part of the problem?  How come
  your abuse is perfectly OK and that posting articles with intensely
  inflammatory subject lines line "naggum-mine" is not indicative of a
  person who has arrived at the amazingly self-destructive notion that
  he has no effect on the world at all so he can do anything he wants
  without incurring the slighest judgment of hypocrisy or ridicule?

  If you had any self-esteem at all, "PhD" Raffael Cavallaro, you would
  not be able to believe that you do not affect people with your rants
  and personal attacks.  Just like that insane stalker Marcus G. Daniels
  who actually believes that posting hundreds of condescending and
  disrespectful messages has _no_ effect on the forum, you suffer from a
  moral displacement: You think the evil you commit is somebody else's
  fault and that you can blame him for everything _you_ commit.  Here's
  a surprise for you: You can't.  _Only_ the criminally insane believe
  that their actions are _caused_ by someone else and that they are
  _not_ responsible for their own actions.  No normally matured person
  can even hold the idea in his head for a second that "look what you
  made me do" is a valid excuse for _anything_.

  Let me know when you have matured beyond kindergarten and have moved
  up the evolutionary ladder to something that can take responsibility
  for its own actions, will you?  So far, all I can relate to is a sick
  person who has a deep personal need to blame me for his emotional
  problems, and that, frankly, is intensely disgusting to behold.

  Yes, they do it, too.  No dispute there.  However, it is quite typical
  of your lacking mental ability to mistake this for a valid implication.
  Do you really have a PhD?  From where?  McDonald's Burger University?

| When you hurt another person, it is, by definition "personal."

  Yes, this is also true, but it is because some people choose to take
  things personally that they get hurt.  You swap cause and effect, just
  like one expects from a "people person" who can't think worth a high
  school diploma, much less a PhD.

| The fact that you think it is not shows how profoundly out of touch
| you are with the social reality around you.

  No, it doesn't.  You would need a lot more than that "fact" to show
  anything like that, but we have already established that you feel that
  single data points are better than many because you can extrapolate in
  your favarite direction from the single data point, and not from many.

| "People like Raffael give _people_ in general way too much importance,"
| implies that technical matters of common lisp are more important than
| the people discussing them, and this is clearly false, because without
| these people, there simply is no discussion.

  Without breathable air, there wouldn't be any people, so clearly we
  should be concerned about the environment and work very hard to reduce
  solar activity and CO2 emissions from photosynthesis instead of
  talking about programming computers that only contribute to the
  displacement of heat into the athmosphere.

| Erik's style of discourse is so hurtful that many people are driven
| from the discussion altogether.

  This doesn't even apply to yourself since you return so often with the
  same old rants, so do you even have a single data point to extrapolate
  from this time?  Have you gotten signed papers that allow you to be
  the advocate of the "many people" you claim to speak on behalf of?  Or
  do we have yet another moron who feels entitled to speak for others?

| People are always more important than technical discussions, because
| what really is the point of technical discussions - some absract
| exercise in mental masturbation?

  No, that would have been _your_ point if you didn't discuss people.
  Well, it seems it is your point even when you do, since there's no
  discernible contents anywhere in what you keep ranting about.

| No, the point of technical discussions is to learn to use technology
| to serve people better.

  And you serve them better with your personal attacks, I presume.  I'm
  so impressed with your ability to stuff all of your four furry feet
  into your mouth at the same time.  Serve people better -- SHUT UP!

| One does not learn to serve people better by gratuitously abusing
| their feelings in a relatively insignificant technical discussion.

  So stop doing it, or is it better not to have any technical discussion
  at all while doing it, like you do?  But why do you exempt me from
  your rules?  Why can't I make up my own rules about whom I think
  deserves to be hurt when you can do it and feel so strongly about it
  that you are fucking blinded by your hatred?  As long as you post your
  insane hostilities, you validate and legitimize everything I have ever
  done and ever might do, because you prove that it is _correct_ to hurt
  people who do something you don't like.  If you don't like this and
  have the retarded emotional response that I'm hypocritical, you are
  reacting and behaving like an outsider to what you do here.  I'm not,
  so as the outsider, you should refrain from any shred of hostility,
  and that includes Marcus G. Danielisms, passive aggressiveness, etc.
  See if you can calm down completely and consider if you have anything
  worth posting when you have done so.  Posting an insane attack on me
  for the fourty billionth time is not a sign of your good mental health
  but is in fact detrimental to your ability to do something that might
  actually be conducive to your goals, if you _have_ any goals except
  shooting your wad off into cyberspace, of course.

| Erik's narrow minded focus on what is technically correct at the
| expense of other people's feelings displays a foolish lack of
| perspective on technical matters and their place in the world.

  I don't have any focus on what is technically correct.  I do have a
  focus on avoiding technical mistakes.  If you do not understand the
  difference, return your PhD for kindergarten vouchers and try to learn
  this time around that you are encouraged and rewarded for any kind of
  constructive activity and punished for any kind of destructive
  activity, you are _not_ punished unless you do some _specific_ things.
  I must wonder if you have ever managed to learn anything from anybody
  else at all the way you manage to miss the point.  Oh, of course, the
  people stuff -- You sucked up to your teachers and advisers and got
  some other impressionable people-person to do the real work for you?

  I do have a focus on precision.  You are out of focus, the antithesis
  of precision.  Blurred nonsense is better for people than precision,
  because precision requires thought and care and not everybody can
  "share" in that elitist requirement, so you have naturally optimized
  yourself towards blurred nonsense and you _succeed_, too, but that
  does _not_ mean anybody has to applaud your success or agree with your
  goal.  In fact, most people consider senile dementia or Alzheimer a
  disaster to a working brain, but maybe you can donate your brain to
  such research and argue that they should find ways to _give_ you those
  illnesses so you can become a _better_ blurry people-person.

| Technolgy, and discussions of it exist _only_ because they are useful
| to people, not the other way around.

  That is your opinion.  I'm just aching to see Marcus G. Daniels come
  rushing to my rescue with "enforce one guy's particular definition of
  technology", but he's probably been taken care of by now.

  You need to figure out that not all people are Raffael Cavallaros and
  you should probably ask for medication to help calm you down while you
  listen very carefully to people who explain in monosyllabic words that
  you are not ruling the world and not deciding what's true or false.

  If you cannot even manage to keep your calm when you disagree over
  which is more important of people and technology and breathable air,
  there's a word for you: Lunatic.  Since you keep ranting and raving
  about the exact same thing no matter what happens, you already fit one
  major criterion for an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  Now, let me see how a mature PhD can calm down and post something that
  does not hurt or irritate me, because you most certainly understand
  that such reactions are all _your_ fault when you try to blame me for
  how everybody under the sun feels hurt by what I do.

  What really irritates me about such retards as Raffael Cavallaro is
  that they would have been perfectly OK as pets if they only packaged
  that useless brain in a lap dog.  Reincarnation is so cruel sometimes.

  You have a _choice_ to take this personally or not, punk.  If you do
  not have that choice, recycle yourself immediately.  A lonely old lady
  in Florida who regrets indenting for Buchanan needs a lap dog, _now_!

  Since I maybe think it's a mistake to think that people ought to have
  engaged their brain if they actually manage to _write_ anything in a
  complex language like English, here's a simple clue for PhDs who have
  not quite grasped that scientific method: There are questions that you
  could ask that go approximately like this: "What did I (i.e., Raffael
  Cavallaro) do to cause this reaction?  What else can I do?  Will it
  cause a different reaction if I do ...?"  Fill in the ... with one of
  the incredibly obvious options that someone who can manage to cow-tow
  with an adviser and fullfill academic requirements _must_ see by now.

  Now, I don't really think you have the brains of a lap dog, I just
  wish the yapping from my neighbor's retarded mutt was less irritating
  than you are, so it seemed fitting to swap you two and lo and behold,
  it shut up.  I think you would make a _smart_ lap dog.

Let me rephrase your question in a way that puts it in the perspective
I see it:

  ``We're talking about a man who, on channel 51943776 of your TV at 4am
  on Sunday morning, asked someone to commit suicide.  How can any
  reasonable person not expect such behavior to drive people away?'' asked
  Raffael Cavallero, reporter for CBS 60 Minutes in the tag scene of his
  expose show "People who would be driving people away if only I called
  enough attention to it that they would be offended".

I see it that you're promoting a very annoying but highly obscure situation
to the foreground, and then concluding it's having mass effect.  The claim
it's annoying is true, but the original situation isn't the cause of any
mass effect -- you are.  Just as surely as a largely constant crime rate isn't
makig people feel unsafe in the US as much as primetime media coverage at
close range of every bloody body that does come along.  The "if it bleeds,
it leads" philosophy of news has done nothing to make people safer, and has
meanwhile caused enormous anxiety about something that cannot be changed.

I don't doubt Erik is upsetting particular people he's chatting with.  I wish
he wouldn't do it.  But I have no power to affect it, and his responses
in this discussion pretty much confirm that no one does.  If he hasn't
responded to peer pressure on this by now, he's not going to.

Erik annoys some people, but he helps a lot of people technically,
too.   And while that doesn't excuse what I agree is occasionally annoying,
it does make me willing to tolerate it.  

I myself am used to being frequently labeled annoying.  I've tried my
whole career to get better at it, but it comes withthe territory of
being strong-willed.  I may not swear at people, but they get pissed off
just the same.  I don't like pissing them off, but I don't find it easy to
avoid in all circumstances.  I just deal with the aftermath when I find it.
I don't think people should like that I annoy them, but I do think they
should sometimes tolerate it more than they do.   And I think the same of
Erik.  You can make a list of all the greats of CS, and almost to a one, I
can tell you for the ones I know many times they have been obnoxious and
pissy to people, both in public and private.  It is not a trait to be
emulated, but I'm not so sure that the reason for that is the often-cited
one.   Emulating pissiness doesn't make you a great thinker.  But great
thinkers can be single-minded, driven, impatient, focused, etc., and the
other stuff, while maybe not causal, may be side-effect.  In choosing
which of these people to eschew, I look to the whole of the person.  Yes,
we should ask them to moderate, but in private.  And yes, we should learn
to tolerate, if we want what they have to offer.  Otherwise, we may not
be being fair.

I will make one further remark, going seriously out on a limb and risking
pissing off some people myself, perhaps just for comradery with Erik.
But in examining the whole of the person, and I won't say specifically
which people I mean--this isn't in specific response to Raffael's message
in other words--there are some in this discussion who while they are incensed,
are also not prone to contribute much technically.  The world does not need
everyone to contribute.  I enjoy just chatting with people and being social.
But I find this thread as annoying as many find Erik, and on balance I don't
find some people sustaining this thread to contribute what Erik contributes.
So when I consider the whole of the thing, some people are, taken in the
large, not seen as positively, at least by me, as they imagine.  

Anyways, jfrank801 before me already made the point just fine.

Now, I can agree with you that as a general approach, it's better to
killfile an asshole than to continue a thread with him or her.  That's
what I keep recommending in my sig.  

But the situation in cll is a constant, perpetual thing.  And so of
course it sometimes erupts, because people just get tired of this
constant garbage and shoot back.  And I certainly can't blame them.

Was is deliberate that you used the word "rights"?

Supposing it wasn't, I understand your point but I don't agree.  

As just evidenced, Erik is so often within a small nudge of writing
pages and pages of these characteristic delusional & narcissistic diatribes.

I believe that Erik is not the sort of person that should just have
his way because he says some smart things.  There are few, if any,
unstable people that valuable.

EN> No normally matured person can even hold the idea in his head for
EN> a second that "look what you made me do" is a valid excuse for
EN> _anything_.

It depends on what "made" means.  If it means "you hurt my feelings
and now I'm going to hurt you", then it's not a terribly mature way to
respond.  If it means "we have different values and you act in a way
that will influence the satisfaction of my preferences in a highly
negative way", then it is entirely appropriate to expect resistance or
a counter-response.  Like, _dooh_.  

Actually what I said was "As you've observed, I've been following your posts".
The non-presumptuous and more-literal way to read that is, "I've been
following-up after your posts".  The context being that I was specifically
focused on these threads regarding your response to criticism about being
abusive.

btw, i have a marvellous suggestion that should help  minimize these
endless "i hate naggum" threads: everybody who feels like that put him
in their killfiles or ignore his messages whenever they encounter
them.  the percentage of lisp related messages in this ng would
benefit from that

  No, the hostile atmosphere is not caused by me in _any_ way.  I do not
  address the "atmosphere", but individual people and individual actions
  of these people.  The people who address the atmosphere and who attack
  people are Marcus G. Daniels, Raffael Cavallaro, Tom Breton, and such
  random vermin as Israel Thomas.  I am not responsible, nor could I
  ever be, for the kind of articles you USENET terrorists post.  You
  must grow up to take responsibility for your own actions.  You cannot
  blame anyone else for what you do.  The kind of provocation you can
  claim just "happen" to you in real life does not happen in a written
  medium.  You have the option of refraining from responding, of
  delaying your response until you calm down, of responding in ways that
  reflect who you want to be, option you do not have in a bar brawl,
  say, because of the physical and immediate nature of the conflict.  If
  you do not understand this, as I suspect you guys never will, neither
  will you understand your own role in perpetuating the hostilities like
  the kinds of apes that form street gangs and fight over their honor.

  Now, the most interesting thing here is how the USENET terrorists Tom
  Breton, Marcus G. Deniels, Raffael Cavallaro and such random vermin as
  Israel Thomas defend their evil.  They do not address actions in a way
  that it is possible to change anything and have their evil stop.  It
  has always been inordinately simple and straight-forward to stop my
  criticism, but it amazes me that the moron terrorists do not grasp it.
  Do not post _your_ personal attacks.  I don't attack out of the blue.
  I never have and I never will.  People who want to push my buttons
  know exactly what to do, and I'm accused of being very predictable by
  those who try, such as Marcus G. Deniels, who does it for his own
  insane and perverse "enjoyment".  You can't accuse people of being
  predictable and at the same time claim that they do something without
  reason.  But Marcus G. Daniels is the kind of person who does that.
  Tom Breton is the kind of person who does that.  Raffael Cavallaro is
  the kind of person who does that.  Take a good, close look at the
  first article that leaking douchebag Israel Thomas ever posted to
  comp.lang.lisp and you must _be_ Tom Breton if you do not understand
  what kind of personality we are dealing with in that instance.  I
  cannot _possibly_ be responsible for such first attacks on me.  I have
  no _possible_ way of preventing it, modifying it, _anything_.  Only a
  criminally nsane person like Tom Breton could even _think_ of blaming
  me for that first hostile article.  The hostile atmosphere was and is
  the responsibility of people like Marcus G. Daniels, who thrive on
  making other people hate and disrespect who he hates and disrespects.
  His _goal_ is to create hostile atmospheres where some people are
  attacked.  Israel Thomas is the evidence that he succeeds.  That Tom
  Breton rears his ugly head and Raffael Cavallaro thinks it's OK to
  come back with more of his unique hostility is the fault of people who
  try to work the forum up to hate and disrespect people.  The moral
  culpability lies with such instigators, and the morons who respond,
  that is, pathetic shit-for-brains like Israel Thomas, probably have no
  mental capacity to understand how they got into their emotional state
  to begin with.  If they did, they would be ashamed of it and stop it.

  The people who work up the hostile atmosphere are those who keep it up
  after every conceivable reason for doing so is gone.  I have made it
  very, very clear that people have an opportunity to do something else.
  I am explicit about it in every single conflict.  People like Tom
  Breton do not understand this, not because they distrust _me_, but
  because they distrust _themselves_.  They are are hateful, revengeful,
  and harbor a certainty about their emotional prejudices that defines
  madness and insanity.  On top of it, they are massively uintelligent
  under pressure, so any ability they would otherwise be able to invoke
  to change their minds is disconnected.  Such people usually grow up to
  be criminals, gang members, rapists, football hooligans, wife beaters,
  street protesters who destroy property in blind rage, etc.  The very
  important distinction between normal people and such anti-social scum
  is that only by thinking do they refrain from violence and other forms
  of disrespect for other people and their property, so when they lose
  their ability to think, nothing keeps them back, anymore.  Normally
  matured and socially responsible people actually have an _emotional_
  restriction against violence and injustice and disrespect for people
  and property.  It's what we call _conscience_.  The kinds of people
  who have to keep thinking in order to stop themselves from harming
  others do not actually _have_ a conscience.  If you have to _think_
  about whether to hit somebody when verbally provoked, you _will_ hit
  when you feel sufficiently provoked.  If your emotional response is
  _not_ to hit, you don't have to think about it.  Pretty simple, yet
  overlooked by people who normally believe that thinking is much more
  important than feeling.  Such people talk about _controlling_ one's
  emotions.  I submit that the normal, healthy, mature human being does
  not _have_ feelings that need to be controlled.  Those who control
  their emotions through conscious processes actually _fear_ their own
  emotions and will respond with extreme _hostility_ to people who argue
  that no such control is necessary if you are good person.  That is why
  Tom Breton's first inclination is to distrust.

| Why should anybody else believe that?

  Distrust without due cause is a symptom of destructive personalities.

| You seem to be trying hard not to understand the point.  You assert
| several times that Erik's doing good, when IMO it's patently obvious
| he is doing great harm.  I can't break thru a wall of denial like that.

  No, just like the facts cannot be broken through by your distrust.

  The day you realize that you _may_ be wrong is the day you have a new
  hope of becoming an honest human being.  Until then, the "wall of
  denial" sadly applies to he who erects it, not he who identifies it.

| But the situation in cll is a constant, perpetual thing.

  I think we need to keep this statement very clearly in mind.  This is
  how Tom Breton sees the situation.  Marcus G. Daniels has a similarly
  deranged and distorted view of both me and the newsgroup.  These guys
  do not see what they do not want to see.  We have a long-term resident
  in comp.lang.lisp who also expressed exactly similar attitudes some
  time ago, but I was deeply impressed when he understood that he did
  harbor an image of me that prevented him from seeing what actually
  happened, and simply stopped doing it.  That has happened to a dozen
  people over the past two dozen years

| And so of course it sometimes erupts, because people just get tired of
| this constant garbage and shoot back.  And I certainly can't blame
| them.

  That's surprisingly honest of you, and we need to keep this in mind as
  a literal statement of how you think and feel, too.  No, _you_ most
  certainly can't "blame" the right person for his actions.  Everybody
  else should, and probably do.  The idea that provocation is a license
  to initiate violence is held only by people who _want_ a license from
  somebody else to initiate violence.  The idea that it is OK to open
  fire on somebody (the degree of violence is determined not by the
  principle but by the "provocation") you don't like simply because you
  claim to be "provoked" is proof of a personality that is a threat to
  public safety.  Tom Breton has a criminal mind with no concept of
  justice and fairness.  One must expect him, like Marcus G. Daniels, to
  commit acts of actual physical destruction because of his _admitted_
  inability to take responsibility for his own actions and his
  extraordinary willingness to exonerate and excuse others when they
  attack a target he harbors hatred and emotional prejudice towards.
  Such is behavior and thinking we find in street thugs and mobsters,
  but such people are also allowed on USENET.  The results are what we
  see from Tom Breton, Raffael Cavallaro, and Marcus G. Daniels, and the
  overall result is that random vermin like Isreal Thomas feel that is
  OK to post their braindamaged shit and to keep feeling enraged despite
  absence of anything concrete that could explain it.  Irrational and
  destructive minds like that need the Marcus G. Danielsses of the world
  to feel OK, and Tom Breton and Raffael Cavallaro keep them whipped up
  in that anti-intelligent, anti-justice, anti-rational, anti-ethical
  emotional state.  If these emotionally disturbed lunatics could snap
  out of it and start to _think_, there wouldn't be any hostility, and
  the Marcus G. Danielses of the world would again become invisible.

  I take that as an apology for the errors of your ways, but assume that
  you are able to pull yourself together only when the risks to yourself
  and your personal freedom because of your actions finally dawn on you.
  As I have said on numerous occasions, some people start to think only
  when the pain of doing so is less than the pain of not doing so.

User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.0.92

When did Gnus 5.9.0 come out? I downloaded a snapshot the other day
and it was only 5.8.7

  You yourself suffer from such an amazing level of intolerance towards
  me that you should know what you're talking about, but I disagree.  It
  is only in the long run that our ability to deal with other people's
  different opinions and their deep caring for their values _can_ be
  sustainable, but accepting that people do care about different things
  and do _not_ accept that other people trash and denounce their values
  constitues _respect_ for people.  You have the kind of reprehensible
  personality that is capable of disrespecting people, and you are even
  proud of that.

  It is not intolerance, but disrespect for people, that cannot and must
  not be tolerated.  One must at all times maintain extreme intolerance
  towards disrespect for people, life, and property, and that is just
  what the legal systems of the Western civilization are designed to do
  -- the uniformity of these principles across so many cultures should
  be a warning sign to personalities like yours, but you have probably
  never thought about such things.  No criminal mind has the conceptual
  framework to think about what it means to set up systems where due
  procedure and laws have precedence over revenge and hatred -- that is
  what differentiates the criminal mind from the law-abiding citizen who
  understands on an emotional and fairly direct level that justice does
  not entail vendettas against people some insane stalker like you
  simply do not like.  Cultures that thrive on hatred and revenge have
  yet to develop legal systems that protect individual freedom, too, and
  I don't think they will.  Some cultures are just too evil to evolve
  the concepts of freedom and rights.  And you belong to such a culture.

  Society rests on the fundamental premise that even if we do not agree
  on the concrete values, we agree that it is wrong to smear people,
  destroy property, and kill over our differences.  Those who do not
  agree with this, and you do not, Marcus G. Daniels, are a danger to
  any society of law and justice.  You belong in a lawless society where
  it would be perfectly legitimate to kill you for your disrespect, and
  you are a sad and pathetic misfit in a society based on law.  I doubt
  that you can change that part of your personality and therefore your
  disrespect must not be tolerated at _any_ time.  If you keep up the
  apology of your past evil ways and actually manage to stay "clinical
  and unemotional" remains to be seen, of course, but I'm always happy
  to see even the vilest, most reprehensible, most disgusting piece of
  shit turn around and change his behavior in the future.  It does not
  change the past and I do not believe in forgiving, but as long as you
  do not relapse, I have no reason to continue to think of you in the
  ways and terms you deserve for that past.  I do not, however, think
  you have the mental ability to understand that by your own admission,
  you do not extend this _resepct_ towards me, which makes the evil of
  your past unforgivable to those who have a concept of forgiveness.

  In other words, since I believe your mind has serious problems in
  accepting input that does not fir your preconceptions, you can never
  be tolerated for what _you_ do, so just do something else.  Start now.

EN> that I have a criminally insane stalker named Marcus G. Daniels
EN> out there who has actually lost the ability to consider others as
EN> human beings, is a _little_ easier to deal with than if you were
EN> sane and smart and just plain evil, which I thought at first.

Now come on, don't hold back, tell us what you really think!

Damn, and I always preferred to think of myself as the loyal opposition...

  Thank you for yet more data on your personality.  So this is what you
  think keeping your word to deal with me "clinically and unemotionally"
  means!  Thank you for showing us how much _ability_ you have to keep
  your word.  Very interesting.  Very interesting, indeed.  I had really
  thought you would have avoided the most obvious confirmations of what
  I have been saying about you, but I'm welcoming more of same if you
  keep it up, so all people can see that you _can't_ wipe that moronic
  grin off your own face -- it's your natural state and that mean and
  menacing look is all you manage when you try to be serious, and fail.

Put simply it is "I'm going to pound some sense into him/her."

Lacking the ability to giving a convincing argument, Erik just pounds
away at someone using verbal violence until they get tired of trying to
respond rationally and give up.  Erik considers this a victory just like
a wife abuser considers it a victory when his spouse retreats in fear.

The newgroup is unmoderated so there is nothing we can do can stop Erik
from ranting on this newsgroup but we should not condone it.  The next
time Erik goes off on someone asking a simple question people should
post messages asking Erik to grow up and act like an adult.  Of course
the first person to post such a message will get blasted, but if enough
people post Erik _might_ get the idea that he's at fault and he _might_
learn something.

The fact is that even if Erik _never_ said a smart thing, we would
have no control over his postings.  It may not seem fair, but it
appears to be true that the best way to avoid his lengthy exercises in
self-justification is to stop arguing with him about ethics, social
consequences, etc.  Moreover, just as you're unlikely to alter Erik's
thinking, you're unlikely to alter other people's thinking about him.
We've drawn our own conclusions.

If you think Erik has taken a cheap shot at someone -- something
outside the proper bounds of a comp.lang newsgroup -- it's fine by me
to say so.  When Erik posts his rebuttal explaining the lofty
principles behind his post, I urge you to ignore it.  Trust others to
make their own judgments.  Once you're sucked into an argument about
it, then IMHO you become part of the problem.  

Let's see if I have the guts to take my own advice.

In the past, I've tried to compress my objections into short remarks
for just that reason.

To summarize:

I think he has and will set the tone here, and it won't be a nice one.

I think he has and will alienate people for no good reason, other than to
satisfy his self-centered impulses.

I think a consequence of accomodating Erik has and will be that
visitors will the sense that the Lisp community is smaller and more
homogeneous than it is.  [Yes, some people will be attracted to the
freak-show aspect of the conversation here, but many will dismiss it.
Many will be unwilling to wade-through the overloaded language and
endure the constant and unnecessar harshness.]

Further, I think he has and will be accomodated, not for his knowledge
of Lisp, but because discouraging his abusiveness seems difficult and
unrealistic.

I have come to think these things after being subjected to Erik's
careless whims for many years in a variety of contexts.  It is not, as
Erik suggests, a conclusion I came to hastily and now require for
psychological reasons.  (But I guess you'd expect that answer from a
criminally-insane stalker, eh?)

  Why do you think it is smart to say so much about your personality,
  and your inability to separate scary fantasies from fact?  Don't you
  have _any_ understanding of what people who read this shit will think
  about _you_?  Or is that why you post from an essentially anonymous
  account?

  I wonder, though: Have you, too, been deeply personally impressed, as
  in: deeply emotionally disturbed and agitated, by Marcus G. Daniels'
  rhetoric and now think I'm fair game for any sort of completely insane
  accusation and that you are free of all responsibility for your own
  unspeakably bad actions?

  And to what depths _do_ you guys sink when you lose control and feel
  justified in attacking people?  I have done _nothing_ bad, _ever_,
  compared to what you people do towards me!  The sheer insanity of the
  fucking _lynch_mobs_ that you guys form to gang up on me shows that
  criminally insane stalkers like Marcus G. Daniels and his ilk are the
  ones who _really_ create a hostile environment here where disrespect
  for people is the core undertone.  This is the kind of newsgroup that
  Marcus G. Daniels wants.

| The newgroup is unmoderated so there is nothing we can do can stop
| Erik from ranting on this newsgroup but we should not condone it.

  Should we condone _your_ rants?  Please be _honest_ when you answer.

  I think this newsgroup has a choice.  Either the Marcus G. Daniels
  asylum/fan club takes over and we have people like this lunatic post
  accusations from his perverse fantasy world against any and everybody
  without any possible clue what he's talking about, or I'm right: The
  Marcus G. Daniels asylum/fan club needs to be driven out for good.

  What do I "learn" from this?  I learn that some people are insane and
  go completely nuts when _they_ find something they don't like.  They
  attack without warning, which is what the Marcus G. Daniels fan club
  wants to _portray_ me as doing so these nutcrackers feel justified in
  doing the same.  There is nothing I can possibly _do_ that would make
  these lunatics stop what they are doing and go away.  People like
  Marcus G. Daniels needs to go away, because he and his ilk are driving
  the nutballs up the wall and encouraging them to do what they do.  By
  posting so much disrespectful bile that other vermin who have the same
  inclination as him to stop thinking of other people as _people_ can
  attack me in ways that no person who has any conscience at all ever
  could.

  This is _your_ world, Marcus G. Daniels.  A world where people who
  disrespect _people_ roam the streets and beat people up.  Are you
  happy, now?  Does your disrespect for me go so far that you condone
  your disciples?  Are you happy with your own anti-Naggum "cult" of
  supporting lunatics?  What exactly does it take for you to realize
  what _you_ do to this forum?

Since he will almost certainly not caused him to retreat, and since
you probably knew (or should have known) that he would not, why are
you wasting space on this newsgroup with this kind of talk?

 - Send him private e-mail registering your opinion.
 - Watch for affected people, and advise them to ignore Erik's ire
   in cases that you find it unwarranted.
 - Ignore Erik.
 - Boycott the newsgroup, hoping someone will care.
   (I do this periodically on issues that matter to me, though
   people seem to do little more than send me mail saying they wish
   I would return.  It never seems to result, as I might naively expect,
   in people complaining to the party that drove me away.  Your mileage
   might vary, though.)

Will you, upon learning that I'm taking a vacation from this newsgroup
to protest your protest, have learned that you have also caused
damage through your actions, or will you, like him, just decide it's ok
for you to have had the ill effect you had because you think you are acting
righteously?  And who will be the judge?

This is a free speech forum.  
See http://world.std.com/~pitman/pfaq/usenet-freedom.html
Silence here does not give consent. Consent, such as it is, is given
by virtue of your acceptance of the (non)rules of the forum
itself, since no poster can be denied.  This is exactly in order to
assure that the conversational style doesn't sink to the least common
denominator.  If everyone who disagreed with any given poster's morals
spoke out, there would be nothing but the sound of the offended drowning
out all else.  This forum, by its nature, calls for the offended to
learn tools (such as killfiles) to protect themselves.  This forum is,
by its nature, not for the weak hearted.

I don't think it's the case with Erik, by the way, but in most cases I've
seen, getting beaten up by a mass of people is what the offending person
wants anyway.  It gives them  sense of attention and a consequent sense
of power and only feeds the cycle.  Being ignored is much more effective.
But I don't think that dynamic is in play here.

It is too bad that Erik offends people.  I wish he wouldn't.
It is too bad that you offend people by wasting public time on what
you have no power to change.  I wish you wouldn't, too.

AND it is also too bad that I have probably offended others by behaving
hypocritically and compounding what I believe to be your mistake.
Rather than engage in further discussion of this, I'm going to just
do what I promised before I would do if this thread continued, and
opt out of this newsgroup for the rest of the calendar year, or until
the anti-Erik threads all subside, in the unlikely event that happens
first.  (Then again, if it doesn't happen first, I don't promise to
return next year.  I'd just get dragged back into it and I woldn't
like myself for it.)

I sometimes enjoy posting here, so this is part penalty to me.  I
sometimes do not enjoy it, and you are causing such a situation, so in
that regard this is part vacation.  It's a definite gray area.

I'm mostly just dismayed that you sucked me into responding yet again,
since I know better than to realistically think my words will have
been effectual, I apologize to the community for having wasted further
bandwidth on this topic.  I hope that no one will waste further words
about me in similar kind, whether to applaud me or to chastise me.
This newsgroup should be about Lisp, not about the public berating of
individual posters.  Such communication, if it needs to be done at
all, can take place over e-mail where it doesn't pollute the archives
and everyone's newsreading experience.

  Well, _you_ have set the tone here, too, and it _is_ not a nice one.

  A forum with people who gang up on others with insane accusations in
  the spirit of _your_ disrespect and hostility must appeal to you since
  you keep it up, but I wonder how it is possible for someone concerned
  about how _others_ influence a forum to neglect his _own_ role.

| I think he has and will alienate people for no good reason, other than
| to satisfy his self-centered impulses.

  Well, rather than alienate people, you bring in the lunatics with
  _your_ tone.  That is _much_ worse.  I don't know about self-centered.
  It's such an incredibly childish thing to say, but I guess _you_ know.

| Further, I think he has and will be accomodated, not for his knowledge
| of Lisp, but because discouraging his abusiveness seems difficult and
| unrealistic.

  Just as you have been and will be "accomodated" because you think you
  are even _more_ justified in posting your _purely_ destructive shit
  than I am in posting _technical_ corrections and urging people not to
  post guesses, untested code, etc.  I have a very clear objective, and
  it is only people like you and Tom Breton who actively distrust it,
  but when it is satisfied, I'm actually happy about it.  I have no idea
  what your objective is.  Would anything at all make you happy and shut
  up, short of my violent death at your hands, of course?

  Please tell the forum what would make you happy and satisfied that you
  have reached your goals.  I think that would be fascinating to hear.

| I have come to think these things after being subjected to Erik's
| careless whims for many years in a variety of contexts.

  You get what you ask for.  You have been attacking me out of the blue
  for as long as I can remember, with an endless stream of snide remarks.
  What do you really _expect_ with _your_ behavior?  Why do you fail to
  realize that your actions cause reactions in kind from other people?

| For a while, I was sympathetic to Erik because he does say things that
| ring true.  However, I came to realize he also says things that are
| utterly misguided and wrong.  Worse, the weaker his position the more
| violent, aggressive, and circular his arguments become.

  Then how come your best response is a snide remark?  One must wonder.
  People who make such broad generalizations as you do have never come
  up with any actual evidence of what is "utterly misguided and wrong",
  or even what would be _right_.  It is mere opinion, and the hostility
  that such people have towards me is not a very good indicator of the
  truth of _their_ claim, is it?  Failure to deal with differences of
  opinion through the kind of sniper attacks with endless reems of snide
  remarks and hostility-breeding attitudes that you have kept going for
  years and years does not exactly _convince_ anyone that you're right.
  All it does is convince people that if I want away or shut up, you'd
  be free to post _your_ "opinion" without response from people who know
  better.  If this sounds familiar to the Tom Breton optimization case,
  well, that is _no_ surprise, is it?  And see how he went off the deep
  end, just like you have.  People who are wrong and dead set never to
  change their mind no matter what happens do turn into lunatics who
  attack me for anything and everything and exaggerate like madmen about
  their problems with me.  But their problem is with _my_ unwillingness
  to accept their bogus stories.  Apparently that is something we share,
  only you're too fucking retarded to realize it.

  On the other hand, I wonder what the hell is wrong with saying things
  that are "utterly misguided and wrong".  Are you disappointed that I'm
  not _perfect_?  Hell, _I'm_ not even disappointed that I'm not perfect.
  With all this bullshit about cults, self-centered, etc, I conclude
  that you have cast me as a cult leader cum guru who has _betrayed_ you
  by not always posting brilliant and superbly correct answers.

  But seriously, are there _anyone_ on this planet that, in some _other_
  people's views, do _not_ say things that are "utterly misguided and
  wrong"?  Even on a regular basis?  What kind of people live up to your
  demand that they _never_ say anything that is utterly misguided and
  wrong?  Is this really how you have such fucked-up ideas about people
  _enforcing_ conformance to definitions?  What kind of lunacy is _that_?

  Yes, I say things that Marcus G. Daniels thinks is utterly misguided
  and wrong.  He responds with snide remarks and broad generalizations.
  Take your pick.  If he can't be bothered to do something constructive
  and has to try to tarnish people for failing to live up to his weird
  requirements, what he considers "utterly misguided and wrong" may just
  be correct for everyone else.  There's no way of knowing, though.

I would be satisfied if you started saying, "no, that's wrong, and
here's why .." instead of "you fucking moron why don't you kill
yourself?   No, wait, first I want an apology from your mother for ever
giving birth to that disgusting little imbecile."  

 Most of us here are professional programmers.  We do our job well
because
we've learned the rules that govern programming.  This forum is not
a program however, it's a discusion group.  What rules should we use
in this forum?  To answer that the smart person will seek out the
people who do discussion and debate for a living and ask what rules
they use.  These people are the politicians.  If you've watched
good political debate you note one thing: all participants are
exceedingly polite.  They will use phrases like "the distinguished
representative from Vermont" rather than "the flaming asshole".
By being polite to eachother they remove the emotion and leave
only the logic to their arguments.  This allows information to
transferred, compromises to be made and no one's pride is damaged.

  If we were to use this technique here then we too would get more
information transferred and could have long debates with no one
feeling offended or fearful of putting in their two cents.

 Erik has stated that this is not how he plans on operating.  Anyone
who says something stupid (i.e. who disagrees with Erik) will get
flamed so as to fry the stupidity out of them (i.e. until they
agree with Erik or leave the newsgroup).    This is not conducive
to having any kind of discussion.

 My point is that we should let Erik know that we don't appreciate
his behavior when he follows through on his scorched newgroup plan.
Email privately to Erik isn't going to help, nor will flaming
Erik back.  Instead just politely tell him that you would appreciate
him acting in a more civilized manner.  Many people have privately
told me that they appreciate my making this point, but private email
to me isn't going to convince Erik.  Everyone has to stand
and be counted.

 I would consider a 'victory' being Erik staying with the newsgroup
and his posts arguing using logic rather that personal attacks.

JF> Erik's reasoning is the same as that of wife beaters and child abusers.

KP> Appealing to this kind metaphor in this context trivializes the notion
KP> of what such abuse is.  Don't do it.

Let's encourage Erik to stop it as well, then:

EN> It has always been inordinately simple and straight-forward to stop my
EN> criticism, but it amazes me that the moron terrorists do not grasp it.

KP> Failing to use newsgroup bandwith about this is not "condoning" it.
KP> Numerous avenues are available to you which do not involve the newsgroup:
KP> - Send him private e-mail registering your opinion.

We've seen how he responds to that.  With a single e-mail, you'll get
"stop harassing me, I'll call the police" or he'll use it as something
indefinite and inaccessible to exaggerate about, as in the most recent case.

KP> Behavior like that which bothers you is often not the result of
KP> conscious choice, and hence is often more invisible to the person
KP> doing it than you probably imagine.

Then it is all the more important to point-out the objectionable behavior --
to make it visible.

JF> Of course the first person to post such a message will get
JF> blasted, but if enough people post Erik _might_ get the idea that
JF> he's at fault and he _might_ learn something.

KP> And if he doesn't?  What might he learn?  That he is driving people away?
KP> He has said he thinks he's doing it righteously.

It is easy to keep thinking that, so long as a cost is not exposed to him.

KP> Who is to be the judge of that.  

Anyone that wants to step up to bat.

KP> This is a free speech forum.