- for me.
  Naggum is the long gone London Smog.
  You can't see through.
  You can't move forward unless you take extreme precautions.
  Any long term plan is hampered by not knowing whether you'll
  be able to carry your next move.
  He is the tree that hides the forest from your perspective.

- for Lisp
  Such lengthy and repeated diarrhoeas that Naggum soils c.l.l
  with just reinforce the impression that, rather than concise
  and clear thinking minds, unstructured, belligerent, ego centred
  and immature know-nothing-but-claim-loudly-otherwise (morons in
  short) constitute the bulk of the Common Lisp community. Not
  a very flattering association.

- for comp.lang.lisp
  The very purpose of the comp.lang.* hierarchy is to _share_,
  not to _exclude_. Yet, Naggum spends most of his active writing
  time annoying people (to say the least), and then turning many
  lurkers out. "I don't know whether Lisp is any good, but
  comp.lang.lisp is just such a content-free zone, filled with
  Trolls, Naggums, and other have-nothing-better-to-do-in-life" is
  an actual quote from colleagues at work.

So, if you agree with any of the above remarks, please help. I alone,
while determined to answer each and every of Naggum's farts, won't be
enough to silence him down. Do whatever you can; write to comp.lang.lisp,
write to Naggum, whatever.

Thank you for your attention,
Thank you even more for your cooperation.

Get the f*ck outa here.
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.

*PLONK*

Bye,
--
Nils Goesche
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.

For the last week or so, I've been peering at the newsgroup and not
even reading most of the posts because as soon as I see this witchhunt
in the subject lines, it puts me off to the whole activity.

I've in the past taken time out to study the negative effects of
Erik's posts in detail.  As nearly as I can tell, Erik sometimes goes
nonlinear and fusses at a few unfortunate souls who could, if they
wanted, easily compensate by learning about killfiles, which are
important to the working of just about any newsgroup.

I don't like it when Erik gets weird on people, but I also find that
he posts at other times with useful stuff, and personally, I just
press "D" ("delete") when I see him getting weird on someone.  I
sometimes send private email to that party saying "Just ignore him
being that way" when he does that.  A surprising number of times when
I've done this, the person has responded saying they didn't mind or
telling me they knew about killfiles.  So I don't sweat it much.

To be quite honest, and this is JUST my personal opinion which could
be very far from the truth, it seems fairly to me that Erik's
sometimes behavior is some form of obsessive/compulsive behavior, and
not a reasoned behavior.  I regard the attempt to talk him out of what
he does as the approximate equivalent of trying to ask someone with
Tourets syndrome out of using bad language, or trying to convince
someone who is anorexic that they are not fat, or trying to convince
someone with a different form of OCD that the house really is locked
after it's been checked six times.  I just don't see the point since
by its nature (assuming I am correct about the nature), it is not a
matter subject to rational discourse.  Moreover, if it is, as I
suspect, sometimes involuntary, I'm not even sure it's polite or
proper to draw further attention to it.  Perhaps he should talk to a
psychologist about it; perhaps he already is.  It's not really my
business, I think.  But in my opinion, what he does is manageable on
our end and our choice is simply one of whether we as a community can
and will do what is needed to survive it.

I've dealt in communities where people had a variety of kinds of
ailments and handicaps that were a nuissance, and I've seen
communities where people simply shunned such people.  The former kind
of community is simpler to live in, but I don't feel good about the
sacrifices of human capital needed to achieve them.  I think the
"reasonable" accomodation of occasionally warning newcomers not to
engage in certain disputes and to learn how to use killfiles is better
tha a .moderated group because a .moderated view imposes a single
social norm upon a diverse group of readers with different social
values, while a killfile allows the selective imposition of different
norms on a per-reader basis.

To be equally honest as I've been about Erik, I feel the suggestion of
a .moderated newsgroup is a thinly veiled construction, a "bill of
attainder" [*], intended to do nothing more than lock out Erik's
posts.  I immediately find myself wondering if ANYTHING else that
appears here would or should be screened, and I honestly can't think
of anything.  We've had some people appear here who others consider
"flamebait", but I don't always consider this unhealthy.  Yes, these
people are an occasional nuissance but I would not trust that I was
understanding the "pulse of the world" if I was reading a group in
which some single individual, even some bright individual, were making
the decision about what I did and did not want to see.

And if it is truly just for one individual, then I think it's a lot to
ask of any moderator that they read EVERYTHING here on a timely basis
just in order to find the few posts of Erik's to remove.  I personally
think the simpler solution is to impose that burden on the people who
perceive a problem in having a simple rule in their head: "see the
word in bad word list? press D".  I just don't see the problem with
that.

I DO see a problem in my having taken the time to contribute to this
distraction from posts about Lisp.  If it were in my power personally,
the posts I would censor would be these anti-Erik posts, not because I
agree or disagree with the content as much as because they have been
elevated to the level of having their own thread, and therefore take
up too much real estate not only in my newsreader but in the visual
field of newcomers shopping for something to read.  I personally
consider people raising negative subject lines to be easily an order
of magnitude worse problem than with isolated negative posts because of
the level of visibility they have chosen.

However, I will hereby exercise my power to penalize the one poster
who has contributed to this escalated scrap that should never have
happened in the first place, and that's myself.  To avoid the
temptation to further engage in this stupid scrap, I plan not to post
to comp.lang.lisp until Feb 1, 2002, with an option to extend if the
waters here don't look friendly by then.  And while I may read the
newsgroup in that time, I don't expect it to be a lot, because it
turns my stomach to even see this discussion.

So when you are tallying up the "cost to the community" of negativity,
please anyone who has been contributing to this discussion, count not
only the negative effects of Erik (and indeed there may be some) but
the very clear and measurable negative effects of hunting Erik, at
least in the form of the temporary loss of MY presence here.  (I'm not
trying to attach a value judgment to my presence or lack of presence,
by the way.  Some people will probably be relieved to see me not
posting for a while so they can get a word in edgewise.  But at least
my silence and its direct cause will be on the books so that people on
the anti-Erik side can't portray themselves as unambiguously right and
virtuous and without casualty of their own.)

I hope to see you all talking Lisp by next month.  Would that I could
reasonably expect it to be sooner, but no sense holding out foolish
hopes.  I can be reached by private email on urgent matters of Lisp
importance that just can't wait.
  --Kent

[*] To my informal understanding, a bill of attainder is a law against
    a person or group, rather than against an action.  At least one
    web page I found quoted Cummings v. Missouri (1867) a saying "A
    bill of attainder, is a legislative act which inflicts punishment
    without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which
    takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or
    easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the
    legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment."

A lot of folk have figured jfb for just such a beast and have stopped
responding, and he is losing steam badly. Kent should should have stood
around to enjoy the Star Trek re-run.

:)

There is absolutely no chance whatever of a campaign like this
doing any good.

If you want to improve comp.lang.lisp, write some interesting
code or do some interesting research that has *something to do
with Lisp*, and post here.

If you want to improve Lisp, write some useful code or document
someone else's or give resources to the free or commercial
implementation projects.

If you want to improve your own life, put Erik in your
kill file and stop being bothered by him.

I have never, *never*, seen the signal-to-noise ratio in
a newsgroup be improved by the sort of anti-one-person
vituperative crusade you're on right now. It doesn't have
a chance.

Don't try and hide behind some reasoned argument about the welfare of
the community in some abstract socio-political sense.  I can look at
it right now, in my newsreader, and in my interaction with CLers at
work and on IRC and all over, and see that we benefit from Erik's
presence and the biggest pain in our ass right now are the crusaders
against him starting negative threads and meta-discussion in c.l.l.

Kent Pitman's comments about "Tourette's" may be relevant; Erik _does_
emit insults that go a fair bit nastier than one would expect to be
necessary.

The stupid thing is that those that are hit with such insults have
such spectacular need to continue the threads long behond the point at
which they should be left dead, dead, dead.

The other pretty conspicuous thing is that those who come as
vociferous #Erik critics generally come in completely devoid of
technical content.

For one who claims to be pushing manners, being polite and such stuff,
I find it very bad taste that you start such a thread here.

And what do you gain from making this all public in the news group?

Do you need other peoples help to make you feel that your opinions are
valid?
Or does holding this in public make you feel more important in some way??

It least if you want to hold a flame war with Erik, hold it over email.

You critize Erik for being a nuisance (which he is), but you're becoming far
worse...

The best part of you ran down your mothers legs after the dog pulled
out.

See no bad words so it is ok to say this.  Now I find this horribly
offensive.  You have insulted and attacked me and my family viciously.
but saying:

fuck off you shit head

is completely unacceptable behavior?  Well it is according to our new
resident "moral compass".  Why is it Erik's fault for not caving in to
this moronic shit head, aka Jean-François Brouillet?

You just got L A 'd  out of sight to join Israelrt. Enjoy each other.

For what it's worth, I strongly disagree with the opinion expressed in the
topic of this thread.  I would certainly like to see Erik change his
rhetorical style, but I strongly disagree that he needs to be "educated"
or that he should be "silenced."  I may disagree with some of the things
that Erik says (perhaps even most of the things that he says) but I
unequivocally support his right to say them.

  Good, you are finally beginning to be afraid of me.  You have seen
  nothing yet.  Far better people than you have chosen to attack me like
  you have, and they have wept themselves to sleep and left the newsgroup.
  This will happen to you, too.  You will be destroyed, unless _you_ start
  to behave the way you demand of others.  It is really quite simple: You
  behave, nobody needs to react to you.  I will, of course, remember you,
  and may rip you throat out if you ever get close enough, but if you do
  not do anything, nobody needs to react to you.  Do you understand?

| - for Lisp

  If you and your ilk walk away, there is no need to respond to psychopaths
  who want control over other people's behavior.

| - for comp.lang.lisp

  Anyone who takes a look at comp.lang.lisp while you have been here, will
  have seen a _large_ number of articles that also flat out contradicts
  your psychotic "impression" of what goes on here.

| So, if you agree with any of the above remarks, please help.

  What would really help is if people would THINK BEFORE THEY POST, and
  that includes such insane freaks like yourself.

| I alone, while determined to answer each and every of Naggum's farts,
| won't be enough to silence him down.

  Precisely, you will _not_ win this.  I am glad that you have finally
  figured this out.  You _will_ go down in eternal shame unless _you_ start
  to behave politely and courteously.  It really is this simple.

  Here is how you can _actually_ make me behave better: Be polite and
  courteous for the rest of your life, and start by apologizing to me and
  to the newsgroup for your behavior.  I think by now you need to beg for
  forgiveness for your evil deeds and promise never to say a harsh word to
  anyone, _ever_.  The next time you blame anyone else for your personality
  disorders, you agree to seek help from psychiatrists and have yourself
  committed to a mental institution.  The solution is quite simple: Behave.

  Learn to take responsibility for your actions, Jean-François Brouillet.

I promised by private email to Mr Pitman that I would not
carry on with this thread because I can agree with some of
Mr Pitman's reasoning.

This doesn't change anything about how I consider Naggum and
his followers, and will be my pleasure (!!not!!) to continue
this whole thing by private email.

This my last *public* thing against Naggum until further notice
to the contrary.

To all those who were hurt by Naggum, I'm with you and I continue
off-site. [If only this could stop too ;-]

To the others Naggum-like: go buy a mirror and stare at your
decomposing face.

"Erann Gat" <g...@jpl.nasa.gov> escreveu na mensagem
news:gat-1201021625040001@192.168.1.50...

    And you know what? The __worst__ that could happen is to have moderated
group.

  Please remember that you are what you focus on.

This benign view does not extend to the out-of-the-woodwork bozos like
jfb who are no more than hooligans looking for the first excuse to bust
up a party.

Consider some past famous flamers:

"It's the sort of mail you should wear a welding helmet while
reading...."  -- Dave Moon

"The wrath of Holloway is nothing compared to the wrath of Moon."
-- Fred Drenckhahn

And then consider that Symbolics suggested some severely Machiavellian
approaches to dealing with email:

Mail should be at least a mixture of upper and lower case.  Devising
your own font (Devanagari, pinhead graphics, etc.) and using it in the
mail is a good entertainment tactic, as is finding some way to use
existing obscure fonts.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
It is considered artful to append many messages on a subject, leaving
only the most inflammatory lines from each, and reply to all in one
swift blow.  The choice of lines to support your argument can make or
break your case.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Replying to one's own message is a rarely-exposed technique for
switching positions once you have thought about something only after
sending mail.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
State opinions in the syntax of fact: "...as well as the bug in LMFS
where you have to expunge directories to get rid of files....."
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
If you have nothing to say on a subject, replying with a line such as,
"I agree with this." puts you in the TO:'s for all future messages, and
establishes you as "one who really cares", if not an actual expert, on
the topic at hand.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Inclusion of very old messages from others makes for an impressive show.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
People can be set wondering by loading obscure personal patchable
systems, and sending bug reports.  Who would not stop and wonder upon
seeing "Experimental TD80-TAPE 1.17, MegaDeath 2.5..."?  The same for
provocatively-named functions and variables in stack traces.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Know the list of "large, chronic problems".  If there is any problem
with the window system, blame it on the activity system.  Any lack of
user functionality should be attributed to the lack of a command
processor.  A suprisingly large number of people will believe that you
have thought in depth about the issue to which you are alluding when you
do.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Know how to blow any problem up into insolubility.  Know how to use the
phrase "The new ~A system" to insult its argument, e.g., "I guess this
destructuring LET thing is fixed in the new Lisp system", or better yet,
PROLOG.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Never hit someone head on, always sideswipe.  Never say, "Foo's last
patch was brain-damaged", but rather, "While fixing the miscellaneous
bugs in 243.xyz [foo's patch], I found...."
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Idiosyncratic indentations, double-spacing, capitalization, etc., while
stamps of individuality, leave one an easy target for parody.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Strong language gets results.  "The reloader is completely broken in
242" will open a lot more eyes than "The reloader doesn't load files
with intermixed spaces, asterisks, and <'s in their names that are
bigger than 64K".  You can always say the latter in a later paragraph.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Including a destination in the CC list that will cause the recipients'
mailer to blow out is a good way to stifle dissent.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
When replying, it is often possible to cleverly edit the original
message in such a way as to subtly alter its meaning or tone to your
advantage while appearing that you are taking pains to preserve the
author's intent.  As a bonus, it will seem that your superior
intellect is cutting through all the excess verbiage to the very heart
of the matter.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Referring to undocumented private communications allows one to claim
virtually anything: "we discussed this idea in our working group last
year, and concluded that it was totally brain-damaged".
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Points are awarded for getting the last word in.  Drawing the
conversation out so long that the original message disappears due to
being indented off the right hand edge of the screen is one way to do
this.  Another is to imply that anyone replying further is a hopeless
cretin and is wasting everyone's valuable time.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Keeping a secret "Hall Of Flame" file of people's mail indiscretions,
or copying messages to private mailing lists for subsequent derision,
is good fun and also a worthwhile investment in case you need to
blackmail the senders later.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Users should cultivate an ability to make the simplest molehill into a
mountain by finding controversial interpretations of innocuous
sounding statements that the sender never intended or imagined.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Obversely, a lot of verbal mileage can also be gotten by sending out
incomprehensible, cryptic, confusing or unintelligible messages, and
then iteratively "correcting" the "mistaken interpretations" in the
replys.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Trivialize a user's bug report by pointing out that it was fixed
independently long ago in a system that hasn't been released yet.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail
%
Send messages calling for fonts not available to the
recipient(s).  This can (in the case of Zmail) totally disable
the user's machine and mail system for up to a whole day in some
circumstances.
-- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail

Just for amusement, not particularly flamage related:

TECO Madness: a moment of convenience, a lifetime of regret.
-- Dave Moon