Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 15:12:02 07/25/99
Go up one level in this thread
On July 23, 1999 at 17:34:20, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>Hi all:
>
>Many things has been said about my resignation and the reasons of it. A lot of
>posts support Bruce, other support my case, others take an intermediate position
>and many just take for granted malevolent interpretations in order to
>strengthen his arguments. So I have the right to clarify this not to prolong the
>battle -although it deserves to be prolonged because the issue is essential -
>but precisely trying to get some consensus about what should be done. And I will
>do it here point by point.
>a) My resignation is not and cannot be considered an act of immolation in order
>to get the upper hand against Bruce, as he thinks and proclaims with not
>dissimulated enthusiasm. Or a “dirty suicide” as Christophe putted it. By the
>way, Christophe, I never expected such a "double tranchant" interpretation from
>you.
I never expected such a dramatic childish exit from you. I voted for you because
I thought you were very balanced, experienced, and able to calm things down when
it becomes necessary, because you were supposed to be very tolerant.
And what happens? You resign from your post and point a finger at Bruce and say
that he is responsible for your "suicide".
OK, maybe you did not think about it when you wrote your message, but now I
think you could at least understand why many of us get so irritated.
You don't see why? No, really?
> I was compelled to perform a public resignation due to reasons than even a
>child could understand. To be moderator is a public position and so you cannot
>go without doing it publicly; people that elected you deserve an explanation and
>besides you must warn about what they can expect. Or should I email each of the
>3 or 4 thousands members of CCC instead of posting one post? Each day I receive
>and I still do posts of people asking this or that, sometimes related with CCC,
>sometimes with WCCR, where I am coordinator. So, I had to make public my
>resignation. To confound this obvious reason with other resignations that were
>dramatic and operatic is a nasty move.
>b) To discuss all this problem on the ground of considering as a definite fact
>that my post was a “dirty” one and only deserves to be in the bathroom wall is a
>logical fallacy. The point is PRECISELY to discern if it was such a lousy dirty
>thing that was going to produce a mess.
This is NOT the point.
The point is not about "was the joke acceptable or not".
The point is in the way you reacted to the deletion.
> It is a joke circulating in the Jews
>circles of NY, with great laugh of all people. Then, why so much concern here
>about it? And why NOTHING off topic can be said, including jokes, when even in
>the most serious meetings of real scientist of real high level they take his
>time for talking of everything to relax a bit? They are human beings, no
>pedantic guys talking all the time of his professional equivalent of hash
>tables. That simple fact is no understand by Mr Moreland. In fact It amazes me
>that so many people with supposedly a scientific education are so an easy prey
>to his prejudices and does not know to debate with the sane principles taught in
>the elementary school. In every argumentation against me it is considered as
>axiomatic that I made a mistake because of the off topic condition of my post,
>his dirty quality, etc.
I did not use this argument. The mistake you did is to react the way you did
AFTER the deletion.
Consider the 2 hypothesis:
Hypothesis #1: Bruce is right. So why do you need to react as you did? He did
what he had to do, if you disagree you can at least talk first with him and
KarinsDad, and if you still disagree you simply resign and don't start a battle
here publicly.
Hypothesis #2: Bruce is wrong. He is going to be blamed for what he did. Your
post will be restored. So why would you need to resign and create such a mess?
>And nevertheless we have never had here a serious
>discussion about that, being this site all the time in the hands of the
>particular morality and prejudices about cleanliness of some people. It is not
>necessary to be a psychologist to see how unbalanced is a person that put a cry
>in Heaven because of a joke with sexual elements. Almost every joke has them.
>The force with which such “unmorality” are discussed and proclaimed here by some
>people remember me some preachers seeing sins all around them and ready to
>strike the sinners.
Who is preaching here?
The only one I see is you.
It's quite funny:
Fernando: "Let's be free, let's be human!!!"
Everybody else: "Yes, you are right."
Fernando: "What? What are you saying? You are talking like robots! You don't
understand me! Let's REALLY be free!!!"
Everybody else: "Well... Yes Fernando, we agree... OK..."
Fernando: "Oh my god! Why do you say yes? Why do you agree with me? You want me
to stop talking? These guys want to censor me! But I will fight against you,
robots!"
Everybody else: "Come on Fernando! It's alright! We are free... No problem...
Can we talk about computer chess now? Please..."
Fernando: "I see! The devil has got you already! But don't worry! I'm going to
save you from yourselves!"
and so on...
>c) Moreland has said that he tried to prevent complains, etc. Well, that is a
>really awful argument for an intelligent person like him. Trough the path to
>prevent things you can go directly to hell.
Talking about preaching... :)
>To prevent genocide Nato killed
>scores of people. To prevent something it is necessary more caution and
>subtlety, or you are going to get more troubles instead. This discussion about
>my case is just a long, long example of it.
Philosophical and political preaching now. :)
>d) Respect to people that ask me to stay as moderator in order to compensate
>Bruce and KD views of the world,
Don't worry too much, there are not so many people asking you to stay as a
moderator.
> I only can say that without consultation before
>each candidate post to deletion be actually deleted my position becomes
>unusable.
Did you ever think about consultation AFTER deletion? Your post has been erased
because Bruce thought it would start a fire. It isn't an unbalanced reaction at
all. I guess that if you had insisted to repost your message and talked about it
with the other two, they would have say: "OK, Fernando. Repost it, but be ready
to be fully responsible of what will happen after that...".
> Bruce erased my own post without a word before and KD had erased
>threads in the same way. Now they argue about time, about the necessity to do
>that tak very fast, etc.
They are perfectly right. Response time is an important parameter in moderation.
If a moderator erases a message and, after that, the two others disagree about
the deletion, the message can be reposted, isn't it?
So the only drawback of such a deletion is that the message gets delayed. I
cannot see any case where this could be a problem...
> Robert Hyatt even made a serious and ponderous
>astronomical statement with all the weight of his reputation about different
>hour axis. Thak you, Bob, I did not know... All of them see the branch and not
>the tree. They forget than the real issue is still to discuss whether this or
>that post deserve deletion and whether the rules must be considered sacred and
>without reflection either. It is not enough just to mention that certain rules
>exist. Not even the most stupid judge ignore the necessity to compensate
>abstracts rules with a bit of sane reason for each case. That discussion is
>neccesary.
And once again you want us to believe that the moderation system is
inappropriate.
But it worked perfectly.
And even if your post had been deleted for wrong reasons, it would have been
restored after consultation.
But maybe the joke couldn't wait 12 additional hours?
>e) That discussion has to do with the following point: clearly in this site the
>problem goes further than a problem between Bruce and me.
You want us to believe that there is a problem in this site.
> There are here two
>very different groups of people; one of them is very adhered to some supposed
>moral principles and abhors jokes, “dirty” things, bad words, off topic post,
>etc. They are the kind of people that, like a guy here said to me in a post,
>“are transforming this site in a very insipid place, a kind of pathetic
>scientific magazine...”
Sorry, Fernando, I tried really hard to figure out who you are talking about,
but I really do not see.
I can find nobody here that I could put in your "first group".
If I had seen somebody like that here, I would certainly have reacted in some
way, trying to poke him by some nasty post or something, trying to get on his
nerves. I like to do that.
I can find easily some guys who clearly are doing nothing else than causing
trouble here (I'm not talking about you of course), but really I cannot see who
are the "intolerant" people...
>And there is another group, probably with less
>pretensions and arrogance and more tolerate views of the world, that see this
>place not just a magazine about hash tables, but as a human place where people
>gather to talk about computer BETWEEN other things.
Oops...
As I told you I cannot imagine who the people of the first group are, but I can
clearly see that I'm not in your second group either.
So I must presume that you put me in the first group?
I don't think CCC is a place to talk about computer chess amongst other things.
I think CCC is the place where you should talk about computer chess in the first
place, and where you can from time to time post jokes and off topic stuffs
(provided the content of such things stays marginal).
From what I know you do the same. I mean you mainly post computer chess stuffs,
and from time to time a joke or an off topic message, which I don't see as a
problem.
>And clearly the first group,
>trough the more abundant chess computer reputation of some people that belong to
>it, has won the upper hand long time ago. They have shaped this place at his
>will and the result are that funny, entertaining people goes out and bore guys
>talking all the time about the same computerish thing remains and even rule.
Now maybe we should apologize for talking about computer chess most of the time?
>A great discussion about this should be opened or this site will continue to
>clash on the same topic. The second group will continue to be trashed and
>overwheelmed and disdained and crucified with the emblematic phrase “off topic”.
>That is the perfect tool they use to impose his will once and again. .
>Fernand
This "2 groups" dichotomy comes out from your imagination.
The number of deleted posts is ridiculously small, and the "off topic" warning
is almost never used. Off topic threads tend to disappear from themselves
anyway.
The only concern I have, and we can talk about it if you want, is that we don't
know when a post has been deleted. I would prefer that instead of deleting posts
the moderators replace it with a message like:
"This message posted by XXX has been deleted because of its offensive nature.
XXX has been informed of this deletion and can post another message to replace
it, provided he does not break the CCC charter."
CCC works well and Bruce did not make a mistake. Even if he had, there was no
reason to react as you did and the mistake could have been corrected. All this
mess could have been avoided.
Christophe
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