The title was taken from Doug Burns post “Why you can’t just say ‘Stop feeding the troll’ …”. I don’t say I am a “good man”, but in this case I totally agree with Doug. Speak out. Speak out loud, and because Doug has his comment feature turned off and Jonathan probably will delete my comment, I write it down here…
I had a small deja-vu regarding Doug’s post, because when Doug and I had a small conversation on a bench in Dallas. One of the topics was web etiquette and one of my fears (just started this website), being sued by people with more money then me, while I only wrote down how I feld or what I thought was a correct (technical) argument.
If I am wrong, I am wrong. I will re-write my post or withdraw it, but first someone has to give me the correct arguments and test case to proof my fault. Lawyers are not in this category.
Being a perfectionist anyway, I find it hard to setup decent test cases, that’s probably why I don’t post them that many. Also I know that it is very difficult to do this, for example, every Oracle database version is different and can behave differently. Besides that, every Oracle database is unique, acting in completely unique (infrastructure) environment.
It’s all about context.
That’s why I plea to Jonathan Lewis, also, not to “delete any comment which have no technical relevance to the original blog” (Jonathan Lewis in comment 36) regarding a “emotional” discussion (“Analysing Statspack (6)” ) between him, Donald K. Burleson, and others. Of course it is his right to do so, but even so, I / We are old enough to filter the good from the bad and even from the bad we can learn…
On the other hand, he could also turn off the comment feature. After the OTN forum post (and others), he could have known this would lead to the excessive (off topic) comment on his post.
Especially those “off topic” discussions, as long as they don’t become rude, are also of value to me, because I can learn from other peoples opinions aswel (as long as the context is still intact, that is…).
Peter Gabriel has a very nice song called “Signal to Noise”. I disagree a little on this, with Peter. If you “Wipe out the noise”, no one has any idea anymore why the “Signal is Turned Up” so high. Context is important. Absence of context was just the point what started this (“Analysing Statspack (6)”) whole discussion anyway.
“Receive and Transmit”.
Did I tell you that English isn’t my native language (and I only say this once ;-)) ? Having a Greek wife and I being Dutch, I know now how difficult communication is, especially with also a “NLS thingy” playing part, so if I offended someone, please (also) leave a comment.
Re-reading the mentioned Jonathan Lewis article… Apparently all Don Burleson comment have been revised / deleted. Missed chances…
“all Don Burleson comment have been revised”
Yes, it distorts the truth. Either a blog should allow ALL non-anonymous comments (without editing the words of other people), or completely closed, IMHO.
Lewis had no right to edit my comments.
I think, he has all the rights, as do you.
IMHO, as far as I am up to date, both of you revise stuff on your websites, which is, as said, rightfully correct.
If it is correct regarding being truthful to content and issues discussed, is a different matter.
Hi Marco,
>> I think, he has all the rights, as do you.
You think that YOU have the right to change my comments that I post here?
>> both of you revise stuff on your websites,
That’s our own content. I have NEVER revised the words of other people.
“You think that YOU have the right to change my comments that I post here?”
Yep. I believe I have the right.
I will revise and / or delete comments if they are harmful or disrespectful to others or anything I believe is not standard “Net-etiquette”
So be advised.
>
> Lewis had no right to edit my comments.
> Don Burleson
>
I’ve only just come across this posting, so I’d like to point out the truth about the comments Don Burleson’s attached to my blog.
I didn’t edit any of his comments, I deleted several of them and removed various critical references to his comments from comments made by other people.
I did this because Don made himself look extremely stupid and unprofessional in the comments he made and in a posting he made on one of his websites.
I did it after publicly stating that I would if he were sensible enough to remove the posting (which he did – but, alas for his reputation, only temporarily).
I labelled every comment where I’ve deleted a reference to his comments, giving the other posters an opportunity to complain.
Alas, Burleson started to tell lies about this sequence of events – so I’ve posted the pdf file that I had printed before cleaning out his mess. A URL to the pdf file is available from comment #26 to the blog entry.
Regards
Jonathan Lewis
http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com
http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk
Thanks for making the effort for clearing that up Jonathan and I apologize if I made things worse, although…regarding the…
“I did this because Don made himself look extremely stupid and unprofessional in the comments he made and in a posting he made on one of his websites.
…I think it his right to make those mistakes and apparently he thinks differently about it. At least that is what I read from his remark here.
>
> Lewis had no right to edit my comments.
> Don Burleson
>
I am human, so I make mistakes (and one of the ways to learn / improve myself, I would think), so I don’t think less of Mr. Burleson if he makes mistakes as well. Proves to me that he is human.
Regards (and thanks for stopping by…)
Marco
Hi Don (via Marco)
You state that you have never edited the comments of a contributor to your blog, which may well be true, you have however made wholesale changes to your content when errors were flagged up with out in anyway indicating that you had changed the content, nor the reasons that you had changed it. So you have on numerous occasions changed the content that comments referred to without any indication to this effect, often with the side-effect, I’d love to believe unintended, that you have made comments on your blog nonsensical. So if you wish to carry on revising your content in the light of criticism, the only civilised thing to do surely is to credit those who cause your revisions. You know, like the Ivy League universities that you purport to emulate do.
@Niall:
Changing web content, without saying why or mentioning names, etc. is a big “And so what?”.
It’s a choice thing. If Don or anyone else wishes to change their site in this way, then that’s their right. You may not like it – but, again, so what?
Don’s pages tend to be short and punchy. I suspect that rather than being some sort of twisted Web psyco, he, instead, wants to keep the content pithy rather than splattered with worthless bits of stuff like:
“Line 58, typo. Corrected.”
“Lines 25-36: Realized I was in error, so have changed from ….. to …..”
etc.
“Lines 100-102: New contradictory info. just out on MetaLink has rendedred these lines obsolete”
etc.
That’s not helpful to anyone. And it’s time-consuming and it’s, in and of itself, another possibility for error.
Get over it!
I noticed that a lot of people actually were searching for the origin of the title of this blogpost…if so than you probably were in search of this: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke
Hi thank you. i have referenced this article for my assignment. Thanks