in reply to Chapter 714: The Long Chapter
Your article focuses alot on this voting issue connected with a monk, and I would like to bring it to your attention that at least one monk, namely AgentM, is not so subjective as to think that this holds anything against the person. bravismore was almost certainly not a bad person- just a monk who became a sort of joke after he copied his homework into a node verbatim. I imagine he's wandering around under a different alias now- perhaps as tye, or Petruchio, or any other monk of arbitrary name. I believe that above all, the votes are irrelevant and I'm sure that you would at agree that one should consider the person (as opposed to XP). Sure, it's exciting to become abbott or saint, but what I'm really here for is to learn more about Perl while at the same time helping others (did anyone else come for a different reason?). I myself, as was mentioned in previous nodes, was the obvious target of similar attacks. I was confronted via /msg by several people telling me they voted my nodes up simply because it was voted down for no particularly obvious reason. While I consider that friendly and I'm certainly not unthankful to these people, I really wouldn't have cared if no one came to me and said that there was a problem- because I didn't see a problem. If someone wants to waste his time downvoting my nodes- then feel free to- because I realize that it has NO impact on me (yes- NO impact).
But I also realize that i did not make friends by condemning Perl, using name-calling, and other annoyances. If a monk cannot conform to a level of decency where he can be respected, then it's fine with me if he leaves or is even removed. I consider the loss princepawn no biggie, even though he left with a big fireworks display. However cult-like we may be, nothing any monk says to me will have such a profound impact on me. princepawn was quick to take everything very personally and it seemed to drop like a hammer on him. Why? Insecurity, I imagine, but I certainly don't know. The preservation of my anonymity is one of the most valued things I hold at PM. When I'm bored, I'm guaranteed some wasteful space in the CB and possibly some responses. I come to PM to be with other folks that I could not normally be with. I find it an excellent medium for learning. There is no school that would hesitate to punish one for bad behavior.
In short, I'd really like to keep PM as friendly as can be, but realistically, this will change as the influx of new monks changes the tide and culture of PM- maybe even in the future, some rules. But am I not afraid of change. I guess my final question is: what's the big deal? Why even bother to respond to stupid comments obviously aimed to provoke? While I think it's important to discuss, most of the attacks from princepawn warranted little attention- certainly less attention than he has received- like this enormous node above.