Stupid mass-downvoting ... made ptkdb go away from this site.

Unfortunately he accidentally touched blacklist subject (like I currently do) and, after he was very supportive and full of bright ideas person, author of famous ptkdb module, with a plenty of usefull tips like Inline Breakpoints for ptkdb, those plenty '--' made him go away.

Instead of downvoting this node, I'll say something for the record. Here is a reconstruction of the narrative.

ptkdb wrote a node which got criticized for some pretty good reasons. Instead of acknowledging a mistake (or several mistakes) or just letting the thread stand, ptkdb then posted another node which seemed to be *very* negative. The monks like it when people graciously accept criticism; the monks even upvote people for this sort of behavior. They like to see people learn.

Instead of accepting responsibility for his originally simple mistake (What's so hard with "Oh, yeah. You're right. I was being sloppy because I just wanted to sketch an idea in pseudo-code"?), ptkdb then posted another node with an idea that did not go over very well in the Monastery for two reasons:

1. It would be technically difficult, if not impossible
2. Many people thought that it was just a whiney reaction to being downvoted earlier. In other words, the pseudo-code was a pseudo-problem.

I noticed that it is quite often even pumpkings do not have proper "fined" respect here.

I would like to think that status outside of the Monastery has little to do with individual evaluation of nodes; I hope they are judged on their own merit.

I know that XP does not matter, but this really forces people go away, unfortunately...

People go away by their own choice.

PM must be much more forgiving to novice's errors! I only do not know what to suggest to made it so... But certainly people should use downvote feature quite rarely, and may be always describe a reason of downvoting.

Basically, ptkdb looks like he was downvoted mainly because of his personality, not technical problems. Just compare the (currently) -7 original post to the -12 reaction to his correction. That's only five people, but it says something.

I agree that /msg'ing or posting a correction is better than a simple downvote, but some people like their criticism to remain anonymous because many take XP seriously and might retaliate. I don't think I've ever seen a post that got more than -10 on technical "merit" alone.

BTW, I upvoted those nodes to determine the community reaction to them.

Update: I've just reread this node for the fifth time and think it comes out too negative. I stand by the analysis, but I would like to add that ptkdb could easily recover from this. I think all the monks have good intentions in this regard and downvoting a person in a particular node does not mean that the community hates him/her. I also looked at ptkdb's positive contributions and feel much as ysth expresses in the first paragraph of his post in this thread.