http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=576199


in reply to Re: Want a million dollars?
in thread Want a million dollars?

I was originally going to try it by myself, but I figured I'd see if anyone else wanted to join in the fun. My grand idea is to have the winning team be a sort of open source movement. Of course, PM was the first place that came to mind for a community of brilliant programmers.

Do you really think I'm the type of person that would fool a bunch of people into doing the work for me so I could get a cut of the money? Doesn't my mere presence on PM (and rank obtained) suggest that isn't the case? I would agree with your cynicism if I had just joined and had zero posts previous to this. But I think you're really reaching in this case.

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It's all fine and dandy until someone has to look at the code.

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Re^3: Want a million dollars?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Oct 03, 2006 at 23:36 UTC
    Sorry, but your presence and rank on perlmonks don't mean much to me. You are person 438 in Saints in our Book. Anyone who shows up and votes religiously on this site for a few years should be able to reach a rank like that. That doesn't say much about what you personally are like, or how good you are.

    I have paid no attention to you in the past so I don't know what you're like. Glancing at your highest rated nodes and looking for one that shows your level of Perl knowledge, I see Using a module more than once. This shows that you have fundamental misunderstandings about how Perl works, and shows that you are not in the habit of looking in perldoc first for answers. (perldoc -f use would have given your answer.) Sorry, but this doesn't inspire confidence in your ability to realistically contribute to a problem like this.

    Furthermore as a personal bias, I dislike the groupthink on this site that says that people from this site are all great. Not only do I dislike that groupthink, but I tend to think relatively poorly of the people who subscribe to it, and doubly so of those who expect me to subscribe to it. So you get a bad reaction from me by insisting that your presence on perlmonks demonstrates that you can't be the kind of person that my (admittedly cynical) first reaction suggested you might be.

    I'm not saying that my cynical response is accurate, but it really was my first reaction. And as much as you might dislike it, I don't think it was particularly unfair under the circumstances.

      I agree with the substance of your arguments, but I think you have definitely erred on the side of unkind cynicism. It is likely that kwaping started out with a decent amount of enthusiasm and you have certainly made it more difficult for him to build a team from the ranks of PerlMonks ... I'm not sure what else you have accomplished with your words, apart from a few not-so-subtle put-downs. Striking a blow against groupthink in general seems a rather quixotic goal for which to strive.

      As one who is of similar rank and presence to kwaping, I will certainly concede that such rank and presence means little, except that such a person has posted something that other folks approved, averaging around 10 XP per post. This reveals that they (a) are reasonably committed to doing something over the long haul, and (b) have enough time on their hands that they don't require compensation for everything they do. Those seem like some of the qualifications one would seek in recruiting team members for a project like this. Granted, neither of us come near your lofty status or prolific talent, but, as you've pointed out, you're not motivated to try for this prize, so you're not available. :)

      I have few illusions left about the people on this site as a group. I agree with your assessment that membership on PerlMonks doesn't make you automatically a great person, having recently been savaged by a spate of vindictive down-voting by a collection of folks who I apparently offended. By and large I'm impressed by a few individuals, but not particularly enamored with the community as a whole, especially when it seems to be prone to knee-jerk communal disapproval of anything that ends up in Worst Nodes. But that doesn't mean that kwaping can't find a small group of like-minded folk who want to take a shot at the prize he mentions. What's it to you? Why the desire to rain on his parade?

      A simple "Hey, that's not my cup of tea." would have sufficed, I think.

        I've stated elsewhere that my goal was to cause people to think a bit about how group dynamics work before they either join or attempt to start a group. I further pointed to a very good book, The Logic of Collective Action, which has a lot of very useful things to say about why real group behaviour falls short of the ideals we would like it to reach. If I got someone interested in reading that book, that's worthwhile to me.

        About rank and presence, it doesn't even mean as much as you think it does. With the various voting changes I do not know what the exact rate is. But I know that if you show up every day and vote religiously, you will get onto Saints in our Book in just a few years without having to post anything!

        Oh, and about making it more difficult for him to succeed. Since I already judged his odds to be close to non-existent, my posts have made at most a minor incremental difference.

      Where I draw the line: I try not to deliberately offend without good reason. - remeber who said this?

      BTW "Glancing at your highest rated nodes and looking for one that shows your level of Perl knowledge, I see Using a module more than once. This shows that you have fundamental misunderstandings about how Perl works, and shows that you are not in the habit of looking in perldoc first for answers."...Err no. It shows that a year ago he took what could definitly be called the wrong approach to something. Assuming anything else will....well i'm sure you've heard what assuming does to you right?


      ___________
      Eric Hodges
        I just looked at the thread again and my description and I stand by my basic reaction.

        He demonstrated that he did not understand compile versus run-time, nor did he understand how use works. Nor did he immediately reach for the documentation when he had a problem. This was after he had been on this site for over 2 years.

        I admit that it is possible that in the following year he has improved his understanding of how Perl works, and he has learned to reach for the documentation first. I submit that it is unlikely.

        As for causing offense, I did not do so accidentally this time. The first message attempted to explain why this effort was unlikely to go anywhere. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I think it a valuable life skill to be able to muster appropriate cynicism. Unfortunately what tends to happen is that lots of experienced people have the thought, but nobody wishes to come out and say it. Since I think the point is valuable, I'm willing to risk offense sometimes by saying it.

        Subsequent to that, in my response to kwaping's response I stated why I was responding like that. I've personally had some horrible experiences (on this site and elsewhere) with people who try to insist that because they are a member of a particular group, I should think well of them. In fact it has happened enough that insisting on that line of argument generally results in me thinking worse of you. *shrug*

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