Re^7: Snarky comments on the ddj perl quiz (silence)

And I never said that you said ...

And I never said that you said that I said... But, I certainly hope that you implied that I implied it or at least that you implied that you thought I might believe it. Otherwise the only sentence you composed in the body of your node was rather a waste.

...when monks in authority...or can be misinterpreted to appear to give succour to such notions, you may be misinterpreted to be condoning them.

Was my reply unclear such that you still wonder whether I think conceit is a requirement for having a desire to know "why" someone down-voted one's node? Or perhaps you are just worried that some third party might misinterpret me to be appearing to support such a notion? Do I belong to some privileged group that makes my personal opinion on "conceit" or on asking questions about down-votes of some paramount importance such that people should make guesses as to my thinking on the matter and then base their actions on what guesses they produce? You worry that I'm condoning the idea that conceit is a requirement of etc.? And the fact that I have some influence over site policy and some power to enforce site policy has anything at all to do with how people think about conceit and down-voting or asking about it?

There is no site policy on conceit nor on asking about down-voting. And the only site policy on down-voting is that you mustn't write software to cast the down-votes for you.

Those who witness a wrong doing

Huh? There was a "wrong doing"? Are you worried that I'm condoning someone downvoting a node that they found a reason to downvote (or something else, we'll get to that) so you ask me a question about "conceit"? If you are going to be that coy then I'm likely to give up trying to pull the teeth of meaning out of you. You've been forewarned. So if you get "silence" from me, it is likely not a sign of "consent", despite your personal worldview. Just FYI.

Those who witness a wrong doing silently, implicitly encourage those that perform it.

Loaded words much? "Silently"? So if I hadn't replied at all that would have been worse? Or would these supposed performers been left to assume that I didn't witness their villainy?

Since you specifically mentioned my "in authority" status, I'll first try interpretting "wrong doing" as "breaking site policy". I'm not aware of a single action related to this thread that is a violation of site policy. So I, as a monk having a role of some authority with the site, do indeed not see a "wrong doing" to be discouraged (nor even "un-condoned") by some official administrative act.

I also thoroughly reject (under the current interpretation of "wrong doing") that witnessing a violation of site policy and not doing anything about it implies that I encourage or condone¹ such violations. By such logic, since an average node is viewed by dozens or hundreds of visitors and most of them don't do anything to discourage the author, then the deafening din of those dozens or hundreds of silent monks encouraging them to repeat their tresspass surely must be very compelling. But please don't tell Warnock this. And clearly the worst thing anyone could do would be "don't feed the trolls", as the resulting unanimous encouragement would be irresistible.

¹ Using what I understand as the more common meaning of "condone", the one closer to "to forgive", or perhaps "officially condone" since just "condone" as "do nothing about" would just be a circular statement.

I actually quite often avoid discouraging things that I (currently think that I) disapprove of and avoid encouraging things that I (cttI) approve of. I don't actually believe that the world is black-and-white. I find that there are things that are worthy of sometimes discouraging and there are things that are worthy of sometimes encouraging and there are many, many things that aren't worth proclaiming anything about. And those two previous "sometimes" range between "often" and "rarely" and beyond.

"Encourage" is not a synonym for "don't discourage". And "failing to actively discourage this time" is much further from "encourage" than that.

Perhaps by "wrong doing" you mean something not forbidden by site policy. Perhaps a moral violation? Maybe just a discourtesy? Maybe just thinking the wrong thing about "conceit"? I am not the designated moral compass of PerlMonks nor am I the courtesy enforcement officer and I'm not even in charge of how visitors to the web site should think about "conceit". But some other interpretation of "wrong doing" doesn't change my response much. I certainly don't see anything in this thread that I would characterize as an "evil behavior or action" (a definition of "wrongdoing").

So, I guess you'll actually have to state what the "wrong doing" was. Or at least not be so coy if you wish for me to understand you.

- tye

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