But the fact that the Perl troll army is after me because I rate my own module

Let me explain how I think of the cpanrating service, because I think that many perl monks and mongers share this view:

The cpanrating system is intended to give people a clue about whether to use a particular module, or rather look for alternatives. Since participation is sadly low, it significantly skews the picture of a module if the author itself rates it.

Most authors think their modules are good, which is why they wrote and published them, so the author's own review only adds new information in very few cases. If a module author wants to compare his module to other modules in the same area, it is a very good idea to include a section in the POD of the module, listing possible reasons for using this module over another, and maybe even the other way round.

As tinita wrote, you were told before that rating your own modules is bad style. Continuing to brag about it is even worse style, and explains a certain hostility that you might feel from other monks.

When I tell you there is a security hole somewhere you better believe me

As I wrote before, such critisms is best mentioned in form of a bug report, including a small piece of code that demonstrates a vulnerability. And if the author does not respond to security related bug reports after a reasonable amount of time, that's a good reason to write a negative review for that module.

but for every new Monk there is some amount of needless hazing to the new member

Beware of over-generalizations. In terms of temporal monestary usage I'm pretty young here, and I do remember my first time here. I experienced no hostility whatsoever.

In terms of temporal monestary usage I'm pretty young here, and I do remember my first time here. I experienced no hostility whatsoever.

Me neither.

(Actually I see a problem in the other direction. It seems to be fashionable at the moment to affront a community (or certain members) and then whine about not being welcomed or even thrown out...)

update: and just to make sure, with "affront" I don't mean criticism but offending

I have worked on open source projects and had to deal with pig-headed people that think their "Sh^t don't stink"...

...rate my own module...

It is really quite simple. You're guilty of your own pet peeve here.

s/module/review/ and warn "Pot/Kettle error 42";
[download]

You are trolling with this post.

You are claiming your module as your baby by rating it highly and being pissed when other people ask you not to rate your own work highly. You are failing to take constructive criticism when people point out to you that it's not productive to rate your own module.

You make a quite a few anecdotal complaints about people here and about people who have worked on open-source projects and then proclaim yourself holier-than-all.

I, personally, am a credited contributor to open-source projects before 2004 as well. Big deal. I'm not claiming to be better than anyone else because of it, and in fact there are plenty of better programmers here than I am. I also happen to have a decent amount of XP here, although it's not a runaway level. I and several others can assure you I've not made a habit of kissing ass or even of refusing to rock the boat.

You are not special just because you wish to be. Quit whining about being singled out for persecution even though you're God's own gift to programming. You're not being treated specially to the good or the bad. Your module may be very good. I haven't been hot and bothered to look at it. Yet claiming -- demanding -- some right to be acknowledged as an uberprogrammer and to be expected to objectively rate your own module is just crass self-promotion. How does that make your module not "your baby", when you're pissed that people won't agree that you, personally, should rate it highly?

Wishing someone would die in a horrible accident because you disagree with them is juvenile and anti-social. You should probably seek professional help.

BTW, considering the care you take with your spelling and grammar to communicate to the public, I really don't want to trust your code. If "To many people think", "constructed criticism", "find out they where just dump", "open minded to reality then those other people" is your idea of careful and precise communication among people, then I'd hate to see how you communicate your intent to a computer.

Call me a troll. I know you're going to call everyone who disagrees with you in this thread a troll anyway. Don't lump me in with some organized "troll army" run by some Perlmonks cabal, though. If such a thing even existed I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be welcome in it even if I wanted to be.

Please, try and muster some of that objective detachment you claim so vociferously. You are the one trolling here, calling yourself a persecuted martyr and making harsh judgments against a large and diverse group simply because you're doing something unpopular. Perhaps you should try to see why your action is unpopular and determine whether you are wrong or the consensus is wrong. That's what being objective and detached means, and it doesn't just apply to code quality.

But the fact that the Perl troll army is after me because I rate my own module

well, think about you're coming into a house where people are already sitting together, and somebody tells you that it would be nice if you take off your shoes inside. now you reply "Haha, now I'll walk an extra round through the mud and then come in with my dirty shoes.". would you be surprised if people don't want you come in then?

that's how you've been behaving (in my eyes).

where is the problem with removing your rating? if you don't wanna do that, then don't complain. you have been told (twice), you refuse to accept that convention and now you're complaining that you're haunted by a "troll army". could have foreseen that maybe.

So if you want good XP in "The Monastery" you have to brown nose every member

Yep, that pretty much sums up BrowserUk and ikegami. Their obsequiousness sickens me. But you can't argue with their XP results.

And it is human nature to see coordination where there is none. That is why conspiracy theories abound. I see no evidence of a troll army. I see evidence of one troll. You are not even close to the first monk to be incorrectly convinced that s/he was a victim of a multi-monk coordinated attack.

I also see a lot of uncoordinated individuals reacting negatively to what I usually just clump under the heading "not acting mature".

Where actually earning the respect is a more noble path

The choice is not between "be respectful" and "earn respect". Those two actually are more likely to go hand-in-hand. The easiest way to earn respect is to be respectful (and to appear mature) when pointing out what you have discovered or created and are now contributing.

Trying to be a maverick and break the rules and buck the system and not brown-nose just interferes with earning respect. If you are exceptionally good, you can eventually earn respect from some people despite such immature behavior. But appearing mature will mean that you can earn some respect easier and sooner and from more people and this means that you can accomplish more as well.

Note that I don't require that anybody actually be mature. The important thing is to act mature. I'm immature plenty of times. But I make an effort to not spew such immaturity all over the internet. The further one is down the "immature" end of the spectrum, the more effort will be required for them to appear mature. But when dealing with on-line communities, the effort is usually very much worth it and benefits more than just a few people.

Yep, that pretty much sums up BrowserUk and ikegami. Their obsequiousness sickens me.

This is strongly competing to be my favorite thing anyone has ever written here.

"Yep, that pretty much sums up BrowserUk and ikegami.

Their obsequiousness sickens me."

Especially to each other!

Makes for some really not to be missed deeeeep Nodes

OK, so let's get technical and look at your modules.

SF::SF_form_secure

• SF::? Is that supposed to mean anything? Or is it just the first two letters of your nick? I mean I do name my modules using my name, but only as long as they are internal only. Modules that are to be uploaded to CPAN should have meaningful names! At least the first part of the name should definitely be meaningful and aligned with others in the category.
• The docs are crap. Not only do they contain a lot of typos and missing letters, they are confusing at best. "Minutes code will expire in 1 to 99"?
• The API is crap. You require "SF::SF_form_secure" and then call SF_form_secure::x_secure()? Where did the SF:: go? And why the heck do you only have one function with the "action" you want to do specified by an integer passed as the first (heavily underdocumented) parameter? Actions 4 and 5 mentioned in "DESCRIPTION" and Changes are not documented at all.
• README is NOT supposed to be a plain text copy of the docs.
• Tests only test the undocumented actions 4 and 5 and the tests are very very shallow. Almost nonexistent. And the code ... even though there is just some 20 or so lines is not even indented consistently.
• The module deletes some %ENV variables. Without this being documented anywhere. The variables are none of its fscking business! The fact that you read somewhere that these are dangerous is nice, but irrelevant.
• There are typos even in the short list of error messages. 'Referer is to long.'? "Referers do not Match."? 'Code Has expired.'? And you keep them in a hash with keys a,b,c,d,e,f,...?   if (this or that) { return $x_error{f}}? Beg your pardon?
• $act eq 1? You have heard about the difference between eg and ==, right?
• if (!$link) { You do know 0 and "0" is false, right?
• Code indentation is totally absolutely inconsistent.
• Function and variable names are crap. Let's see, what does x_regex() do?

  sub x_regex {
  my $regex = shift;
  $regex =~ s/^(.*?)\?(.*?)$/$2/;
  return $regex;
  }
  [download]

  Waitasec? It finds the first question mark and removes everything before plus that question mark? The variable is called $regex and you pass the function the HTTP_REFERER? What?!?

So all in all, thank you for making me waste my time on your crap. I would not touch that module no matter what. The AUBBC looks slightly better at the first look, I ain't gonna waste any more time.

And let's not forget such beauties as found in the "Notes":

To Provide a uniqe link others can not use Format the provided key something like this $key = $key . $Member_Name; and/or use the IP encoding the new key format and/or ip encoding will need to be used for all actions

I had to read that three times to start understanding what it was all about. Making it easy on your users is of course oh so uncool.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

The AUBBC looks slightly better at the first look, I ain't gonna waste any more time.

I have now tested it to include it in my Parse::BBCode compare.html.
It is fast (almost as fast as HTML::BBReverse), but unfortunately like the latter it creates invalid HTML with unbalanced tags:

perl -Ilib -wle'
use AUBBC;
my $p = AUBBC->new;
my $bbcode = "[i] italic [b]bold[/b] end";
my $html = $p->do_all_ubbc($bbcode);
print $html;
'
<i> italic <b>bold</b> end
[download]

So it's basically unusable in a web forum because it can break the output HTML. I didn't find something about unbalanced tags in the docs.
It allows block elements like div inside of elements like i or b.
These are the reasons why it is so fast because it replaces start and end tags independently.
The module does not have any tests.
Source code is IMHO not very readable. No, too small or inconsistent indenting, very long lines. But of course, source code is just a matter of taste...

I said this to you in the CB and I'll repeat it here: You had won. You were the winner. You wrote some new code that on its face is better than some old code (I haven't tried it but the benchmarks looked great). Nobody here with the exception of a curmudgeon and troll or two would do anything but thank you for that and you could have silently banked some respect and good will. Then you engaged in a feces throwing contest and have tried to continue it here. Nobody comes out of that looking good.

The problem is that in a true meritocracy, which I think PM tries to be, self-rating one's merit highly tends to set off everyone's Dunning-Kruger alarms, i.e., a suspicion that the person self-promoting is instead someone who is incompetent enough to not actually understand that they are indeed incompetent.

Please be clear here: I am not saying you are incompetent: I am talking about a social phenomenon.

This translates into letting one's work speak for itself, and allowing others to make the judgement as to worth. (This is why you can't ++ your own posts, for example.)

You're getting downvotes because you are saying, essentially, that this primary means of establishing status in a meritocracy is invalid, and that your modification to the metric is correct. Sometimes rebelling is useful, but trying to simultaneously rebel and participate leads to conflict.

I really can't give you any sure-to-work advice; I can only say that attempting to achieve status by working counter to the social norms involved in establishing status will probably fail. If you want to promote something, show how it can solve problems and help people; simply claiming it's great will lead to distrust.

pemungkah:

Thanks for that reference ... that was an interesting article.

...roboticus

Kind Sir,

Would you please remove your head from your arse. (It's getting in the way of my nose.)

Yours obseek, obsec, obsqeak, er, ingratiatingly. Buk.

I don’t know what’s been going on here, and I don’t want to know.   I do know, however, that PerlMonks is probably the most professional and responsible forum that I have ever had the privilege to participate in.   The CPAN library, also, is a collection of astoundingly good software.   (Like any product of diligent human effort, it has its warts.)

If you are finding yourself not-well received here, then consider what you might be able to do to improve the situation for yourself.   If you have taken offense, and you find that your fingers are itching to snap-off a response ... pause.   You can do nothing to influence what anyone else chooses to do, but you have absolute control over what you do.   Very often, the best action is no action; the best words, silence.

I sincerely hope that you find these thoughts useful in some way (“HTH...”), and I do not mean to appear condescending or disrespectful.   “Whatever happened,” it’s over now.   It’s done.   Let it remain that way.

Umm, maybe you should check to see whether you actually are in that list of contributors before linking to it (hint: you're not).

Assuming SFLEX is Shaka_Flex, he's mentioned as a contributer for version v0.9.9.2, which spans the period June 21 2004 to February 24 2005. Now, he put 2004 inside quotes - I don't know what significance that carries.

So if you want good XP in "The Monastery" you have to brown nose every member, like a lot of people do.

That is so absurd it barely merits a response. First of all, brown nosing "every member" would be a silly policy, even if you were into that whole brown nosing thing.

Second, I never have and never will be a brown noser and I dare you to come say that to my face.

Oh wait, you didn't mean me right? You meant the "Perl Troll Army". If you behaved halfway sociable, you'd never even have that delusion. Sigh.

Oh, and for what it's worth, security has been part of my job since at least 1994 ... I'm sure that you're the real expert here though.

Looks like you'll get your wish of the highest / lowest rated "Worst Node of The Year" as you are well on the way in just a matter of hours.

Update

17th September 2010 Now lying No 3 in "Worst Node of The Year" not bad in 24 hours!

18th September 2010 Now lying No 2 in "Worst Node of The Year" Just one small push and you'll have made it in record time.

19th September 2010 Congratulations No1 in "Worst Node of The Year".

Perhaps we now need a new category "Worst Nodes of All Time" just to accomodate you.

You, sir, appear to have “a problem.”

Maybe it is “an attitude problem.”   Maybe it is that at the of forty-five you are stuck at the age of eleven.   I don’t know.   I don’t care.

Don’t ask me to care; certainly don’t require or expect me to.   Have a nice day ... in another place and time.

“A CPAN module” is ... software.   Nothing more; nothing less.   You presume that it is good enough for ten thousand programmers to incorporate into their software and to use it every day.   If you undertake to provide such a thing, please be very certain that you do.   If you do, then everyone will know (and will say, without provocation) that you did.   But if they do not say this, do not whine in public places.

I, after all, might someday be one of those “ten thousand programmers,” and let the truth be known that my standards are extremely high.   So are my risks.   By using your code, I am putting a tremendous amount of faith in you.   Kindly do me the courtesy of dazzling me with the thoroughness and completeness of your work.