...poisonous people and apologies

[Luke-Jr]

Theory: The "poisonousness" of a person is relative to at least two things:

1) Priorities being straight

Example: Joe Developer writes a neat new feature, but part of it is implemented in a hacky way. I put together a patch with the problem fixed, but I have the "sanity" of the resource system prioritized too high so I post it with a huge warning against the first patch, giving Joe Developer the impression his work is not appreciated and is somehow inherently bad.

2) Differences in perception of devil's advocate comments

Example: Joe Developer proposes a refactor of the game engine, but I notice a design flaw. I comment on the design flaw, but since I omit talking about the idea in general, Joe Developer thinks I have shot down his idea completely.

That said, I would like to apologize for having had my priorities messed up in the past and (perhaps as a result) taking the devil's advocate stance far too often when new ideas are proposed. I believe this apology applies to at least groundpig, wrtl, and ph, though I'm sure it probably applies to others, especially developers, despite my own poor memory.

While I'm at apologizing for stuff, I'd also like to apologize to Dave for obstinantly removing his +m on #armagetron a few weeks ago. Even though there was a conversation going on (of which he was not partaking), I should have just let him speak his mind and addressed the issue with him textually afterward if necessary. I won't say that I've missed you in the channel (quite frankly, it's been nice), but as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to rejoin if you care to, and I'll try to tolerate you if you tolerate me.

(and if there's anything else anyone thinks I need to apologize for, now or ever, please don't hesitate to make it known)

[Lucifer]

Can't accept your apology, I know you'll do it again, just like you kept reversing my bans on hyphy, and he was causing trouble in that channel.

For the record, the reason I was modding was because I was seeing the same idiotic conversation going on with nothing new, and people getting mad. Or at least appearing to get mad. If there was something new, I would've ignored it. ANd it was on a topic that's basically considered ok to talk about as long as it's not a problem. Anyway, I thought it was "a legitimate use of power", as was my hyphy bans.

The reason I left and will not return is because I can't ban you permanently.

[Lucifer]

In case you hadn't noticed, I only responded to part of your post, and made no comment on the rest. Have to think about it, after figuring out if I *want* to think about it. Curious what the others have to say, too.

[Luke-Jr]

I know you'll do it again,

Yes, you know everything.

The reason I left and will not return is because I can't ban you permanently.

On the topic of priorities, I sometimes wonder if "ban Luke permanently" has made it to the top of your list.

[Lucifer]

The reason I left and will not return is because I can't ban you permanently.

On the topic of priorities, I sometimes wonder if "ban Luke permanently" has made it to the top of your list.

Heh. Do you see me campaigning for a permanent ban?

[Luke-Jr]

The reason I left and will not return is because I can't ban you permanently.

On the topic of priorities, I sometimes wonder if "ban Luke permanently" has made it to the top of your list.

Heh. Do you see me campaigning for a permanent ban?

No, but I do see you arbitrarily banning me for no reason in channels where you can, even when I haven't talked in them for months. I also lately see new DoS-type bugs somehow coming up on servers I host (except that they're not really a big DoS risk since only master servers know the relevant port *cough*) and have to wonder. Quite frankly, I was surprised you never got over the +m thing. Even though I was wrong in un-moderating the channel, I wouldn't expect it to be something to use as a grudge for weeks and weeks.

[Lucifer]

On the topic of priorities, I sometimes wonder if "ban Luke permanently" has made it to the top of your list.

Heh. Do you see me campaigning for a permanent ban?

No, but I do see you arbitrarily banning me for no reason in channels where you can, even when I haven't talked in them for months. I also lately see new DoS-type bugs somehow coming up on servers I host (except that they're not really a big DoS risk since only master servers know the relevant port *cough*) and have to wonder. Quite frankly, I was surprised you never got over the +m thing. Even though I was wrong in un-moderating the channel, I wouldn't expect it to be something to use as a grudge for weeks and weeks.

Look, you asked a serious question and this is a side argument we're having.

If you think I have made any attacks on your server, file a report with the FBI. Don't waste my time with accusations here.

Finally, it's not a matter of holding a grudge. I don't want you in my life anymore, period. Is that so hard to understand? I also banned you from channels where you weren't welcome to begin with, you were merely tolerated.

[Tank Program]

On the issue of Luke vs Lucifer, don't get so involved in this that you forget that you serve a higher cause, ie, Armagetron. As long as you've got that in your heart, I'm sure the world will be a better place. If there's ever a world peace summit, I'm sure they'll be playing AA afterwards.

Now that I've got the obligatory exaggeration out of the way, Luke, I hear what you're saying. Being a devils advocate can be a good thing. But I'd encourage you not to forget that this is Armagetron. It is not ballistic missile control software. Design flaws and code issues are what makes the game the fun piece of software to work on and with that it is. Maybe you're starting to see it this way, maybe not, but it's all good.

At least for me, I'm pretty laid back. I tend to think of Armagetron in that fashion as well. We're all going along at a pace that's... OK. I think. I haven't been involved in that many open source projects. It's not like I'm saying to introduce flaws left right and center, it's just OK if one or two slips by if something else is happening with them.

Picture the forums as a tropical island. It's already hot enough out here in the sun. Grab a chair underneath the palm trees and relax a bit. We'll have some coconut and a nice discussion about Armagetron.

[Luke-Jr]

Look, you asked a serious question and this is a side argument we're having.

Ok, but I don't recall asking a question.

If you think I have made any attacks on your server, file a report with the FBI. Don't waste my time with accusations here.

I'm not going to accuse you; I have no evidence that can't very well be coincidence, and the fact that other servers encountered the problem also makes it seem unlikely.

I also banned you from channels where you weren't welcome to begin with, you were merely tolerated.

Perhaps you should inform the others involved with the AFL that it is your own personal project and you will be banning people who you simply don't like. I'm not sure they're aware.

[Lucifer]

If you think I have made any attacks on your server, file a report with the FBI. Don't waste my time with accusations here.

I'm not going to accuse you; I have no evidence that can't very well be coincidence, and the fact that other servers encountered the problem also makes it seem unlikely.

That's the beauty of such filings. You don't need evidence, you only need suspicion. The FBI will gather the evidence. Assuming they take your filing seriously, of course.

I also banned you from channels where you weren't welcome to begin with, you were merely tolerated.

Perhaps you should inform the others involved with the AFL that it is your own personal project and you will be banning people who you simply don't like. I'm not sure they're aware.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if anybody in the AFL thought anything different, especially since I've already banned at least one person from that channel (although I lifted the ban after a couple of days, because he needed to go in there to meet with other teams). Hell, when I gave Durka op in there I told him to basically have fun with it, just don't piss off so many people the AFL becomes unviable.

In the end, it doesn't matter a whole lot. I PM'd Durka to tell him the AFL is all his, and I was getting out (because I just don't have time to do any more with it), and he wrote back saying he doesn't want to run a spring season either, so we're in limbo again.

Now, to respond directly to your original post. I'll start by saying that nobody around here is perfect, least of all me. It's not a question of perfection.

I just took a speech class, so here goes. It's not enough when communicating to say that perceptions of your message don't line up with your intent. If perceptions don't line up with intent, that usually means the delivery was borked. There's plenty of opportunities for delivery of a message to get borked on the internet, in a place like this. And there are plenty of cases where delivery wasn't borked anyway, perceptions didn't match intent because the person doing the receiving was borked somehow. Messages get filtered through a person's previous experience, education, and environment. It's true that I read messages here differently when I'm trying to get my kids to settle down compared to the middle of the night when I'm just fooling around, and that's true for everyone here. So if fifty people read your post and 1 or 2 don't get it, that's no big deal, the delivery was good enough. But if fifty people read it and 40 don't get it, that's a different story, and I think more representative of what we have here.

In the last few months, where "few" is ambiguously defined and could be as long as 12 months, even, I have noticed you stepping down from a lot of arguments I would have expected you to step up to. This is compared to when you first showed up engaging every little difference of opinion in some effort to win, and I'm not going to speculate on what you were trying to do. In the end, what I'm saying is that I have noticed you making an active effort to be less argumentative and more conciliatory and productive and being successful in that effort. Hell, we've even had some fun freeciv games not too long ago, besides the one where we nuked all of your cities and can clearly point our fingers at freeciv directly for any games that weren't fun.

This whole message is being transmitted in an environment where hopefully I am not trying to assert that I have done any better or worse.

I'm not sure what to say about your example for priorities. You see, the specific example you gave I would agree with your action, but your action is being interpreted in the context of your point #2. Anyway, the reason I'd agree is because you and I and everybody else here knows that if someone adds a feature with some hacky part, it's not enough to say "Please don't extend this hacky part without first fixing it". You want to avoid the hacky part being extended at all, but particularly avoid having it grow and contaminate other not-hacky code. So what do you do? Exactly what your example says, you fix the patch and repost it and advise people to use your patch rather than his. The only thing you might add to it is to profusely thank the developer for the original patch.

So, maybe I could use a better example. Or, dealing with your point #2 will automatically deal with your point #1. One of the advantages to working as a team rather than a collection of individuals is that different people will worry about different code, and enact QA accordingly. We wouldn't want to throw that away, for sure, right? So the thin line to walk is to avoid having code where only one developer knows anything about it, but to specialize enough that you have at least one developer who knows everything about it and can make those kinds of calls.

[Luke-Jr]

If you think I have made any attacks on your server, file a report with the FBI. Don't waste my time with accusations here.

I'm not going to accuse you; I have no evidence that can't very well be coincidence, and the fact that other servers encountered the problem also makes it seem unlikely.

That's the beauty of such filings. You don't need evidence, you only need suspicion. The FBI will gather the evidence. Assuming they take your filing seriously, of course.

Maybe they don't need evidence for a report, but I do. Plus, the time that would need to be spent to find evidence that most likely doesn't exist anyway is better spent finding and fixing the bug(s) so that it no longer matters.

So, maybe I could use a better example.

How about here?

[Black Clover(O)]

They just keep using the same examples. I think by now they'd know what the other one, and themselves wrote. But, ahh well. I dont make enemies on purpose, just keep the ones i get. Usually for stupid reasons too. I still don't know why D!P$ET hates me. But, who cares?

~Amen to that!~