[conspire] Rick's Linux Gazette essay

[Adrien Lamothe]

Just happened across one of Rick's essays on Linux Gazette (http://linuxgazette.net/130/misc/nottag/speaking.html).

Rick, I understand the point you are making, but I think you misunderstood my post. If you read all of it, you'll see that I'm referring to a live event, a town-hall meeting; very different from people posting to mailing lists. The panel member seemed upset that the audience was more informed than him and chose to create a dialectic, rather than passively listen to the "expert" panel members. The panel members had more than enough time to utter their profundities; without audience participation the event would have been next to worthless.

The point I was making was that some types of discussion and information are best disseminated as "tribal knowledge", that benefits the group, and that it really doesn't matter who says what, what matters is group awareness of the information.

I agree with your point about holding people accountably for statements of a slanderous nature.

Quoting Rick:


----- Forwarded message from rick -----

Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:17:30 -0800
To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: [conspire] A sometimes scarily small community, is ours

Quoting Adrien Lamothe (a_lamothe@):

> I attended a panel discussion event, at which the audience was invited
> to make contributory statements. A couple of audience members made
> what could be concieved as provocative statements (which were also, as
> far as I could tell, true statements.) One of the "experts" in the
> panel then stated that he "came from an era where people claimed
> ownership of their words, and there was none of this anonymous sniping
> from the sidelines." His statement sounded a lot like "no comments
> from the peanut gallery."

 Adrien --
 
   There are certainly situations where the capacity for anonymous commentary is very much A Good Thing.  We can both probably think of many.
   Certainly, not everyone who posts anonymously (let alone using LWN-style "handles") in the community is a passive-agressive shithead trying to backstab people.  But a large number of such backstabbing shitheads in the Linux community do seem to resort to anonymous posting for attempted smear jobs.  Very often.  Thus my point.
 .... I'm sorry, but I believe in names.  I believe in accountability.  People  unwilling to stand behind what they say, who don't have an extremely compelling reason, tend to get from me a quick gesture of contempt and summary dismissal.

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