From: Anton van Straaten (anton@appsolutions.com)
Subject: Re: endless onanism about semantics 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Date: 2004-09-01 13:43:36 PST 


Bradley J Lucier wrote:
> In article <w7dr7pmhxem.fsf@cs.brown.edu>,
> Shriram Krishnamurthi  <sk@cs.brown.edu> wrote:
> >Bill Richter has explicitly said (privately, but given me permission
> >to quote him) he has no stake in the Scheme community.  He is using
> >the newsgroup as a medium to advance his career.  He doesn't care
> >how many people he drives away.
>
> This is total speculative bullshit.

At the very least, Bill is using the newsgroup to learn some very basic CS
points, the hard way, that he should really pick up by doing some basic
reading and groundwork.  (E.g.: "computable" doesn't mean that you need to
be able to compute the entire range of a function in a finite number of
steps; other examples abound in the threads).

Now, I've been guilty of that kind of thing myself in the past, and have
appreciated the patience of smarter & better educated c.l.s.ers in helping
me, but (a) at some point you realize what's happening and should go off and
do some of the reading, and (b) if you're going to get your info that way,
it's just simple politeness to not start out by attacking the credentials
and competence of the people you're trying to learn from.

Bill seems to have developed a strategy which often works for his
personality, of bugging people enough that he gets responses despite his
obnoxiousness (i.e. trolling for education, a relatively unusual
phenomenon).  I love, in particular, the phrase "sounds wrong", which he
usually applies to incontrovertible common knowledge, and is Billspeak for
"I don't understand that, and I want you to explain it to me".  Perhaps this
translation should be added to the RichterFAQ, if it's not there already.

It should also be recognized that this kind of experience isn't unfamiliar
to Bill - he's said that his Math peers are "worse" (from his perspective).
So he's just indulging in what he must see as more or less ordinary
competitive academic interplay, and the kinds of insults and digs that bug
those assisting him just roll off his back as part of the cost of doing
business.

My perspective here comes from some long private threads with him, which I
finally terminated when he admitted (I'll paraphrase) that part of his
attitude comes from being uncomfortable with accepting help if he can't
offer anything in return and/or doesn't feel like a peer (or superior), and
as a result (my interpretation) he has to insist on being a Math expert who
is teaching his correspondents as much as they are teaching him.  I stopped
replying to him when I heard this; some barriers just aren't worth trying to
overcome.

Bill, feel free to take this as constructive criticism.

Anton