http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=416976


in reply to Re^2: A (highly) "ethical" use for for Perl
in thread A (highly) "ethical" use for for Perl

Alright, that's cool, but why didn't you post that to begin with? I immediately caught what you meant by "ethical", and I immediately saw what the program did. I can't possibly fathom why the node approver didn't see that.

Anything suspected to be malicious does NOT go over well here. In the olden days, a thread like this would have been nuked - that means it wouldn't even go under the normal review process to be deleted, with a record of it remaining. The admins would make it just *disappear*. Its happened to me before, a few years ago over what I thought was some innocent networking code. (This node wasn't deleted under the normal review process because I was pretty sarcastic in my consideration - I often forget that people here don't get sarcasm. It kind of sucks for you, the rep would have probably wouldn't have gone under a -5 if it had been reaped.

Anyways, the quality of the code isn't too shabby. Lurk a bit, and don't try to imply that you're some sort of cracker next time, ok? :)

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Re^4: A (highly) "ethical" use for for Perl (how not to consider)
by tye (Sage) on Dec 23, 2004 at 05:16 UTC

    Then next time don't consider it with a reason of "useless". "Useless" doesn't tell me anything bad about a node. It tells me that the person considering the node could not think of much good about it but also was at a loss to actually describe anything bad about it.

    And the person doing the considering is the one who must take the most care in evaluating what should be done. So if the considerer can't come up with any offense beyond "useless", my first reaction is to want to remove the consideration. When I investigated this one, I saw a reply from the considerer and it just emphasized the "useless" angle and went on to claim to not even know what the code did. So voting "keep" was an easy choice for me since "deleting" should require "harm".

    - tye        

      You know, it sounds like our consideration system is really, really, really broken.

        Or at least, like a lot of people mix up the purposes of downvoting and reaping.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

Re^4: A (highly) "ethical" use for for Perl
by blazar (Canon) on Dec 23, 2004 at 10:12 UTC
    Alright, that's cool, but why didn't you post that to begin with? I immediately caught what you meant by "ethical", and I immediately saw what the program did. I can't possibly fathom why the node approver didn't see that.
    As I already wrote, I thought in fact that it was self-explanatory. And (IMO) funny because of the sarcasm, and FWIW, not really malicious...
    Anything suspected to be malicious does NOT go over well here.
    <SNIP>
    was some innocent networking code. (This node wasn't deleted under the normal review process because I was pretty sarcastic in my consideration - I often forget that people here don't get sarcasm. It kind of sucks for you, the rep would have probably wouldn't have gone under a -5 if it had been reaped.
    Well, as hinted above this is not really malicious. It's a kind of joke: of course this thing won't run forever. We only do want to see his reaction, but we do not want to do any harm to him: the sysadmins could have done much worse things, had they really wanted.

    All in all I'm still astonished at the kind of feedback I got: indeed I'm used to think of a Perl-addict as a person with a great sense of humor, so it definitely surprises me that people don't get sarcasm here. Also because in other Perl-related contexts it seems to me that they definitely do: for example in clpmisc, where the sarcasm of some of the most resourceful regulars is often mistaken for harshness towards newbies...

    Anyways, the quality of the code isn't too shabby. Lurk a bit, and don't try to imply that you're some sort of cracker next time, ok? :)
    Indeed I will. However at the cost of being repetitive, I'd like to stress that it didn't seem to me so harmful after all. Well, definitely it isn't! And OTOH what's more important, I think it's fundamentally well written (although there's certainly room for improvements) but even more importantly it was a strong motivation for me to learn better about message handling and process management techniques.