A few years ago, I was an officer in a start-up company. A key employee created an internal forum for submitting artwork assets, and chose to use a pseudo-religious motif in the features of that forum. A less-key employee threatened the company over the use of religious symbolism in company operation. I personally am agnostic and despise state sponsorship of any religion, and yet I was dismayed to think someone was even more uptight about it than I was.

I was initially put back by the dominant motifs of THIS site, and they are a constant reminder to me of that unpleasant situation in my previous company. However, I am gratified by my experiences here that the use of symbolism is not indicative of proselytization.

The brief lesson here is that some unstable people are just going to go crazy at the slightest provocation, no matter what. Execute your joke if you like, don't permanently delete stuff without cause, and don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive.

Oh, and I noticed several times today that my XP was plummeting too, so maybe people don't care for my point of view, either. ;)

Not in order.

Some others might take issue with clicking the button on your homenode only to find a message they hadn't intended placed in the chatterbox and represented as their words.

Fair call. Fixed.

For anyone I offended or let down, I apologize.

Accepted in full.

I don't think either of us got it seriously wrong.

Personally I feel we both did. My button is there partly because its a harmless way to teach people that homenodes aren't safe. The point was forgotten over time as i occasionally modified it away from its original more direct message which i think was something like "/me shouldn't press other peoples home node buttons" or "/me mails his perlmonks password to demerphq". Even the one you just looked at was along these lines. However the fact it didnt mention my name was wrong. Anyway, as I said, thats fixed now.

I've modified the code so now only your homenode shows other images. This way we can have fun and still be *more* ethical.

Great. I think thats a perfect compromise and frankly had it been the plan in the first place actually pretty funny.

I guess a /msg with my concerns to you would have been a better way to deal with this. I did discuss it in the CB but wanted to deal with it as a PMD anyway. I regret that i played a part in spoiling the fun, but after discussion and reflection still felt it was wrong.

As many pmdev members know it's not the only reprehensible code I'm responsible for, in fact there's a lot of it on this site

It works. Its patchable. And some of us pmdevers have posted a few stinkers ourselves. Thanks for your efforts vroom. I think you know how I feel about the site. Cheers.

I appreciate your input and am glad that none of this has turned into a long-standing problem. Your points are well-taken. It was all meant to be good fun and in deciding how to achieve maximum effect I was trying to decide whether to make the change affect only the current user's node, or other users' nodes and what sorts of probabilities for each. In the end I decided both with differing probabilities.

The point you raised does make sense and in my attempts to maximize the effect of the humor (in my mind at least) perhaps I didn't consider all possible consequences. I'm glad in the end a compromise could be found and humor could still exist w/o misrepresenting a user to others.

Hopefully we're all a little wiser, learned something from this and had some laughs in the process. Thanks for being willing to express your views. I'm glad I haven't irreparably offended you since your contributions here are valued. Also I like your new homenode button.

vroom

I have two comments to make about all this:

1. Wazzamatter? Can't take a joke?
2. As my hero Bugs Bunny has said: "Dont' take life so seriously, you'll never get out of it alive anyway!"

The only (slightly) negative thing I will say about all this is: I wonder how may coronaries resulted from the "Ack!" message! :-)

It is clear from the XP losses I am sustaining

Like many others, I was way more worried that my account had been hacked than to worry about XP losses. I really, really appreciate the site (boy do I!), and I also appreciate your candour in replying to demerphq. Having the 'wrong' home node picture pop up would be a problem if there were potentially work-dangerous pictures, but since that isn't the case, it's a relatively harmless prank.

And I didn't worry that much about the supposed XP losses -- every time I 'lost' XP, I remained the same distance away from level vroom. ;) And anyway, it's not my XP, it's XP that other people have given to me.

Well - I thought it was funny anyway :-)