Dealing with ad hominem attacks in comp.programming

There has been an unfortunate spate of ad hominem attacks in this newsgroup
recently. This is not good for the group as a whole, it's not good for the
victims of the attacks, and it's not good for the attackers either.

Some of those attacks have been directed against me. Whilst I think it's
bad for the group as a whole for me to respond to such attacks
point-by-point (I've done this before, and it did indeed result in
monster-threads that almost nobody wanted), I do think it necessary to
point out that my lack of a response does *not* indicate agreement with
those (very few) people who are conducting those attacks.

Whilst he is not the only offender by any means, it is of course mostly Mr
Nilges to whom I refer. It is possible that Mr Nilges's habit of
misrepresenting reality might, by dint of constant repetition, mislead
some people into thinking that his attacks might have some substance to
them.

Just one example will suffice here: he keeps banging on about a C++ test in
which I "did poorly", by which he means that I *only* scored 86% on a test
set by an idiot who'd probably learned his C++ from a Schildt book, and
the "poor" score of 86% was achieved despite refusing to answer at least
five of the fifty questions, because it was quite clear to me that they
had no correct answer. (Do the math, and you'll find that my 43 "marked
correct by a question-setter who doesn't know the language" responses out
of a self-imposed maximum of 45 comes to over 95.5%.)

Others who took the test, and who I am happy to concede know C++ far better
than I do, also commented that the test was flawed. This was in fact the
test in which I was so busy spotting one error that I didn't happen to
notice *another* error in the same question. (This is the &&/|| thing, by
the way.)


I promise that, if he continues to make these ludicrous accusations, I will
*not* post (or at least *try* not to post!) rebuttal after rebuttal after
rebuttal. As you may have noticed, I have been practising for some weeks
before making this promise, and it does seem that I can more or less keep
to it.

But what I may do instead is put up a rebuttal Web page, a link to which I
will post when necessary, so that those who really want to know the facts
behind the lies can find out without a monster thread being generated.


--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
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