The internet is full of freaks and weirdo's and unfortunately I have come into contact with my fare share of them, but that is one of the pitfalls of using the Internet and especially if you regularly use forums and discussion lists. While i am not a fan of Facebook, at least this a medium where you have control over who you speak to and who can speak to you, if someone annoys you then you can block them, and only the people you know and trust can read your ramblings.
The other big problem you have on the Internet is that it is a very poor communication medium due to people misinterpreting things that are written and inserting their own perceived emotions or intentions into electronic communications which then often causes them to react in a confrontational and often aggressive way, which invariably spawns an argument. We have all been guilty of this at some point, and I am certainly no exception and as anyone knows me well is aware, I unfortunately get sucked into these things far too often even against my better judgement and good intentions.
When these things happen the best thing to do of course is to walk away and not get involved, and preferably just try to ignore the other person or persons, sadly something I am not very good at due to an unabated need to defend myself to the bitter end, which is usually a fruitless endeavour when dealing with people who simply will never admit they are wrong, will never apologise or are simply plain ignorant.
A recent unfortunate incident spawning from an utterly ridiculous misunderstanding that blew all out of proportion causing smart and intelligent people who should know better to behave like degenerate teenagers, also resulted in the following allegation which I found particularly odd.
"You often treat the folks on "list name removed" as your own private support team makes me very frustrated. You are the reason that
I've unsubscribed from "list name removed" twice over the years - at one point, over 50% of threads on "list name removed" were you trying to get help on various configuration and coding issues."
Now aside from the fact that "asking questions" to get help from your peers is exactly what a discussion is for, I knew this wasn't true as I simply do not have that many questions to ask as I am very competent in what I do as I have been doing it for a long time and I am not a developer anymore and have not been for many years, so I simply don't have coding issues. So in my quest to defend myself against this accusation, I decided to go and dig up some evidence. It was of course no surprise to discover that the above was not true, and after checking the list archive I discovered I had actually only posted 3 questions in total this year. I passed this information to the accuser to see what his response would be, and this is where it gets a bit spooky.
he responded with
"Go back to 2005 - which was when I unsubscribed because of the volume of threads you started, asking for help."
Now I wont sink down to the same gutter level by naming and shaming him, but I do know who this guy is and he is a respected member of one of communities I am also part and a generally smart (albeit big headed) guy in the programming world, but I am not friends with him and have never had any personal commination with him before now, so why on earth would someone I barely know have such a vivid memory of something I did 6 years ago or go to the effort of searching through 6 years worth of emails to find this information?
Now I have to say I actually found this quite disturbing and a bit creepy for someone to be this obsessive, I don't even know what I did 6 years ago, and I would imagine most people don't know.
Sep 12, 2011 at 1:11 AM Crikey definitely some sort of fruit loop that one.
Sep 12, 2011 at 8:31 AM I'm perfectly happy to own up to my accusations.
Sep 12, 2011 at 1:35 PM Out of curiosity, I read through said discussion and was rather suprised by the reaction of some. Maybe there was a full moon that day/night? Anway, I've always held the view that "If you've got nothing nice to say, Dont say anything at all". I think it may have been far better (on my soap box) if said people had simply sent a private email asking to clarify the mis-interpreted message... problem would have been solved within minutes. I don't think a public forum is best placed to solve or voice what was said and i for one was quite shocked to hear respected people in the community doing this.
Anyway, humble pie, shake hands, kiss and make up and time to move on. Smile everyone it'll soon be friday :-)
Sep 12, 2011 at 2:22 PM +1 on the creepy, especially if he follows your blog too.
I'm curious now, where is this discussion you speak of ?
Sep 12, 2011 at 2:59 PM I will not post the link to the thread here as I do not want anyone going there any stirring things up more. I have already deleted all my own posts in order to disassociate myself from the problem and the instigators, but unfortunately the list owners want to prolong the argument and refused to delete the thread. If you really want to read it, email me directly and I will send you the link.
Sep 12, 2011 at 5:39 PM I'm willing to bet he's jealous of an accomplishment or project of yours. I am fully aware of your abilities and if this guy is as good as you say he is he probably feels threatened in some way.
Sep 12, 2011 at 6:04 PM Wow I read the thread, you definitely did nothing wrong there, it was blown way out of proportion, they should be ashamed of themselves for behaving like that.
Sep 19, 2011 at 2:09 PM The most unbelievable thing I thought was it wasn't even the community who kicked off it was the Railo team themselves which I found very unprofessional and Sean's final post was unwarranted had no purpose than to needlessly add fuel to the argument. As you say though, if he actually went to the effort of researching that, it is quite creepy.
Ironically the only reason I found out about Railo is because I use cfmldeveloper.com for my development, I think I will be sticking with ColdFusion for now though. At least all the arguments on the ColdFusion forums and lists are between community members, not Adobe bashing their own customers.
Oct 5, 2011 at 1:51 AM I have recently started using railo myself, which is thanks to you and cfmldeveloper.com by the way, but I have not dare post on the list since reading that thread and have just struggled through my problems by myself. I'm not sure I want to be be reliant on such people for support, I certainly don't blame you for removing yourself from the list.
Aug 14, 2012 at 10:14 PM Lol, well at least he posted and owned up to being a total twat.
Which ironically must mean he subscribes to your blog as well, hmmmm, if it walks like a duck etc....
As for asking for help, shit you have been helping the cfcommunity for more years than I can even remember, certainly long before I ever heard of sean corfield, I would say you are more than entitled to ask for help occasionally, and isn't that what lists are for? I guess he just doesn't like helping people.
Aug 16, 2012 at 7:16 PM sorry to all the last few people who commented, there was a bug on my blog since I moved it to Railo and it was not sending out emails to anyone, including to me to tell me there were comments to moderate and so I haven't logged in for months. So I only just processed months works of comments.