Tuesday, May 30, 2006

flame on dick morrell

dick morrell has been having a little email argument with someone via his blog here and here over mr. morrell's views on okopipi...

in the first one, rather than address points made by the emailer, morrell laughs at the emailer for not being able to figure out how to jump through the necessary hoops in order to leave an actual comment on the blog... the hoops are there to prevent blog spam, i can understand why a so-called anti-spam expert would want to prevent blog spam, but the hoops are non-obvious as i soon found out... it's not enough to enter your name, email address, webpage, comment, and captcha code in the comment entry webform like you would for most other blogs - no, for this one you have to hunt down the login link, create a user account, check your email for the password, go back and log on, and then enter your name, email address, webpage, comment and captcha code... i went through all of those steps and then left a comment to the effect that perhaps the emailer failed to figure out the comment process because the comment process was non-obvious... nothing particularly unfriendly in pointing out the user experience of his blog could use some work - heck, just putting a login link in the comment webform area would have probably made a huge improvement...

in the second one morrell pulls the old who does he think he's talking to routine, again instead of addressing the emailer's points... for this one i didn't pull any punchs - i plainly stated that the emailer was talking to someone who was clearly too full of their own self-importance to do anything other than say "i'm an expert and i say it's like this"... i pointed out that just because he was supposedly an expert that it doesn't mean his claims don't need to be backed up, and then i called him on his support of gadi evron's FUD and his own smearing of the principals involved in okopipi...

and he deleted my comments... both of them as i turns out... and what's more he sent me email - not to the anonymous email address i entered (to avoid spam) in the comment webform but rather to the disposable email address i had to use (to avoid spam) instead when creating a user account in order to keep the password secret (i wouldn't want someone reading the email to the anonymous email address and posing as me)... the email went something like (but not exactly like, since unlike mr. morrell i follow the letter of rfc1855 so i'm paraphrasing here) this:
i've deleted your comments because you don't show the proper respect for me or gadi or any of the other people who work really hard to stop spammers the correct way.

i have a lot more experience than you or any of your team on . . .

ok, first of all respect is something you earn, not something that's given to you and certainly not something you take as an entitlement for being a so-called expert... second, who do you think you're talking to, dick? "my team"? what team? i'm not part of okopipi, i'm just someone who thinks you and gadi need to explain yourselves and support the claims you've made with logically valid arguments - just being an 'expert' isn't enough...

but wait, there's more... not long after he sent a second email that went a little like this:
i hope you don't think my deleting your comments breaches the freedom of speech i support.

the email address you use [place disposable email address here] says it all.

stand and be counted and have a reasonable discussion instead of acting like some guy sitting in his darkened room in front of a glowing computer monitor.

[sarcasm]no... deleting my comments doesn't breach freedom of speech at all...[/sarcasm]

if you really supported freedom of speech you wouldn't delete comments that were 'undesirable' to you... clearly if i want freedom of speech i'm going to have to take it thusly... and as for knocking my use of a disposable email address - are you for real? stand up and be counted my ass, it's a farking anti-spam measure and a real anti-spam expert should have respected that...

then again, a real anti-spam expert should probably have also thought twice about sending me unwanted email in the first place... i don't appreciate the out-of-band communication, dick - if you wanted to engage me in discussion you should have responded to my comments where i left them... i didn't enter an address into your blog's anti-spam system so that you could send me patronizing email that i don't want, i entered it because i was forced to, because it was the only way to leave a comment... you abused that information... it's a good thing i anticipated that and used a disposable address - consider that address disposed of...

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