Version 49 of RMS

RMS is Richard M Stallman (see Richard Stallman), a famous programmer in the GNU/FSF scene, but not enthusiastic about Tcl. (See Who says Tcl sucks...).

I think RMS is a grand guy. I think his opinion is based on experience with a very early version of Tcl. Richard tends to consider things in terms of their relationship to GNU, and to his own concept of Free Software as a philosophical imperative. Tcl has no particular relationship to GNU, so Richard probably does not think about it much at all. ;^)

RMS picks his nose and eats his boogers , snacks on toe jam , speaks with a lisp , has nasal sex with plants , and is the leader of a evil cult . He has won the Linus Torvalds award for his tireless dedication to Linux, and appears in public with semi-nude boys . RMS will throw your momma from the train .

AMG: I don't know what's going on with this page, but it's beyond weird and needs to stop. Earlier today an edit was made including a link to http://www.majortek.com/ which is a "parked" domain, meaning that the edit was done without actually checking the link. What purpose does it serve? This is not responsible editing.

PYK: Weird is as weird does. RMS will see your children safely through puberty .

AMG: I'm not disagreeing that he's weird, I'm questioning the fact that you're posting invalid links, but now I'm also questioning why you feel the need to say any of this about RMS on the Tcler's Wiki. What does this have to do with Tcl?

PYK: The link works for me , but more importantly, the dude can dance .

PL: Maybe it's time to put this page up for deletion. It's not as if information about RMS is essential to the Tcl programmer.

PYK: Well, he called The Creator a parasite 1 , but like many an evil genius, he really just needs a little love .

RLE: What seems to be going on is either:

   1) someone's masquerading as pyk/pooryorick
   2) pooryorick's gone mad;

I don't have enough evidence to decide between the two. But in any case it is a very concerted attempt at wiki spam by someone.

Maybe an IP block of 174.52.22.202, which is where the character that made the spam edits is showing as arriving from.

PYK: I'm not mad, but Stallman might be :) The statements about Stallman above are presented in a zany way, but are basically factual. Anyone landing on this page might be here because they're interested in learning a bit about the topic of this page, i.e., RMS. Rather than be yet-another-dry-Wikipedia article, this page might as well paint him from an alternative perspective, since 1) he did, after all, pen Why You Should Not use Tcl , and 2) the man continuously strives to shock people out of their habitual and uncritical mindsets. Why else would he eat toe jam on camera? Once again, it's important to remember that RMS would happily concede every one of the points I've made. That's just who he is. That's RMS.

PL: It may be intended as "zanyness" but that's not how it comes across, unfortunately. We're concerned that the things you put here paints Tclers in a very bad light as childish people who bear a grudge against Stallman for dissing Tcl sometime back in the middle ages. This in turn invites other people to add childish things to other pages on this wiki, which in the long run will damage it. The tone on this wiki is one of maturity and we need to keep it that way lest this wiki devolve into another one of the rant-and-feud wikis that no one cares about or can use.

PYK: If you think the tone is wrong, the wiki certainly welcomes you to jump in and improve it!

PL: How, exactly, could we do that, apart from doing what we've already have been trying to do? Or more to the point: why are you making it your business to stop us from improving the tone?

Maybe you can be reasoned with, maybe not. I'll try some more, at least.

Some may be worried about dead links, and you on the other hand seem to think that it's OK to write whatever and however as long as there is a factual basis for it. The way I see it, neither of those points matter very much. What matters most is the word picture you're painting. You're basically saying "here on the Tcler's wiki it's ok to use defamatory language about people you don't like, go ahead and try it: isn't that (random Tcler) guy a bit of a tool? go on, delete his boring code and write that he's eating his boogers instead".

(Note that I'm not saying that you yourself are using defamatory language: as has already been stated, your statements are basically true -- the point is that looks like it: very few are going to click trough, scroll down a few pages and see that, yes, it's actually true about the semi-nude boys. Most readers will simply assume that you're making it all up and are linking to malware sites with this text as a bait.)

Once that rot sets in, it spreads quickly and is very hard to stop (I've seen it on other wikis all the way back to when the first wikis began to appear). The only way to avoid it is to maintain language hygiene. Wikipedia may be dry, and this wiki isn't always a barrel of monkeys either, but that's because that's how wikis survive. Those wikis that let go will be lost. (Also, you're being a bit hypocritical here: there is a lot of room between being "dry" and imitating defamatory language.)

There's absolutely nothing to stop you from posting this material on your own pages or blogs, but you shouldn't be adding it here. It's off topic for this wiki, counter to the tone and atmosphere of it, and it will in the long run turn out to be poisonous for it.

I find it very curious that you on one hand seem dedicated to improving the wiki by correcting and rearranging the content, and on the other hand have no qualms about vandalizing it.

Category Person

Category Glossary