tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (What do you do, when on a different forum...)

Scott Morrison comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12853)

2011-01-27T09:57:37-08:00

I've made a cursory inspection of the logs, and find no evidence of sockpuppet downvoting again Michael Blackmon. Harry's claim above about his downvoting activity seems to be essentially accurate, barring the omission of some voting on community-wiki posts.

I would prefer to close this thread, as it doesn't appear to have produced anything productive whatsoever, expect perhaps, to give François, and now me, the opportunity to reiterate the moderators plea:

If you have a complaint about an individual user on MathOverflow, please contact the moderators directly via moderators@mathoverflow.net

I think this thread makes abundantly clear why we prefer this over meta threads.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12852)

2011-01-27T09:53:54-08:00

I have neither said nor done anything so far in this meta thread that is in any way disrespectful.

This is false. You may as well be saying, "I'm not touching you; you can't get mad." Your first post seems to be a (partially successful) attempt to derail the thread and belittle Mike's concerns. At best, it was intended as pure noise, which is already disrespectful. I don't have access to the IRC logs, but based solely on this thread, Mike is rightly frustrated with you and his assertion that you're being "vindictive, manipulative, and immature" is supported.

I expect leaving this thread open is unlikely to generate any light, but is likely to generate heat, so I'm closing it. If anybody has something to add, email moderators@mathoverflow.net. If there's something in this thread that you think would make for a productive discussion, feel free to start a new thread.

sean tilson comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12851)

2011-01-27T09:48:41-08:00

@ Harry: I think your first comment, while amusing to me personally, can be interpreted as you not taking the person making the complaint seriously. It also could be misconstrued as implying that his complaint will be handled in a similar manner, which surely was not your point.

@MikeBlackmon: If Harry had in fact systematically down-voted your posts on multiple accounts the proper course of action would indeed be to contact a moderator. In fact, a moderator should even be able to determine if this is the case. I have not had any personal confrontations with Harry, but I think I might have witnessed a few. My impression is that he makes comments without fully determining whether or not they could be misconstrued as personal attacks. Other times, they are ill posed personal attacks. I don't think that posting logs is the right thing to do now. Maybe you should contact a moderator to in fact determine whether or not Harry did use two separate accounts to down-vote your posts, simply put, it might be best to have third party corroboration.

As to people not respecting your field, I don't know what your field is, but certainly there are many people that don't respect many fields. So I suggest you try to not take too much of this personally for that reason, and because it is Harry.

Lastly, Harry, please refrain from posting such comments, ie monty python quotes, in serious discussions. I do enjoy them, but I think I might be in the majority. They have the effect of derailing serious conversations.

ajtolland comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12850)

2011-01-27T09:46:07-08:00

I only downvote when I think a question is inappropriate.

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12849)

2011-01-27T09:43:27-08:00

Do other people downvote questions that are not interesting to them? I only downvote questions that are inappropriate. I upvote the questions I like or that I think would be interesting to a lot of people. If you don't care about a particular question, but it is appropriate for MO, then just don't vote on it at all. If we all did that, the appropriate (but uninteresting) questions would have low, but non-negative scores.

A noble goal, but apparently that's not how things work on MO. I regularly receive downvotes on questions because people think that they are not interesting (either that or they don't like me, I dunno!). I vote for other people's questions the way people vote on my questions.

Spiro Karigiannis comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12848)

2011-01-27T09:40:20-08:00

Do other people downvote questions that are not interesting to them? I only downvote questions that are inappropriate. I upvote the questions I like or that I think would be interesting to a lot of people. If you don't care about a particular question, but it *is* appropriate for MO, then *just don't vote* on it at all. If we all did that, the appropriate (but uninteresting) questions would have low, but non-negative scores. Negative scores should be reserved for *inappropriate* questions. I should say, I have not looked at any of the questions being discussed, and I do not care to do so. There are many fields in mathematics which I do not find interesting. I don't waste any of my valuable time downvoting those questions. They are very likely of interest to others.

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12847)

2011-01-27T09:18:32-08:00

Dear Qiaochu, I see which posts I downvoted (there are three).

Number 1, which, as you can see, displays a complete misunderstanding of how category theory works. It is argumentative and linked to an IRC discussion where Mr. Blackmon was trying to make some kind of point that category theory is completely useless as a tool and a language.

Number 2

Number 3

are questions that I voted down because I did not find them interesting.

That's it. That's the extent of my "downvoting spree".

I should note that Mr. Blackmon has voted down my question about Vopenka's principle (as well as my question about pushouts of fully faithful V-functors (the answer is nontrivial even in the case V=Set (the pushout of categories is quite complicated and related to the amalgamation of two groups (although substantially more complicated), so you should vote it up!)).

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12846)

2011-01-27T09:08:27-08:00

Michael believes that you targeted his posts for downvoting, so I would argue that (insofar as Michael was not aware that SOP is to contact the moderators) this was a reasonable question to ask. I have reworded the first post.

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12845)

2011-01-27T08:59:40-08:00

This is not an MO IRC channel, which makes things more absurd. That's why this doesn't belong here.

Regarding the wording of your post, I take issue with the assumption that I have done something wrong. I have not.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12844)

2011-01-27T08:59:04-08:00

Harry, I think my comment is sensible regardless of the details of whatever happened between the two of you, and I do not read it as "support" for Michael except insofar as he, like any other member of MO, has a right to contact the moderators to address grievances. (I am willing to reword my response slightly.) Also, I have no idea what the name of the MO IRC channel is; I have looked for it before on meta but couldn't find it.

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12843)

2011-01-27T08:52:45-08:00

To all:

Either come on IRC and be a part of this other community, or reserve judgement. Mr. Blackmon is not to be taken at his word. Please hold yourselves back.

Dear Qiaochu,

I respectfully ask that you reconsider your previous post and reserve judgement. I have neither said nor done anything so far in this meta thread that is in any way disrespectful. Apparently, as only Todd noticed, my first comment was added simply due to the part of Mr. Blackmon's comment where it is mentioned that he "would like to make a complaint". The other part of my comment was explaining to Mr. Blackmon that I do not have two accounts, just that he misread the display.

Dear Yemon,

Regarding Mr. Blackmon's motives, I tried to contact him via IRC earlier this morning, after he posted his comment here. My messages were ignored. If there was any question that Mr. Blackmon wanted to use this as an excuse to try to embarrass me, it was answered when he decided to ignore my messages.

MO is not for settling scores, and I hope that you will apply the same standards to both myself and Mr. Blackmon.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12842)

2011-01-27T08:46:21-08:00

@Mike: I agree that you should contact the moderators. To provide some context (and explain Storkle's comment a little), Harry caused an enormous amount of trouble in the early days of MO. It got better in some respects, but those who were here during that time no longer have the mental energy for incidents involving Harry.

MikeBlackmon comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12840)

2011-01-27T08:37:03-08:00

Yemon Choi,

Thank you, I will do as Francois and you suggest.

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12839)

2011-01-27T08:36:52-08:00

@Yemon: I didn't say anything!

Yemon Choi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12838)

2011-01-27T08:35:39-08:00

Harry: put a lid on it, please.

Yemon Choi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12837)

2011-01-27T08:34:25-08:00

Harry: while I am not sure that keeping this thread open would be worthwhile, I think it is unfair of you to attribute motives to Michael beyond concern/frustration, whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation.

Storkle: I am not sure if anyone has been suspended from meta.MO (but perhaps someone can come along and tell me).

Michael: I would follow Francois' suggestion and email the moderators.

MikeBlackmon comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12836)

2011-01-27T08:32:03-08:00

Storkle,

I find his behavior repulsive, and throughly degrading. But if you say that he is considered as much a joke here, as he is in other forums, then I can take that, and live with it. Thank you.

My main concern is that he continues to do these things no matter what I do or say, insulting my field and everything in it, including me. I know this behavior will continue, and will only get worse.

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12835)

2011-01-27T08:28:15-08:00

Dear Michael,

It is completely disgraceful to drag this private issue out to a professional forum for everyone to see. We both have logs, and I suggest that you take a look to see what precipitated any sort of event yesterday. I urge the MOderators to lock and delete this topic, since the user in general just wants to cover MO in his dirty laundry.

Dear Storkle,

Apparently my reference went over your head. I suggest that you educate yourself. I have acted with grace... grace and tact... grace, tact, and honor... (our three weapons...)

Storkle comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12834)

2011-01-27T08:26:42-08:00

MikeBlackmon, To convince regular readers of meta/mathoverflow of Harry's immaturity it is not necessary to do anything. Better to see him as a sort of running joke and not take anything he says too personally. He has been suspended several times for bad behavior on the main site, but here on meta it seems more latitude is given.

MikeBlackmon comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12833)

2011-01-27T07:57:20-08:00

Harry, Thank you for continuing to be completely immature, and making my point for me. I was trying to be respectful, and not put your name into this publicly, but the person I am speaking about is none other than Harry Gindi. If it is required, I will begin posting IRC logs of our conversation, just to show you how throughly terrible and vindictive he can be.

If I am to take this as a sign that this behavior is accepted on MO and represents a large portion of the user base of MO, then I can assure you I am done with this site.

Todd Trimble comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12832)

2011-01-27T07:40:07-08:00

Oh, Harry, you are a card!

Harry Gindi comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12829)

2011-01-27T06:45:50-08:00

X: 'ello, I wish to register a complaint...
X: 'ello, miss.
Y: What do you mean "miss"?
X: {winces} I'm sorry, I've got a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
Y: We're closin' for lunch.
X: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not 'alf an hour ago from this very boutique.

...

Also, the -2 refers to the number of points lost, not the number of votes cast.

François G. Dorais comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12827)

2011-01-27T06:17:36-08:00

Please contact the moderators at moderators@mathoverflow.net

MikeBlackmon comments on "What do you do, when on a different forum..." (12826)

2011-01-27T06:10:55-08:00

During a recent exchange with a MO member on IRC, he made it very clear that he had no respect for me or the field that I study. As a result of this he was banned from this particular channel, and just generally lost it. Since this particular exchange I've discovered that many old posts I've made on here which he has replied too, or commented on have received exactly two down votes, from him and what I assume is another account of his. This particular individual is very vindictive, manipulative, and immature. Is there anywhere I can register a complaint? Or is there any method I can use to insure that he doesn't have the ability to post or comment on anything that I do?