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Comments like
Piraha is so fake. That famous linguist is such a liar. – Harry Gindi 1 hour ago
and
I laughed at "rigorous engineering". Maybe vigorous, but not rigorous, no no. – Harry Gindi 1 hour ago
are not going to make you any friends.
Here's my suggestion: Try to refrain from making jokes, making comments, and expressing opinions (including opinions about pedagogy or books) on this site for a month. Perhaps you will find that these things are correlated with your repeatedly being systematically downvoted by others. Try to stick to mathematics and mathematics only (that's what the point of the site is anyway, right?), and see what happens. Just sayin'. Think of it as a social experiment.
Having opinions is fine. But you must recognize that some of your opinions and viewpoints are controversial or disagreeable to many others, or even most others. So if you want to express them, you should express them tactfully and with care, at least if you want to be taken seriously and listened to.
I want to add: I think you bring some valuable mathematical contributions to the community. Most people here probably won't dispute that. I am sure that most people welcome your mathematical comments, questions, and answers.
But your non-mathematical "contributions" are probably not so welcome. I think the fact that your posts get randomly and indiscriminately downvoted probably reflects this.
And if your next post in this thread contains the word "persona"...
@Kevin. It is essential to mention Harry's "light-hearted remark" in answer to the question "How to handle a two-body job search", that you can dump one body in the lake and then it becomes a one-body job search.. There were many interesting ones in the "Programming language" thread. But most of them seem to have disappeared now. What happened? I used to look up Harry's comments whenever I felt in need of a good laugh. .. However this should not count as encouragement for Harry.
@Harry. The fact is that you are bending every possible rule of conduct and etiquette to the maximum. It is stressful to deal with you, and though you have become better recently, it might take a while to get fully right.
@Zavosh. Banning anybody won't go anywhere. Also criticizing someone too much is also not going to give anything. The said person can just keep using MO under a different ID, use a proxy, etc.. I have seen a couple of posts by new users which looked suspiciously similar to posts by more familiar guys. However such headaches are for moderators, etc., fortunately..
@Harry: For what it's worth (probably not a lot), I still stand by the comment I made on that thread.
@Harry. That comment of Sonia was precisely of the sort you make regularly to others. Unwarranted, condescending, not in good faith, offensive, all are adjectives for your regular sort of comments too. When Sonia tried to join your league, you reacted even more offensively .. Since people here are in general not so reactive, you do not receive the same sort of reaction.. But the point to note is that man has only finite patience.
@Harry. Yes, that is true. I noted that of late you were much better. However it will take a while to stabilize things and get people's bad memories behind. Trust me, people will appreciate you in a while. You are on the right track, as of now.
@Harry,
I think the way for you to maximize community respect would be to behave as an adult in some noticeable way: the very fact that you ask questions about yourself on meta is already making me respect you more.
To give an example, you could voluntary decide to treat Math Overflow as a purely math place and confine yourself to purely technical interactions (asking questions/receiving answers). It's like a fast (or going to gym, or something else if you prefer): you restrict yourself a bit for a month, but reap the benefits (community respect here) for a lifetime :)
If you think about it, it could be a pretty fun game to express meaning only through math without using comments about the person!
Harry: I'd like to add my voice to those encouraging you to follow Kevin Lin's suggestion.
Actually, I thought from your last comment that you had decided to follow it. I hope you didn't decide to but then immediately cave in as a result of the current spam-storm. With the possible exception of the moderators, the smooth running of MO doesn't depend on any single one of us. You or I or any other user could step in front of a bus, and MO would carry on fine. In particular, your comments on the spam/flaky posts haven't been in any way necessary, even if they've been helpful (which may be debatable). To quote Bertrand Russell:
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
Here are three reasons to follow Kevin's suggestion.
For you: as a kind of social experiment (as Kevin said). You might find that people treat you differently. I've noticed, as I'm sure other regulars have, that over the last month or so you've reined in the rudeness. You're still doing things to piss people off, but less than before. I've also noticed that as you've made this change, people have been willing to take you more seriously.
For MO. In another meta discussion, Pete expressed his worry that one of the loudest voices on MO is (and I paraphrase) a 20-year-old with a highly abrasive manner. Maybe there are heavyweight, mature mathematicians who would have participated in MO, but were put off by this. It might have happened. Clearly MO gives you something. Are you willing to do this thing for MO? Of course I don't speak for everyone, but by now quite a large proportion of the community has put it to you, one by one, that the site would be a better place if you changed your behaviour.
For the rest of us. You've surely gathered that many MO users would breathe a sigh of relief if you decided to keep your contributions strictly mathematical. Think of it as a gift to us. Or, think of it as self-interest. Kevin Buzzard and Matthew Emerton eloquently pointed out that, if you continue in mathematics, it's near-certain that someone who knows you from MO will play a part in determining your future: deciding whether to admit you to grad school, offer you a postdoc, etc. When they see the name Harry Gindi, do you want their first thought to be "that obnoxious guy from Math Overflow" or "that mathematical superstar from Math Overflow"?
So: how about it? For a trial period of one month, all contributions to be strictly mathematical. No jokes. No opinions. No comments on the suitability of other people's contributions. Safest would be no comments at all. Try it for a month, and see how it makes you feel. What do you say?
+1 to Tom's post: I came here to say exactly the same thing.
That was my intention, but pretty much immediately after, the troll started posting new questions every 5 seconds. I'll try again starting today.
Do you think this could be still a project you're interested in?
Because I understand every day stuff that is interesting appears; sometimes a troll comes with an axe, sometimes a person posts a question that should be closed, sometimes, somebody is just wrong. But, if you look at this rationally, won't something new, and worthy of comment, be happening every day?
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