With that qualification I think your criticism of Xah is correct, although it entails that debate and trolling don't constitute "contributing anything". That, in turn entails that Naggum's thousands of posts also don't constitute any sort of a "contribution", though of course the small amount of functionality he added to Emacs does. This is debatable, but I do believe it's correct.
It's puzzling to me that you responded to my comment, which quoted Xah saying that he was trolling back then, by saying, "The Usenet archives document this though and he has actually said that he was trolling back then." Possibly you didn't see that part of my comment; did I edit it in after you read it? Certainly I edited it in before you posted your comment, because my editing window for that comment closed 19 minutes before you posted yours. Were there other parts of the comment that you also didn't read?
I don't think he's stopped being a destructive troll, but without Naggum's enthusiastic collaboration he is much less effective. I'd like to say that the changes in the online environment over the last 20 years have reduced the damage that any single troll can do, but eight years ago a Twitter troll got himself elected President of the USA, and seems likely to do so again.
When you say "this topic", I'm not sure whether you mean "the history of Lisp"† or "the social dynamics of online communities", but in either case you can save your tears; both of those topics are fascinating and enormously rewarding to study. Your demand to "get out of it" is not appreciated—it is a breach of civility to elevate yourself above me in that fashion, as if I were your servant—and I will not comply with it.
I asked you a similar question attempting to clarify what you meant in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41760084, and I appreciate your slight clarification on that question here. I've put a lot of effort into attempting to understand your flames so that I can respond to the substance they have, but without your collaboration it's impossible.
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† This gloss seems unlikely, because you've dedicated a lot of time studying this topic yourself.
It's puzzling to me that you responded to my comment, which quoted Xah saying that he was trolling back then, by saying, "The Usenet archives document this though and he has actually said that he was trolling back then." Possibly you didn't see that part of my comment; did I edit it in after you read it? Certainly I edited it in before you posted your comment, because my editing window for that comment closed 19 minutes before you posted yours. Were there other parts of the comment that you also didn't read?
I don't think he's stopped being a destructive troll, but without Naggum's enthusiastic collaboration he is much less effective. I'd like to say that the changes in the online environment over the last 20 years have reduced the damage that any single troll can do, but eight years ago a Twitter troll got himself elected President of the USA, and seems likely to do so again.
When you say "this topic", I'm not sure whether you mean "the history of Lisp"† or "the social dynamics of online communities", but in either case you can save your tears; both of those topics are fascinating and enormously rewarding to study. Your demand to "get out of it" is not appreciated—it is a breach of civility to elevate yourself above me in that fashion, as if I were your servant—and I will not comply with it.
I asked you a similar question attempting to clarify what you meant in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41760084, and I appreciate your slight clarification on that question here. I've put a lot of effort into attempting to understand your flames so that I can respond to the substance they have, but without your collaboration it's impossible.
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† This gloss seems unlikely, because you've dedicated a lot of time studying this topic yourself.