Reporting chronic problems

[testjz]

Sometimes, a situation arises in a topic. If things go too bad, we have the "Report" button for individual posts. Sometimes, the situation in a topic is part of a "chronic problem", one that may have already existed for several years. In that case, it doesn't make much sense to report individual posts, because they are just the tip of the iceberg. It makes sense to report the actual problem itself, in a way to bring the moderators' attention and without resorting to public shaming and bullying.

We now have an active topic that talks about one such problem, that is the manners of a member here (won't say who in order to avoid further bullying against them). The same topic, however, is itself part of a related problem, that is that bullying is still considered acceptable or, at least, is not criticized as it ought to. The problem, in relation to said member, would be maybe solved by now, if there was an efficient and obvious way to report it. The problem, in relation to said topic itself, would not even exist, if again there was an efficient and obvious way to report the problem in relation of said member.

The forum software allows only 5 recipients per PM, but I would find it necessary for all moderators to receive the report, and for all moderators to be able to reply to the report, with the reply being visible to all moderators (and the member who originally reported the problem). Granted, there aren't more that 5 moderators active at this point (edit: the total amounts to just 2). But, either way, it can be tedious to check the last visit time of each moderator before adding them to the recipients.

Would PMing the 5 most active moderators be an acceptable solution to report a problem that's not limited to just a couple of posts? Or would the moderators object to that?

[nexos]

Hello,
I believe you can enter a comment when reporting a post, so you could tell the mods what the problem is.

[StudlyCaps]

I would recommend sending a PM to Octocontrabass and klange, I believe they are the most active mods. If you have a concern about the site which you do not wish to discuss in public then sending a PM to the mods is a perfectly acceptable way to approach it.

[nexos]

At this point, @zaval, I regret suggesting that thread being created. For me, the problem is the amount of arguing and bickering going on the forum. I didn't try to single you out, and definitely not bully you, and if I did accidentally, then I'm sorry for it. There is enough drama in the world right now. How about we make this place peaceful. I am very surprised that the mods are yet to do anything.

[testjz]

Thank you all for your feedback!

I believe you can enter a comment when reporting a post, so you could tell the mods what the problem is.

Indeed that's possible. On the other side, I still don't think it makes a lot of sense to report a single post as part of the problem, and that's because multiple reports about a single larger problem makes the reporting disjunct. There is also the problem that trying to select the most relevant posts to the case can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. However, I can resort to doing just that, if necessary.

There is enough drama in the world right now. How about we make this place peaceful. I am very surprised that the mods are yet to do anything.

Indeed, we absolutely don't need or want any more drama and, in fact, I suspect you nexos didn't intend that, just like I didn't. We just wanted to have the moderators know about it, correct?

I would recommend sending a PM to Octocontrabass and klange, I believe they are the most active mods. If you have a concern about the site which you do not wish to discuss in public then sending a PM to the mods is a perfectly acceptable way to approach it.

We don't have any official confirmation from a moderator, but I think you are right after all.

I ended up PMing chase, Combuster, klange, Octocontrobass and pcmattman about the issues discussed here, namely the behavior of the member who decided to get some visibility once again, the inexistence of an obvious way to report continuous problems that aren't limited to a single post, and that there are only 2 moderators active (though another one visited the forums a couple of days ago).

...

As for you, zaval, "a member here", "said member" and "the member who decided to get some visibility once again", I wasn't sure whether I should bother replying to your post and, if I did, whether my reply should be a serious or an ironic one. I assumed you are an adult, despite your actions indicating otherwise, so I decided to be absolutely serious with you.

In short, your reply just confirms and reinforces what I'm talking about. I haven't talked about you by name publicly until now on purpose, nor I linked to that thread or any thread you participated (or any thread for that matter). The reason was simple: I wanted to give you a chance to backtrack, reconsider your actions, and sincerely apologize for your past behavior or do nothing, presumably out of shame. Instead, you decided to reply in your usual manner. So, because you responded, the benefit of me not being entirely clear who I'm talking about no longer applies, not even for someone who doesn't know the full story. I thus will be now talking about you by name in this thread. I don't know if you realize it, but you ridiculed yourself, once again.

So, you replied with a load of insults directed at me. Most of it just went directly to /dev/null (a fun metaphor even if you dislike UNIX-like OSes). I don't really care. But some members, on the contrary, do care, and this results in fights that no one really wants to waste time to either read or, even worse, participate in. You provoke them out of the blue.

For example, in the post you are talking about: you wanted to help someone. That's absolutely good that you like to help newcomers, but there was no reason to ridicule the OP's approach to development using a virtual machine, as your ridiculing only irritated everyone reading your post. Instead, constructively disagreeing is fine obviously, as it adds to the discussion, and without causing any conflicts. Indeed, you eventually need lots of actual real hardware, but few can invest money and space in a good sample of machines before even starting development. But also, virtual machines are very useful for debugging.

Apart from this one, it's been already a couple of years that I have noticed that you routinely pick fights with other members here, thus this is a "chronic" problem. As an unregistered guest, it was especially irritating for me to read through all of the fights because I had nothing to do with that. Imagine if you went to a concert and the first violinist started yelling at the violist "you played this phrase wrong" in the middle of a movement. Despite the prevalence of viola jokes, it doesn't happen and, if it did, it would make headlines in at least the local newspapers and the violinist's contracts would be most likely all cancelled. A musical work has continuity and so should a public forum discussion, if we want it to be of even a little help.

Finally, some members I suspect might have personality weaknesses. You have to respect that. Not everyone has your "don't care" attitude. You can help someone in a polite way. You can also correct someone in a constructive way. And, if they get defensive for some reason, you don't need to escalate the discussion into a fight. And, remember, the more politely you help/correct someone, the less defensive will be the one you are referring to or are talking about. Do you understand that?

Your post here, zaval, was not worthy of a reply but I replied anyway. I will however refrain from replying to your posts again, unless you write a post worthy of a reply. If you don't want to write a such a post, for everyone's peace, don't waste your time trying to provoke yet another war. You shall not succeed this time.

[nullplan]

I debated whether to answer in long form, picking your post apart, testjz. But I decided against it. In short: I think your claim of not caring is not entirely accurate. This thread, from the OP to your last response is proof enough of that, but even that post in the other thread showed that. Something about zaval's posts bothers you, and you try to make them go away without losing face yourself. So you blackmail zaval emotionally, claiming he's the childish one for acting as he does. Yes, he can be abrasive sometimes, however "avalanche of snot" is a good description of the entire farce so far. So what we have here is two supposedly adult people calling each other childish, and one going to the teacher to tattle.

Say what you will about zaval, at least he's honest about his feelings. You however try to manipulate others into seeing things your way, and that is far more harmful than the occasional abrasive statement.

As for insults, see my signature. I have a reason for having chosen it.

(Boy, this is going to look weird when I change it again to something else.)

[PeterX]

Say what you will about zaval, at least he's honest about his feelings. You however try to manipulate others into seeing things your way, and that is far more harmful than the occasional abrasive statement.

Is it really "manipulating" when someone tries to convince others? And is it really more harmful than the abrasive statements? And is it only occasional?

You seem to have a quite relaxed point of view which is good. Good for you and good for others. I fear I ain't so relaxed. I found putting zaval on my foe list the best solution for everybody. "Foe list" isn't actually a very fitting name for it. It's just an ignore list.

Greetings
Peter

[bloodline]

_________________
future big goal: ANT - NT-like OS for mips, arm and x86.
current smaller goal: efify - UEFI for a couple of boards (mips and arm).

Apologies for going off topic, have you written anything about your ANT project? Is is something akin to openVMS? You peaked my interest with that... Cheers!

[nexos]

When I go to his Sourceforge, it appears it is either closed source, or he hasn't started working on it. You can start a new thread to talk about this, however .

[zaval]

Apologies for going off topic, have you written anything about your ANT project? Is is something akin to openVMS? You peaked my interest with that... Cheers!

Isn't OpenVMS just VMS in the POSIX costume on it? and thus "open", meaning Open Group, and absolutely not that open, as either in beer or in speech. anyway, my napoleonian project has nothing to do with VMS (sorry), it has with the next D. Cutler's creature - NT, in a sense, NT (or, rather, what I know about it ) serves me as an inspiration, just like UNIX does for (so) many here. such a dream toy - my own NT with blackjack and ladies for tiny ARM SBCs. I have written something about it, but it's a mess, just like the project itself, so it's not ready for public eye (sorry, again, when it is ready, I'll make the ANT part of the signature clickable, if, of course, won't get stoned by a bunch of whiny boys over here earlier. (needed to say something on topic too)).

When I go to his Sourceforge, it appears it is either closed source, or he hasn't started working on it. You can start a new thread to talk about this, however.

that link is for an SVN mirror of my UEFI project, and I really didn't update it. But I'll do, when there is something to show in the ARM field (MIPS got stuck because I realized, the lack of PE compiler is a bigger problem, - I want to use import/export inside the core and between non-UDM drivers. when you start in SRAM right after Boot ROM code, you need to do very freaking out things (these PLLs, voltage regulators, SDRAM initialization), and well, it's interesting but often filled with obstacles. so, it's lying dormant and without the lowest level (SEC/PEI in terms of PI, which I don't follow (anymore), due to its overdesigned nature), all those (written) Boot Services are just paperweight. I was thinking about running my DXE (UEFI core) atop of uboot, maybe it's a way for now. if not, then deciphering Allwinner DRAM init code, I was kindly gifted a long time ago is. why I am telling this? ah, the UEFI part, if ever will be a thing, will be BSD with (possibly) closed parts (vendor specific secrets).

[testjz]

Some clarifications...

nullplan, I think you misunderstood what I wrote in that particular sentence about me not caring and, in retrospect, I could be clearer about that. I personally don't care that zaval insulted me. Really. But I do care that they insult others and disrupts peaceful discussions, and that's why I wanted to raise the issue to the moderators. I didn't post in that other thread though and I don't know where did you get that from, but I thought that starting a slightly more generic thread instead would allow to talk more broadly about raising similar issues to the moderators in other cases later.

I'm not trying to make zaval go away. I actually told the moderators not to ban them, but to make a clear and official statement, intended to make zaval realize that causing forum drama is not acceptable. Now, if you think that trying to convince someone equates with blackmailing and/or manipulating them, then all of us have done similar blackmailing and/or manipulation. Virtually everyone has tried to convince someone else at least a thousand of times during their lives, don't you agree?

As for the "farce" as you call it, it was probably more of a reaction to whatever has been going on since more than two years already than that single post in the "emulation" topic alone. The latter just added more fuel to the fire.

For future reference, your current signature is:

Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.

I can relate to Starbuck, but I don't know whether you would agree with that.

[nexos]

I don't think testjz was manipulating anyone. He expressed his opinion and confronted him directly. Zaval expressed his opinion on thee matter. Let the mods deal with this issue. I personally think it was bad how he insulted several people, but let's stop talking about him. Zaval isn't the only person doing this. Let the issue rest.

[zaval]

I don't think testjz was manipulating anyone. He expressed his opinion and confronted him directly. Zaval expressed his opinion on thee matter. Let the mods deal with this issue. I personally think it was bad how he insulted several people, but let's stop talking about him. Zaval isn't the only person doing this. Let the issue rest.

look, nexos, unlike that unhealthy graphoman from the above post, who claims I "insulted" him/her, despite I didn't know about his/her existence until recently he/she appeared, generating walls of text, mostly water in regard of UEFI, plus he/she jumped into this "drama" they created, so unlike him/her, I see your attitude constructive and calm, so please, again if you saw I "insulted" someone and you don't like it, just report it to the authorized persons. because for now this topic has become a magnet for local psychopaths that have been hiding all the time and now saw it's their star time, they jumped out of nowhere and keep this crazy f&cking sh1t on, disturbing people. this is not osdev, let them talk alone. I suggest anybody normal to stop posting in this cringeworthy thread.

and still, even though the whole problem is sucked out of the finger and has mostly to do with mental health and puberty hormone storm, I explain yet once, last time - I wasn't "ridiculing" the OP in the rk3328 emulation thread, and he didn't express any concerns regarding my posts, I was genuinely wondering why could be there a need to emulate such devices - it's not the first time, when talking to someone in regard of these ARM boards, I am getting asked if they could be emulated, and I always am like "come on, these boards are made for tinkering with them directly, not virtualized ones". thus it's a total lie about the root of "the problem" as it's now being shown by these self proclaimed "watchdogs" of the forum. "the problem" there arose because another person said that "pci" in the name of emulated device, doesn't mean they are "pci", but that they are "integrated" "somehow" and asked me if he/she is wrong with the assumption. I answered, he/she is and told, that I don't understand, what that "integrated somehow" means and wondered if the author of the sentence understands it, hinting, that he/she tried to say something good sounding but meaningless. my remark should have served as a hint to better formulate something and if one doesn't know sh1t, - not pretend he/she does. instead, the person fell into histerics. BUT! it doesn't mean I was abrasive there or moreover - insulted him/her. the thing, triggering him/her, was literally this line:

what this "I don't think they are actually hooked up as PCI devices, but rather as devices that would be integrated to the system" mean, I honestly don't know. do you?

if this is an insult, then there are no words to not be insults.

I'm not trying to make zaval go away. I actually told the moderators not to ban them, but to make a clear and official statement, intended to make zaval realize that causing forum drama is not acceptable.

The reason was simple: I wanted to give you a chance to backtrack, reconsider your actions, and sincerely apologize for your past behavior or do nothing, presumably out of shame.

may I kindly ask you just one question - who the hell you have imagined yourself here to be? a god? because the more and more, you sound like an unnormal, not exactly healthy one, but with loads of time and, that forgot to take your pills, if to be perfectly honest. so yeah, almost a god. and here comes the recipe of the problem solving for you - first and foremost - take the pills in timely manner! and just avoid me, disappear under your rock like you did before - I NEVER EVER NOTICED YOU, not to mention "insulted" you.

PS. yes, I am pissed now. because now moderators, being gotten bothered by this crazy, started to write to me, - what they have to do, who wants to get annoying kilometers of delirious morilizing? but there is NOTHING to poke me as a "violation", so I am getting "warned" about nothing to be more sugary, so the crazy won't be abusing mods mailbox. great!

PPS. now I gave the mods the reason to rebuke me, you may even block me. I, honestly, came here to look at the screenshots of numerous and interesting projects for getting inspired, increasing motivation, for pushing myself. by these great achievements, individuals were able to reach. I believe, I could keep doing this without having an account, just don't block by IP.

[nexos]

I think blocking or banning zaval would be a large overreaction. I don't think zaval meant any harm. In some ways, a mountain was made out of a mole hill .

[bloodline]

PPS. now I gave the mods the reason to rebuke me, you may even block me. I, honestly, came here to look at the screenshots of numerous and interesting projects for getting inspired, increasing motivation, for pushing myself. by these great achievements, individuals were able to reach. I believe, I could keep doing this without having an account, just don't block by IP.

Hmm, as nexos says, this whole thing is indeed a mountain out of a mole hill... Conflicting opinions, coupled with the inherent ambiguity which English offers its users.

We haven’t had any proper interaction yet, but do keep an eye on the site, I understand you have a lot of experience with EFI/UEFI and at some point I’m going to have to migrate away from GRUB and I’ll need all the help I can get.