Cacowards 2017 discussion (24 years)

3 hours ago, Major Cooke said:

This thread. As I said, I'm not dragging his past in. He could have shaped up and learned his lesson from it.

i fully believe graf can and should change

if he changed he can come and apologize and not spend a week posting in unrelated threads about how much he hates lilith. and then clicking the like button on every negative review. and then logging into his alt account and clicking the like button on every negative review, again.

let's put aside the ethical wrongness of graf's behavior for a moment, and let's look at it from a practical perspective:

when i said earlier that graf drives away more programming ability than he has, this wasn't some dig at his programming ability. this was a practical statement. for example, i'm a programmer. one may argue that i'm not as skilled as him (a point i may disagree with, but that's, well, not the point). but for the sake of the model i'm proposing, let's say that

1 graf worth of programming skills = 10 anotaks

okay, so given that, the following must be true: graf must not scare away more than 10 anotaks worth of programming experience for him to be "worth it".

i would argue that graf has long not been "worth it", that graf pushes away many more people. the longer he continues to behave in this manner, the more people he will push away.

however, most people do not scare away programming ability, they attract it, because they know other people to bring in. and if there is no graf to scare other programmers away, those people will introduce more skills into the community. so this isn't just a 1-to-1 linear relationship, this is the fact that over time graf produces a linear amount of programming work, whereas attracting new people is greater than linear. graf isn't just suboptimal because of a worse constant, graf's behavior is asymptotically worse. and the longer graf behaves this way, the more damage is done to the community.

this isn't some hypothetical. i've been on the periphery of this community since the late 90s. i know more than one person who was unwilling to engage because of highly-visible crap like this. the only reason i ever even ended up around here, and making a mod like lilith.pk3, was because i knew RottKing in an unrelated IRC room. he personally convinced me to join some other doom irc rooms, that the majority of the community wasn't like that. and then at that point i released lilith.pk3, i myself was considering working on the zdoom source code when all this went down. i know at least 2 other programmers who are more skilled than me who specifically do not work in doom because of people who act like graf. i know many modders who are stressed about having to constantly walk on eggshells around this dude. so no, this isn't some hypothetical.

y'all think it's not harmful that graf threatens to throw another childish tantrum and delete gzdoom every time someone disagrees with him? really? like maybe the only reason he seems like such a valuable programmer is because other programmers simply do not want to put up with his shit?

i know an argument that's going to come up is, "well, those people just need thicker skin". but that's not really what it's about. why would they put up with this crap when they could just go anywhere else, thick skin or not? hell, how about graf get some "thicker skin" and not implode every time someone politely disagrees with him?

another argument is, "well, what about all these people that put up with graf". but that's a perfect example of selection bias, as the only people who are going to be around are those that graf's behavior doesn't drive away. but also, does everyone really truly put up with graf? like even his compatriots on the zdoom forums clearly don't think this shit is okay. they move his posts into the locked subforum seemingly on a regular basis.

yes, i think graf can change. no, i don't think he has changed. yes, i think he should change. yes, if he doesn't change, i think he should quit like he's been threatening.

also if anyone's keeping score, i've never even insulted graf on here or ZDF. not once. unless you count me pouring my heart and soul into lilith.pk3 an insult, like he seems to.