On 11/21/02 4:34 PM, "Jonathan Walther" krooger@debian.org wrote:

At 18, I would have had no problem remembering people mentioning on the mailing list here "be careful about using the URL interface to doing raw SQL queries, because some queries can REALLY SLOW THE DATABASE DOWN". We have no idea about this young mans technical abilities, good or bad. We do know he was immature and unstable enough to threaten to commit suicide on a public mailing list. He also posted on my Eleutherphilic Creed article yesterday that the Wikipedia didn't provide any value over the same information being scattered all over the web... Sounds to me like he doesn't really care about the Wikipedia itself, and is getting a charge out of getting people here riled up.

No, he really cares about Wikipedia. That's the problem.

http://qwert.diaryland.com/021120_73.html

This whole scene is a repetition of tedious Usenet wars, where both sides think that being online allows for more rudeness, not less. Lir's rudeness comes in the form of seeing wp az jst ant4r kewl haxor site fiting r fr33d0m and teasing all the stuck-up people who treat him like an idiot, and the rudeness on the other side is from people being stuck up and treating him like an idiot.

Or to put it another way: once you assume Lir's behavior comes from not caring about Wikipedia, you've missed what's actually going on.

And if you take his "i'm going to commit suicide" comment seriously, you're missing what's going on.

He's fallen into the insidious trap that using an online persona can create: acting to meet expectations. That is to say, he's already got the standard anti-authority mindset of young college students, but people here have treated him like he's an unstable, deranged girl, and whenever he makes some inane comment people react, so he keeps it up.