George Herbert wrote:
On 2/23/07, John Lee wrote:
The moderators have agreed to ban this user from subscribing to the list. Since he was not making any positive contributions through his membership, it has been revoked.
This is sort of sad; gadflys and contrary opinions help strengthen projects, and on his good days, he was on the "probably making me think enough that it's positive overall" side of things.
But I see why, from the bad days.
We need a better class of gadfly.
This seems like a fair evaluation of the situation. An effective gadfly gets under a person's or a group's skin, and gives one the urge to swat. This cost the life of the world's most celebrated gadfly. A quality gadfly still needs to be an irritant, but also needs the agility to avoid the swatting hand.
Courage cannot become foolhardiness, and agility cannot become evasiveness. That's a rare combination of qualities. Parker's agility is lacking, but it is unduly harsh to say that he was making no positive contributions. I am not so insecure in my views that I can tolerate no criticism.
Ec