Subject: Re: looking for books on scraping and flaking

From: [email-masked] (Tim Nye)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 18:01:03 GMT

This looks like a troll, but what the heck.  Maybe throwing some data into 
the argument might enlighten things somewhat.

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:

>Who appointed you to be the policeman or priest of this newsgroup?

The same person who appointed you, Mr. Anon.penet.fi?

>>One of the objectives of newsgroups such as this is the interchange of
>>information and opinion of interest to all who participate.  Much of

>I contacted the person by email, and they did not receive any responses.
>You then posted about the number of times the person posted the message.
>If what you say above is your intention, then you should be thankful for
>the multiple postings, because that is getting answers.

OK, let's look at the history of that _one_ question.

First, the initial post:

:From [email-masked]
:Date 16 Jan 1996 17:58:44 GMT
:Message-ID <[email-masked]>
:
:I am looking for books, papers or videos on scraping and flaking. Please 
:contact via email.
:Thanks a lot!
:
:lbliao

Then an answer:

:From Mike Rehmus <[email-masked]>
:Date 18 Jan 1996 14:08:49 GMT
:Message-ID <[email-masked]>
:
:Please post also!
:
:The book, Machine Tool Reconditioning, talks
:about this subject but not in enough detail.
:
:Best,
:
:Mike Rehmus

What do you know.  There _was_ an answer.  And another:

:From [email-masked] (A. Abid)
:Date 19 Jan 1996 05:50:35 GMT
:Message-ID <[email-masked]>
:
:In article <[email-masked]>,Tim Nye <TJNYE@
:MANSCI.watstar.uwaterloo.ca>; wrote:
:>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (
:Alan Frisbie) writes:
:>>[email-masked] (lbliao) writes:
:>
:>>>I am looking for books, papers or videos on scraping and flaking. Please 
:
:If what you mean is ways scraping, then there is a book by Connely on
:Machine Tool Rebuilding. I am trying to find it myself.
:
:lone

Notice that 'lone' is posting from the same system that 'lbliao' posts 
from.  This would seem to prove there are no technical reasons why 'lbliao' 
would not be capable of reading and posting follow-ups in this group. 

Also note that the book "Machine Tool Reconditioning" contains about 250 
pages describing just hand scraping, layout and inspection.  It's hard to 
imagine that this isn't enough information.  However, guess what pops up 
then:

:From [email-masked]
:Date 19 Jan 1996 05:38:26 GMT
:Message-ID <[email-masked]>
:
:I am looking for books, papers or videos on scraping and flaking. Please 
:contact via email.
:Thanks a lot!
:
:lbliao

Sound familiar?

This is the pattern from 'lbliao' that people in this group have been 
objecting to.  Frequent posting of the same questions, then totally ignoring 
the answers people provide.

A special case of this was the question about "flats" posted in December by 
'lbliao'.  Go back and look the responses from the dozen or so people 
_trying_ to help.  However, nobody knew what 'lbliao' meant by "flats", and 
the responses were all in vain since 'lbliao' refused to explain what he/she 
was asking about.

Ironically, 'lbliao' had posted this _identical_ "flats" question a few 
months before, and the several people who tried to help then also couldn't 
because there was no clarification forthcoming from the questioner.  So, 
probably 20 separate people from this group tried to help 'lbliao' but were 
ignored.

Which brings us to this:

>who are you to decide the ill-posedness? I think that you should be able
>to understand a simple english phrase, "looking for books on 
>scraping and flaking" and the subsequent message, if you had primary
>school education in the US. Or, is the standard of education too low?

The 'ill-posed' question was the one about "flats".  Tell you what, Mr. 
Anonymous, I still don't know what 'lbliao' meant by "flats".  Maybe you 
could explain to us.  Did he/she mean surface plates?  Optical flats?  Gauge 
blocks?  Parallels?  Or something else?  Let's see your command of the 
english language in action.

>I agree, but can you understand that a poster can only reply when he/she
>gets a reply. Further, many people do not have internet posting access, as
>I do not. You can always send email to any original poster to see if they
>got any replies.

Obviously the system at alumnae.caltech.edu does allow reading replies and 
posting follow-ups.  (See above.)

>again you are making a grave assumption. I do not know about your IQ, but
>many people do not have posting facility. Further, many people like to 
>help privately. I do reply to many people privately. 

But 'lbliao' has received _many_ answers to questions posted publicly, and 
all evidence indicates they have _all_ been ignored.

>Most of the people
>posting are what I would call "agents", (a too strong term) of the businesses
>that profit from these newsgroups. 

The conspiracy theory again?

>These are junk sellers, selling eg many old
>books for exorbitent prices for the quality of the material; 

If you mean Lindsay, I suspect a _lot_ of people in this group will go on
(public) record as being 100% in disagreement with you.

>auctioneers
>who benefit from gathering as many people as possible. If any one of them
>denies/lies they have no business interest, then there is no way to prove it.
>But I do not know how these people are supporting themselves when they have
>so much time for posting. They are trying to create a false enthusiasm about
>a field, that is a very old art. Now, I would not say this about a newsgroup
>like the one on TeX, which has genuinely useful information posted, and
>is virtually free for anyone who has ftp access. Most people there are
>those who are writing their thesis, and share information in the way of
>this occupation.

Well, maybe 'lbliao' could spend several months posting multiple copies of 
the same questions to the TeX newsgroup, and ignore all the answers 
provided.  Do you suppose all the _contributors_ to that group would still 
be so helpful to this person after a few rounds of that?

(Data point:  According to the DejaNews archive, 'lbliao' has posted 103 
articles between 9/30/95 and 1/16/96 -- 100% questions (some many times) and 
0% responses to anyone else's questions.)

And let's not forget the abusive phone calls Alan Frisbie got from an 
unidentified caller who demanded answers to questions on scraping and 
flaking.  

Who knows?  Maybe 'lbliao' isn't as rude and arrogant as he/she appears from 
his/her behaviour in this group.  In that case I'm sure people would be more 
than happy to help him/her, but all we get is demands for answers, followed 
by silence.  Hardly a great PR strategy.

Regards,

Tim

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 12:13:34 UTC

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Dale A. Keltie )
writes:
>
>In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (A. Abid)
>writes: 
>>
>>In article <[email-masked]>,
>
>>I don't see what problem you have with the posts of this person. THere
>are
>>so many ads on this news group, that are commercial in nature, that I
>do not
>>see any problem. There is much greater bandwidth taken by postings in
>other
>>news groups such as alt.sex etc. It is perhaps the person did not get
>any
>>reply. It is also possible that you or other people want to suppress
>certain
>>kind of Info to be distributed publicly, probably your proprietary
>info.
>>
>>Any way shut up this childish nonsene and get on with your life.
>>
>>abid
>
>
>Adid -
>
>Does Cal. Tech. offer a course in common manners?  Do they offer group
>rates on tuition?  If so, perhaps you and your pal lbliao should
>consider an (apparently) new academic adventure.

Mr. Keltie, on the contrary do you have any manners? The way you are
spewing out this unintelligible verbiage full of assumptions tells us
something about you. Who appointed you to be the policeman or priest
of this newsgroup?

>that information, especially that acquired in the experience of those
>posting responses to technical questions, can be damned difficult, time
>consuming, and expensive to obtain from other resources.  Responses to
>questions posed (or in lbliao's case, ill-posed) 

>here are generally
>posted here, rather than e-mailed, so all participants can benefit from
>those responses and the ad hoc forum, albiet temporary, thus created. 

>I suspect 

This word probably characterizes you. Not everyone thinks like you.

>lbliao simply posts (and re-posts) his questions here, as
>well as to at least one other technically oriented newsgroup I read,
>and then, somewhat arrogantly I think, expects an e-mail overflow of
>response.  As opposed to the persom whom you chose to attack (a
>frequent CONTRIBUTOR to this newsgroup), I have never seen a newsgroup
>post from lbliao, here or in sci.engr.mech, that I would regard as

again you are making a grave assumption. I do not know about your IQ, but
many people do not have posting facility. Further, many people like to 
help privately. I do reply to many people privately. Most of the people
posting are what I would call "agents", (a too strong term) of the businesses
that profit from these newsgroups. These are junk sellers, selling eg many old
books for exorbitent prices for the quality of the material; auctioneers
who benefit from gathering as many people as possible. If any one of them
denies/lies they have no business interest, then there is no way to prove it.
But I do not know how these people are supporting themselves when they have
so much time for posting. They are trying to create a false enthusiasm about
a field, that is a very old art. Now, I would not say this about a newsgroup
like the one on TeX, which has genuinely useful information posted, and
is virtually free for anyone who has ftp access. Most people there are
those who are writing their thesis, and share information in the way of
this occupation.

>contributory in nature.  He doesn't even take the time to clarify an
>ill-posed question when the confusion generated by that question would
>be readily apparent to a reader of attempted answers (e.g., that
>"flats" thing; I don't think anyone really knows what the Hell he was
>babbling 

your language tells your character

>about even now).  That, I believe, is because he doesn't
>trouble himself to read the generally numerous articles that other
>people troubled themselves to write in response to his questions. I
>think you and lbliao should trouble yourselves to go back several days
>in this newsgroup, and in sci.engr.mech, and look at the number of
>responses to lbliao's most recent question.  No Adid, you needn't
>expend the effort to read them, just count 'em.  Then ask yourselves
>just how perfectly idiotic 

masterpiece!

>your remarks must seem to people who have
>read those responses, and especially to the people who took the time to
>post one.
>
>Cal. Tech. has one of the most prestigious engineering libraries on the
>face of the earth by the way, have you or lbliao ever seen it?  Check
>it out (go inside).
>
>Regards, Dale  

Well you might want to post a little about their libraries, since I plan
to go there for grad school.

No Regards, as long as you try to be the policeman in this group!
Lennart Johnson
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---

From: [email-masked] (Alan Frisbie)
Date: 27 Jan 96 08:48:24 PST

In article <[email-masked]>, 
[email-masked] (Tim Nye) writes:

> And let's not forget the abusive phone calls Alan Frisbie got 

Please, let's not overstate this.   The caller was rude and
abrasive, but not abusive.   He simply refused (rudely) to
believe me when I told him that hand scraping could make a
flatter surface than most machining processes.   He also
dismissed my suggestions that he read some of the recommended
books that discuss the subject (Connelly & Gingery to name
two).

By the second call he had evidently changed his mind, and
asked where he could get Connelly's book.   However, he was
quite put out when I told him that there was no 800 number
he could order it from instantly.   He seemed to be
accusing me of something wrong by referring him to someone
who didn't want to publish his phone number.

I have no evidence that he was in any way connected to
the people who have made these irritating postings, but
I suspect it because of the attitudes expressed.   Perhaps
it is a sign of getting old(er), but I don't have much
respect for the "instant gratification" or "gimme, gimme, gimme"
type of people.   Even less for those for who stoop to
gratuitous insults in their postings.

--  Alan E. Frisbie               [email-masked]
--  Flying Disk Systems, Inc.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 27 Jan 1996 18:53:24 GMT

lbliao has done the same thing in sci.electronics newsgroups...   I just ignore his posts from now on.
If everyone does that he will dry up and blow away.  His postings are representative of the typical 
gimme, gimme attitude that have destroyed many newsgroups.  Don't let that happen here, just ignore
him

John Lovallo