Real "communities", like real heroes, don't have to talk themselves up ...

[Former Member]

There has been much talk of "community" here at SDN lately.

I gotta tell ya, when "communities" aren't focussed on specific altruistic objectives (like Habitat for Humanity, for example), they make me nervous - real nervous.

What do I mean by this?

Simple - when I read the Forums and see one of my questions or someone else's questions being answered efficiently and effectively, I take great pride in being a member of the SDN "community".

But when I see the notion of "community" being abused to jusitfy the opinions of one or two or three or four or even 113/2 members of SDN, I can't help but think about the former US president Richard Nixon, and how he was so proud of saying that the "silent majority" supported the US war in Vietnam.

Here's the point - when "communities" stick to matters appropriate to community activity, like the real SDN community does in the Forums, they function wonderfully. When communities get involved in matters of belief, they are the most dangerous entities on God's green earth.

Oh - you don't agree with this last statement? Then I guess you haven't been reading the newspapers for a long long time.

So please, could everyone go on just a little less about "community"? Real communities, like real heroes, don't have to talk themselves up.

[Former Member]

I'm sorry, but what?!

[Former Member]

Hi Nigel -

Thanks again for taking the time to respond. I am very glad there is enough good-will between us to warrant us having a few beers together if our paths should ever cross.

That being said, I have to say I am also puzzled and distressed by your apparent feeling that I have levelled personal attacks against Eddy, Anton, Alvaro, and Craig. I honestly feel that your claim here is based on a misreading of my posts - the kind of misreading that I have already pointed out in a comment above.

So, to make sure the record reflects the facts, let's take my comment to Alvaro first. In my comment about soccer and hooliganism, I specifically mentioned "Northern European" societies. If I intended my comment as a personal attack against Alvaro, don't you think I would have said "South American" instead of "Northern European"? More generally, I can't imagine that Alvaro has ever given anyone cause to personally attack him - he is one of the genuinely nicest people here at SDN.

With respect to my comment about "Grumpies", your reaction perfectly illustrates my point about misreading. I didn't write "self-styled Grumpy" - I wrote "Grumpy wanna-be's". I think most people know that a "wanna-be" is someone who "wants to be" like someone else - so in this case I was clearly referring to SDNers who want to be LIKE Grumpy. And since there is only one Grumpy here at SDN, I clearly could not have been referring to Eddy in this comment. Does "wanna-be" have a different meaning to you? If not, do you see what I mean about some people almost seeming to want to misread my posts?

With respect to my not attributing Craig's quotes to him directly, I deliberately didn't do so because I hoped that by not doing so, more folks would be encouraged to read the threads to which I linked (to find out who made the statements). Furthermore, the only reason I even brought up the quotes is because Thomas Otter asked me directly for evidence that SDN seems to be tolerating a certain kind of behavior from certain posters that is well outside its own published guidelines. Does this constitute a personal attack on Craig?

With respect to Anton, let me say first that I greatly respect his intelligence and wit, and often learn quite a bit from his responses to my posts. That being said, I also have to say that he has a tendency to judge a situation way too quickly. In particular, what I have in mind here is the fact that he weighed in on my "EnjoySAP" Controls post with an evaluation that was later shown to be completely wrong, based on the informative and substantive replies that this post eventually received. So if I was bantering with him in my comment above, I think I can be reasonably forgiven the banter. But even if not, this banter certainly does not arise to the level of a personal attack.

With respect to your comment about my reaction to negative comments about my posts, I find it remarkable that you are posting to me about my "tone" while excusing clear and unequivocal ad homs from others. Is there a bit of a double standard being applied here? If so, can you tell me why you feel comfortable applying this double-standard?

Anyway, I would like to say in closing that I very much appreciate your honesty in your last post. I consider it progress when anyone stops referring to some spurious notion of "community" and start referring to their "circle of friends".

Oh - by the way - would you mind if I did tequila gimlets instead of beers? Old men like me have less trouble with less volume, if you know what I mean.

Best regards

djh

[Former Member]

actually i wanted to retire from taking part in this discussion but

1) my contribution to the Enjoy Control thread:

<i>a little example or link would have been worth more ...

2007-01-22 11:04:33 Anton Wenzelhuemer Business Card [Reply]

...than a thousand spoken or unspoken words.

Since this information is missing those of us who don't know Enjoy Controls do not get a much value from this blog.

Maybe you give us a WIKI entry on Enjoy Controls using your latest knowledge from BC4711. I'd give it a read.

</i>

2) hooliganism is no phenomenon specific to Northern Europe. They are found in a lot of places where soccer is played. Currently very awful activities of this kind take place in Italy. Problems are to be found in Greece. Even South America has its hooliganism problem in connection with soccer.

3) not only is this analogy wrong with regards to its content, it's no meaningful analogy at all. would someone want to say that where ever a 'sociological gathering or one of common interest' happens there is an inherent danger of hooliganism? Benedictinian Hooligans? Stamp Collecting Hooligans? Tupperware Hooligans? SDN hooligans?

Everything else has been rightly pointed out by others.

[Former Member]

djh,

I really wonder what you're ranting about. I can't help but think that this is a very personal crusade of yours and if that's the case, please tell us whom exactly you are accusing of taking hostage of the community notion. Is it the SDN 'admins' in general? Is it Craig you have some problems with? Is it anyone who presents his personal ideas on how to make things going more fluently here? What is the 113/2 reference good for?

So, please have the guts to get your arguments a little more to the point, tell us whose agenda you are unhappy with and what agenda exactly you think to have identified.

regards,

anton

[Former Member]

Just wanted to say one thing...How the community can be on the forums and not in the bloggers?

I said that because, most people in the forum doesn't collaborate, which I think is a principle of any Community....They just ask questions and most of the time they doesn't sassing points when they get the answer....Others post answers even when the question had been answer...

On the other hand...we bloggers are happy to share our knowledge, up for the criticism and open for comments....And....Also, bloggers are the most participative in the forums.....

I'm happy to be a part of this Community....I'm proud to be a part of this Community....That's why I have no shame to walk on the streets wearing my SDN shirts....to add in my signature that I'm a part of the SDN....to tell anybody that we are a Community doesn't unqualified us a Community.....On the contrary...We show our Community Spirit....

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

Hi Alvaro-<br><br>

Your tee-shirt analogy is actually quite on target here. You seem to like wearing your SDN tee-shirt for the same reasons soccer fans like wearing or displaying some emblem of their team or club.<br><br>

But have you ever wondered why soccer and hooliganism are so closely associated in Northern European cultures?<br><br>

Don't get me wrong here - there are plenty of SDN fans among SDN members - and that's great.<br><br>

But suppose there's a game some weekend where some fans turn into hooligans. And afterwards the authorities issure a press-release saying - "Well, after all, those hooligans were only representing the community" ... <br><br>

regards,<br>

djh

[Former Member]

Anton -<br><br>

Darn ... you' ve ruined the experiment.<br><br>

All we needed was one more of the usual players to weigh in with a comment and we would have had a pseudo-quorum representing the "community".<br><br>

And then, of course, this pseudo-quorum would once again have been "officially" certifed as the "official" voice of the community.<br><br>

Regards

djh

[Former Member]

David,

I feel your hooligan analogy was absolutely uncalled for. It was insensitive and totally inappropriate. Where is the evidence for your allegations? Stop the insinuations or produce the evidence please.

Regards,

Thomas

[Former Member]

Thomas -<br><br>

Thanks for taking the time to respond.<br><br>

On the one hand, I'm sorry the analogy disturbed you. On the other hand, I think it entirely appropriate, given the recent behavior of certain SDN members toward others.<br><br>

In response to your request for "evidence", all I can do is ask you to:<br><br>

1) read these two threads in their entirety:<br><br>

<a href="/people/david.halitsky/blog/2007/01/10/before-bi-there-was-ai-will-enterprise-soa-bring-it-back </a>

<br><br>

<a href="/people/david.halitsky/blog/2007/01/22/yea-though-i-walk-through-the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-wdawdj-i-have-taken-bc412 </a>

<br><br>

2) decide whether the posts directed against me in these threads were appropriate in terms of SDN's own guidelines against ad homs, personal attacks, etc.<br><br>

If you think the posts directed against me in these two threads WERE appropriate, then there is little I can do to convince you that I have a valid point here.<br><br>

But if you think that perhaps the tone of some of the posts in these two threads might not have been all that appropriate, then I ask you next to consider this quote:<br><br>

"<b>Now it has been made very clear in multiple posts over the last several months that there is a certain expectation in terms of "blogs" here and until that changes (the community decides as a whole) certain blog posts here are simply unacceptable. This is not the wide world blogosphere and therefore it's NOT everything goes."</b><br><br>

in this thread here: <br><br>

<br><br>

Again, if you think that these two quotes do not contain spurious notions to some spruious notion of "SDN community" to justify the opionions of a few, then I'm not sure I can do anything to convince you of the point I'm trying to make here.<br><br>

Furthermore, I want to assure you that my purpose in posting this thread and replying to you here is NOT to prolong controversy over this particular matter.<br><br>

Rather, as I have said above, I would like to be able to post to the Coffee Corner about two topics of great interest to me:<br><br>

a) whether SDNers spend enough time looking critically at the greater SAP community of which SDN is merely a part;<br><br>

b) whether SDN managment does enough to encourage SDNers to look critically at the greater SAP community of which SDN is a part.<br><br>

And I cannot post about (a) and (b) if every time I do so, I run the risk of being officially told that I am going against the expressed desires of some imaginary pseudo-community.<br><br>

Additionally, with respect to your earlier comment about there not being a certain type of politics in occasional evidence at SDN, I have to say I respectfully disagree with you, for the following reason<br><br>

There was a US Senator named Joseph McCarthy who ruined many many lives through his false accusations that Communists had infiltrated the US government, even the US Army. These accusations were so false that the US President Eisenhower eventually ordered the review and re-instatement of the security clearances of many people who had lost these clearances due to McCarthy's tactics.<br><br>

What does McCarthy's story have to do with SDN?<br><br>

Simple.<br><br>

When McCarthy stood up before a crowd and told them that he had in his briefcase the names of 250 Communists in the US State Department, he was doing something very similar to administrators of web sites who tell the site's members about certain emails he or she has received.<br><br>

It seems to me that when a site administrator receives a complaint email, he or she should encourage the sender to post the complaint publicly. And if the sender is not willing to do so, then the complaint should be disregarded.<br><br>

Thomas - in closing, I would like to say that I consider you a person of good-will and hope that you see me in the same light. Nothing I have done at SDN to date has been motivated by any desire other than to make SAP a better community for all to work in. If you cannot bring yourself to believe this, then I am truly very sorry.

<br><br>

Best regards<br>

djh

[NigelJames180]

Any examples that don't include you David? Has anyone else copped it and you feel is an example of what you are talking about?

Regards,

Nigel

[Former Member]

Hi Nigel -

Thanks for taking the time to respond.<br><br>

Can you point me to another poster in the past two years who has been explicitly or implicitly critical of anything in the SAP community of any significance, e.g. a marketing strategy, something left undone in some old environment during the rush to the new, some portion of the SAP community left to fend for themselves in the rush to the new, etc.?<br><br>

If you can, please provide the names of such posters.<br><br>

I am always ready to learn from other people, and if there have been psoters at SDN who have criticized significant aspects of going-ons in the SAP community at large, but have done so in a way that has not provoked the reaction which I seem to have provoked, then I will do my best to emulate these posters in the future.<br><br>

And again, I do not mean critcs of the workings of SDN - there are plenty of Grumpy wanna-be's out there whose criticisms of SDN do not amount to criticisms of anything significant in the actual SAP community itself.<br><br>

I await your list of names of posters in the above-mentioned category, Nigel, so that I can begin to learn from their rhetorical styles how they escaped the odd reaction which I seem to have provoked in some members of the SDN community.<br><br>

As I said to Thomas above, Nigel, I consider you a person of good-will and good intentions, and trust that you see me in the same light. If this is not true, please let me know where and how you think I have acted in bad faith at SDN or with intentions other than good ones.<br><br>

Regards<br>

djh

[NigelJames180]

David,

Any chance you could answer my question first instead of batting it away with another question?

Good intentions or not you certainly are getting a few peoples back up.

Nigel

[former_member10945]

> Can you point me to another poster in the past two

> years who has been explicitly or implicitly critical

> of anything in the SAP community of any significance,

Me here on SDN, talking about <a href="/people/daniel.mcweeney/blog/2006/09/19/lipstick-on-a-pig-why-rails-is-good-for-sap">SAP's User Experience</a> and even more crtically here <a href="http://blog.danmcweeney.com/14">SAP's users of Tomorrow</a>.

This even blew all the way out into the SAP Analyst world.

Woo, free links!

-d

[Former Member]

Nigel -<br><br>

I think the fact that Dan tried to answer my question in good faith indicates that this question was asked in good faith, and was not merely a rhetorical attempt to bat your question away. I'm sorry you took it that way - he didn't seem to.<br><br>

More generally, there appears to be a predisposition here at SDN to misinterpret my motivations a little too readily and a little too negatively, as perhaps you just did. Consider, for example, how badly someone leapt to a conclusion about my reason for posting this post here:<br><br>

<a href="/people/david.halitsky/blog/2006/12/28/minimalist-it-what-to-do-when-you-have-to-make-do </a>

<br><br>

In any event, I'm really sorry you think I'm getting people's backs up. If one posts in good faith with good intentions, one cannot really be responsible for whether the result is other people's backs going up. Can we at least agree on this?<br<br>

Dan -<br><br>

Thanks very much for taking the time to respond.<br><br>

To tell you the truth, I myself have noticed the streak of "independent thinker" in you, but despite the fact that I see and acknowledge this, I don't see your two links as examples of what I'm talking about.<br><br>

In the first place, your second post was not at SDN but at your own blog. I'm sorry I didn't specify "SDN locale" in my question - I guess I thought it was unnecesary.<br><br>

With respect to your first post about "lipstick", I'm not sure if any post can be considered as real critical of the reigning philosophies or powers-that-be at SAP when it includes a line like:<br><br>

<b>The other major area RoR helps your organization is in an area Shai himself said, we all need to work on, “Thril[ling] your Users.”</b><br><br>

But as I said to Nigel, I am always ready and willing to learn from others.<br><br>

So if I ever do decide to post a blog entry again (which is highly doubtful), and if it happens to be one containing some criticism of SAP, I will follow your lead here.<br><br> I will be sure and try to find some way of showing that this apparent criticism is actually right-in-line with something "Shai" has said.<br><br>

Dan - I enjoy this back and forth with you a lot - very much appreciate the opportunity to engage with you.<br><br>

djh

[NigelJames180]

Fine David,

But I am with Anton. You seem to be on a personal crusade where you are the only one who is in the right and everyone else who critisises you is in the wrong.

But when you make allegations of my friends, Craig whom you quote but don't acknowledge as the author of the quote, Eddy who you dismiss as a 'Self Styled Grumpy', Blag whom you all but call a football hooligan because he is proud of SDN, your sarcastic dismissal of Antons concerns in this thread, I really think you are taking things too far.

I find that what goes around comes around. If you want to be cricical of SAP fine, just don't cry about it when others are critical of you, Ad hominem or not.

Look David I am a live and let live guy. If you want to rant on here on SDN about how SQL92 is the most inefficient thing since slice bread and why hasnt SAP fixed it yet fine. I will defend your right to do so but as consequence of the threads this weekend I will be a lot less likely to read anything you write here as a blog or in coffee corner. It's all about reputation and you are not doing yours any favours.

I would love to sit down and have a beer with you one day and just like I will with Petr who took exception to one of my blogs last year.

And now let me be really clear (like I was talking to my 3 year old).

• This is not an personal attack against you.

• I am concerned about your tone

• You seem to be making this personal

• Please stop making veiled attacks against my friends

There that is all I have to say about that.

With the exception of this...

A blogger who attacks SAP regularly is

<a href="http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/">Vinnie Mirchandani</a>.

Yes he is not on SDN but you may learn something from him.

<a href="http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/">Andrew McAffee</a> a thought leader on Enterprise 2.0 was savaged last year on slashdot. You will find Thomas's review of that encounter <a href="http://theotherthomasotter.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/slashdot-and-harvard-business-review/">here</a>.

And lastly for some thoughts on football hooliganism I would read

<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watching-English-Kate-Fox/dp/0340818867">Watching the English</a>

Gee maybe I have this all wrong and maybe you are right and if so I apologise.

That now is really ALL I am going to say about that.

Kind regards,

Nigel

[Former Member]

David,

SDN is brilliant the way it is - the envy of the software industry. I think community is exactly right word. In our case here, the community is simply a bunch of people who want to learn more about SAP and share their knowledge.

I think there is a shared belief - sharing knowledge is goodness. But I don't see any conspiracy or cult. There are no Heroes, Nixons or Vietnams here. Lets keep it that way.

Thomas

[Former Member]

Hi Nigel/Dan/Thomas -<br><br>

Thanks very much for taking the time to respond.<br><br>

I think I may have raised some unnecessary dust by carelessly typing "belief" when I really meant "opinion".<br><br>

Let me try to restate the point of the post as follows: There seems to be a distressing tendency on the part of some SDN'ers to misuse the notion of "community" by claiming, without a shred of evidence, that they are speaking "for the community" when they are merely voicing their own opinions.<br><br>

This is precisely how the worst demagogues in history have always misused the notion of "community". You voice your own opinion, wait for one or two people to voice assenting opinions and then claim that the "community" has spoken, despite the fact that an equal or greater number of people have voiced the opposite "opinion".<br><br>

Anyway - I want to speak further to Thomas' point because to me it goes to the heart of the matter. And in the process of speaking to Thomas' point, I want also to speak to something Dan wrote.<br><br>

Thomas - I think your reply was wonderful because it truly voiced the real spirit of SDN.<br><br>

As I said in my original post, this real spirit of SDN is the spirit to be found in the Forums, not in the SDN blogs.<br><br>

But the fact that SDN has managed to keep this kind of spirit alive in the Forums does not mean that this should be the sole purpose of SDN.<br><br>

In fact, I agree with Dan entirely when he writes:<br><br>

Communities that don't talk about the world they live in and don't focus inwardly from time to time either due to ignorance or fear go by other names: oligarchy, totalitarian or autocracy.<br><br>

And I think this is where SDN fails completely. Sure - it focusses inwardly quite often on the inner workings of SDN - so much so that it sometimes reminds me of Student Council meetings in US highschools where everyone gets seriously involved in important questions involving bake-sales for the footbalk team, whether students should be allowed to wear "Goth" raincoats to class, and which flavor of post-punk rock should play at the junior prom.<br><br>

But does SDN really "focus inwardly" on the greater SAP community of which it is a part?<br><br>

Does SDN management really encourage the SDN community to "focus inwardly" on the greater SAP community of which it is a part?<br><br>

These two questions are the two that I am most interested in, and the two that are most easy to dismiss by specious claims that the "community" has spoken.<br><br>

Best regards<br><br>

djh

[former_member10945]

First Habitat for Humanity isn't a "community", using the internet sense of the word, it's a donation funded, centrally directed and centrally driven group. In reality they are quiet scary because they <b>do</b> push beliefs, "Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry."<a href="http://www.habitat.org/how/factsheet.aspx">(1)</a> I have also done one of these in college and I can honestly say it has a lot of ministry overtones, certainly square in the "belief" category.

I guess my major problem with your focus is that unless I'm reading different threads no one is talking about some intangible belief, like morality, this is the community deciding what is decent content. However, to follow your posit for a second, if you've read your Nietzsche you know the importance of a group examining and creating it's own "beliefs" instead of just a central body deciding what is right and wrong<a href="http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/genealogytofc.htm">(2)</a>. It would appear you would just like the folks that run SDN to decide what is good and what is bad for us. For me, that is the danger and if you read the newspapers you will see that all over people in ivory towers are creating policy without any direct checks on their power.

Putting aside the belief question I think we need to focus on what the real question people are asking in the forums namely what is decent content and how to do we get more of that and less useless non-sense.

An example of the community creating standards that has gone awry would be the Supreme Court case FCC v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION<a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=438&invol=726">(3)</a>, "the 7 dirty words case." The problem with this decision is that it doesn't leave the choice in the hands of the majority but, instead leaves it in the hands of the FCC ( an appointed body ) to process a small number of complaints from a handful of unreasonable, selfishly motivated people who send them in complaints, probably acting on behalf of some half baked moral standard<a href="http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/genealogytofc.htm">(2)</a>.

So, really quickly, there is no silent majority on a asynchronous website -- if you are silent you simply don't exist! No one is talking about beliefs this is the community's attempt to self-police and determine what is "decent" content. To allow a small number of people to dictate content is bad and leaving it in the hands of a central authority is even worse.

Communities that don't talk about the world they live in and don't focus inwardly from time to time either due to ignorance or fear go by other names: oligarchy, totalitarian or autocracy. None of these are a good solution for a community. From what I understand Cuba is very nice this time of year, besides that whole poverty and living in fear of reprisal for public speech against the leader.

-d

for your reading pleasure.

(1) - http://www.habitat.org/how/factsheet.aspx

(2) - http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/genealogytofc.htm

(3) - http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=438&invol=726

[NigelJames180]

Yes David we are a community. We should talk about what we want to achieve and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. This is standard behaviour for any community.

What is your point? Explain it to me like I am a 3 year old (to quote the movie)

regards,

Nigel