mjit said:

Oh, HEAVENS. I have disturbed the mighty Bowerbird with snarky hyperbole!

just goes to show how little you know. i am not "disturbed" by _snarky_hyperbole_. indeed, it's exactly the opposite -- that's my _thing_. which you would know, if you read my posts regularly... (yet, surprisingly, you are right that i _am_ "mighty".)

See, a few times a year, I accidentally read something Bowerbird posts.

it's a source of continuous and curious amusement to me that the people who seem to think they know the _most_ about me and my personality and my posts are the people who also say they almost _never_ actually _read_ my posts! that's quite some trick they pull off, if you ask me, yes sir...

I find his spoutings harsh

i admire the fact that here mjit points the responsibility back to how _he_ interprets my posts, rather than how i _write_ them. i can assure you that i do not write posts in a "harsh" manner. how could i be "harsh" all the time? it'd be so _exhausting_. i wouldn't have the energy for it. nope, i'm as cool as a cucumber when i write my posts... and if you're not equally cool when you _read_ my posts, then you're injecting the wrong tone-of-voice into them. it is really just that simple. if it helps, you can think of me as an old man, sitting in a rocking chair, on the front porch, who -- between his resigned sighs of didn't-i-already-tell-you-this? and do-i-really-have-to-say-it-again? -- speaks his peace. because, in case you haven't noticed -- and how would you notice, if you don't read my posts?, but anyway -- almost every thing i say is just plain old common sense. let me repeat that, with the hope that it might sink in: almost every thing i say is just plain old common sense. yeah, yeah, yeah, i back it up with solid argumentation, and code that runs and does the job, and tons of data, and write-ups so extreme they're faulted as pedagogic, which is all fine and good, i guess, and i really wouldn't do it any other way, but if you really stop and look at it, you (and just about everyone else) should have enough plain old common sense to see that what i am saying is just plain old common sense. should be obvious to all. and if plain old common sense sounds "harsh" to you, then just maybe you need to re-evaluate your stance...

I find his spoutings harsh, so most of the time I do the appropriate thing and delete whatever he sends without looking at it.

if anyone out there misunderstands the tone of my posts and finds 'em "harsh", then i _want_ you to stop reading! gee, seriously, why would you want the headache of that? i don't have a need to have _anyone_ read my posts, and i know that many people actually _enjoy_ reading them, and find them informative, and like my sense of humor. so, as i have said _many_ times in the past, if _you_ get unhappy by reading my posts, then stop reading them! (see, like i said, it's just plain old common sense, right? like that classic joke goes, "doc, it hurts when i do this", to which the doctor replies with "then stop doing that".) life is too short to voluntarily subject yourself to material that puts you in a bad mood... so why would you do that? i mean, yeah, sure, maybe you should inform yourself about global warming, even though it's not a pleasant subject, and if you find yourself with a disease then you should probably read up on it so that you'll be more knowledgeable about it, even if in the course of doing that, you become depressed... but almost none of the things i talk about here are like that. (i would say none at all, but i likely do grope around a few of the fundamentally basic issues of humanity occasionally. but i'm quite positive that, even then, i don't write anything that can't be found elsewhere, expressed more eloquently.) all of which is to say that i _loudly_applaud_ mjit for deleting my posts without reading them. it is "the appropriate thing". of course, it's also appropriate then to say "i don't know anything about those posts, because i don't read them." because -- well -- that's just plain old common sense...

This time, I accidentally opened it, and I was surprised to see something approaching civility coming from the notorious BB.

notorious? seriously? you consider me to be "notorious"? well, that amuses me. especially since, when i tried to write myself into wikipedia, a wiki-editor deleted it because i lacked sufficient notoriety. (the wiki-editor did say the bio i wrote made him laugh, because i'd described myself in rather unflattering terms; i guess it seems that most people trying to put themselves into wikipedia write themselves up in a glowing fashion... the wiki-editor mentioned this because it meant that my edit was not being dismissed under the standard rule that stops people from trying to put themselves into wikipedia.) so, anyway, mjit, what just happened to you was that you accidentally discovered some evidence that disconfirmed your set idea about one aspect of the state of the world... so you wondered -- jokingly -- if "the end" was nigh. nope... it's far more mundane... you were just wrong... many people would learn that _lots_ of their conceptions about the world are incorrect, if they actually tested 'em, by subjecting them to the possibility for disconfirmation. but we're wired to seek confirmation, not disconfirmation, alas, to the point that we often reject any disconfirmation, ignore it outright, and continue in our blissful ignorance.

So what has Bowerbird done to offend me, personally?

nothing, i would say. nothing. but let's see what you say.

Filled my inbox with constant attacks against others

"attacks?" no. the _truth,_ bolstered by solid evidence. moreover, i asked the question about _you_personally_, but here you have gone out-of-bounds with "others"...

criticizing how PG is run,

again, with the _truth_, backed with tight argumentation. not to mention air-tight suggestions on how to do it right. and again, you are still out-of-bounds, since the question was about _you_, and you, mjit, are not project gutenberg.

and railed on about how things ought to be run

right, and again, with several offers over many years to help do things right, by -- for instance -- coding tools, as well as by writing careful, thoughtful analyses of the problems facing project gutenberg on the full spectrum. (here i step aside for a brief moment to say "hello" to the e-book archeologists of the future who have come to these archives precisely because of those analyses.) i asked if i had done anything to wrong you, and _this_ is what you come up with? you have missed the point... i didn't wrong you. i put some e-mails in your kill-filter.

instead of doing what any sane person might and just taken his toys and gone home to build his own library.

there's always someone who wants you to leave the public group playground, and go home and hide yourself away... it's as if they think they own the commons.

From the handful of his posts I read, BB would rather spend his time berating people who don't see things his way.

i don't berate people. i berate stupid arguments. one can change one's arguments, by flipping a switch. and one _should_ change one's _stupid_ arguments... because if one accrues too many of those arguments, one can bet that people will begin calling one stupid. (yes, the prior two paragraphs work much better when one uses "you" and "your" instead of "one" and "one's", but i went out of my way to show that i wasn't speaking about _you_, whoever you are, but some generic "one". because you always seem to want to take it personally.)

Mind, I skim through the responses often enough, and I see that others give as good as they get, to a certain point.

not really. if you mean that my opponents throw as many rocks as i do, well, yeah, _that_ is true. indeed, it's true _by_definition_. because i only throw rocks _back_. if they didn't throw any at me, i wouldn't have any to throw back at them. as it is, though, i've got quite a stockpile of rocks they have thrown, so i'm in no danger of running out of them. but nonetheless, i don't usually feel any need to throw a rock at somebody else _unless_ they've just thrown a rock at me. tit-for-tat, ya know. it's against my religion to go out to collect rocks initially, but my religion _approves_ throwing rocks back at rock-throwers. so, in terms of the _quantity_ of rocks thrown, well then yeah, the numbers are _roughly_ the same going in both directions. nonetheless, it's not quite accurate to say that my opponents "give as good as they get", even if you add "to a certain point". because here's the thing. i almost _never_ get hit by one of the rocks people throw at me. (in the 9 years i've been here, it has happened about... 9 times.) but i almost _always_ score a hit when i throw a rock at someone. if you read my posts, mjit, you'd know that. but you don't. so you don't. of course, you could analyze this little exchange right here. you threw a rock, and missed. then i threw it back, and hit. then you threw it again, and missed again. and now i am throwing it back, and yes, hitting again. and much harder. (did i forget to mention that i can throw the rocks _harder?_ well, i can. meaning they hurt a lot more when i throw 'em.) i don't even bother to throw a rock back unless i _know_ that i can hit the target. otherwise, i'd be wasting a rock. and, like i said, my religion doesn't let me go collect more.

it always seems to devolve into a few rounds of Shut-up-no-you-shut-up before anyone gets far enough past this metaphoric third grade that they roll their eyes and walk away.

if you only read the posts from my opponents, then yeah, i see how you would come to that (incorrect) conclusion... it'd be like watching only the _offense_ for one team in a football game. you'd see them score a lot of their points, but only rarely would you see the other team score points. (teams _do_ score on defense, on interceptions, fumbles, safeties, and the like, but the numbers do not compare.) so you'd probably come to the conclusion that the offense you were watching had won the game, when -- in reality -- they might have been slaughtered in a massive blow-out... (especially since many of the touchdowns you seem to see actually get called back after the fact because of a penalty.)

I admit I don't agree with how things are done with the fixing of errors, but I figure I have no say in it

well, i have observed that i have "no say in it" either, but i am still going to continue to voice my opinions about it. even if the powers-that-be don't want to hear them. _especially_ if the powers-that-be don't want to hear them. i'm a poet. that's what we do. plus i have those future e-book archeologists to consider. they need to know that all of us were _not_ as daft as the horribly backward e-library systems that some of us built. if you want to acquiesce with your silence, mjit, so be it. but i do not appreciate you trying to force me to do that. not that you ever could. but don't even _try_. capiche?

I admit I don't agree with how things are done with the fixing of errors, but I figure I have no say in it until I can motivate myself to do something other than bitch that there's typos in my books.

that's very odd. because i _have_ motivated myself to do more, a lot more, and that's another one of the reasons why i _do_ feel able -- and willing, and _obligated_ -- to share with the group. i have spent countless hours doing research, and _more_ countless hours writing code, and _more_ countless hours writing up all my posts, and many _more_ countless hours reading posts from others, and thinking about the issues, and weighing the options, and coming to solid conclusions, ones for which i can make coherent, compelling arguments. i've done my homework. i have _done_ my homework. and re-done it. and checked it. and re-checked it. so don't think you can lash out at me, dude. i won't have it.

I apologize for the offense.

i, for one, wasn't offended. i thought it was a bit humorous. (very tiny bit. but i could tell that's what you were going for.) if you'd had a smiley to start off, i could have interpreted it as a joke, and wouldn't have even bothered with a response. but as it was, a false implication was planted, so i merely corrected the record. just like i'm doing with _this_ post.

Enjoy your seasonal holidays.

i certainly will. i have a big pile of rocks here to keep me warm. -bowerbird