One of the ways I get annoyed

[redbird]

I didn't exactly lose my temper. I did get angry, and analytical. The person it's aimed at probably doesn't know--because part of the problem is that he keeps posting in alt.polyamory, but never participates in any kind of discussion. I responded to one of his posts, pointing out glaring flaws in the statistics he was quoting. He didn't answer that, just posted something else on his pet hobbyhorse a few days later (so I knew he wasn't off in the middle of nowhere, but had Usenet access).

My response to that had the subject "Does Don Saklad understand newsgroups?" That got me email, but still no newsgroup response, and led to my posting the following on alt.poly:

Following up to myself, since the person I was addressing
didn't:

Quoth Vicki Rosenzweig <vr@redbird.org> on Thu, 11 Jul 2002 11:04:42 -0400:

>How about a bit more examination before you post misleading
>statistics?
>
>This is--as you note--based on a survey of gay and bisexual men
>under the age of 30. It's reasonable, if the study was designed
>properly (and I believe it was) to extrapolate from the 5,719
>men studied to the set of American gay and bi men under age 30.
>
>It's *not* reasonable to extrapolate to all American men: the
>amount of knowledge might be different for het men, for gay
>and bi men older than 29, or both.
>

In response to my more recent "Does Don Saklad understand newsgroups"
he emailed me an invitation to send along my questions. I wrote back,
somewhat grumpily:

>Have you actually read what I posted, or are you just grepping for
>our name?
>
>I don't have a question. I pointed out an important statistical error
>in your post to alt.polyamory, and you have not responded to my
>posting.

That got me an invitation to "contact the source of that interesting
piece" and let him know what they said.

My conclusion is that Don Saklad is not interested in talking to
people, *and* that he's not capable of spotting large statistical
holes in what he reposts. Or, perhaps, that he isn't reading through
articles if their headlines support his agenda.

I could, of course, be wrong. I look forward to comments here.

Comments

[kiya]

I would note that it is, as far as I'm aware, one of the standard Kibologist entertainments to poke fun at Don Saklad and his obsessions. (He is also prone, apparently, to writing diatribes about the Boston Public Library.)

As far as I know, the Kibologists are not as yet aware of the HIV-obsessive diatribes, or, if they are aware, they haven't chosen to do anything about it.
The Don Saklad Tribute Pages is a webpage composed by someone who seems to have decided to fight OCD with OCD. They're not aware of the trolling of alt.poly either, apparently.

That's interesting

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

He's popped up recently on rec.food.cooking. I'll have to see what he's posting about there.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I know how fun it is to work up an excellent rant and really dig in and prove your points with breathtaking logic and rhetorical verve, but maybe you could think about just kill-filing this luser and spending your energy on more positive pursuits?

K. [inkles that this sort of thing is not good for me, and maybe isn't all that good for other people either]

[redbird]

I'd been ignoring him for months if not years, but hadn't bothered with a killfile entry because he was putting so little traffic on a.p. I probably will go back to that, or maybe let the software do it for me, once I've given him a few days to respond.

[jenett]

As Darkhawk noted, he's got a long history of doing this in other places *and* serious not listening to any kind of "Hey, this isn't the best place for that." or "You know, you have this giant gaping hole in your logic."

He's been posting the Boston Public Library diatribes for quite a while (apparently because their answer to some questions about some variants of public documents is not producing copies immediately, free of charge, etc.etc.)

After seeing his behavior on one of my mailing lists (library-related), I just decided he was far too much of a kook to bother wasting my time on. Even if I occaisionally want to say "You must think my sex life is a heck of a lot more exciting than it actually is."

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

My conclusion is that Don Saklad is not interested in talking to people

*ding*.

when he first showed up i did a search for him, and quickly found out that alt.poly was just the latest of his victims. he's a nutcase. arguing with nutcases is futile. i finally scored him down him when i became too busy to read all of alt.poly all of the time.

-piranha (*waves* at vicki)

[redbird]

Vicki *waves* back at her favorite fish, and adds zir to her friends list