[e2e] (no subject)

[Joe Touch]

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Marc Herbert wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, Fan Ye wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm really astonished to see your technical discussion on ns drifting, or
>>"accidentally dropping",  onto some language attacking an ethnic group
>>(see below quoted text). You may not have the intention, but what you
>>wrote seems to imply that all these guys are clueless chinese students who
>>dont know a better way to plagiarize.
> 
> 
> I really wonder how many people felt it like this.

Again, speaking as list admin:

The original statement of Jon's was:

- ---------------------------
some people (typically hard put upon PhD students either
strongly self motivated and sef-disciplined) managed to do some useful
things, but an awful lot are those hotmail/yahoo email folks you allude
to, (I have no idea where they are really from - are they using such
addresses because they are afraid their university will catch them
plagiarising, or are they blocked in china?) and they do more harm than
good.
- ---------------------------

This is a fairly clear attack that the there is a correlation between
hotmail/yahoo addresses and those who do harm, and those who get such
addresses because they're in China and otherwise blocked.

>>>(I have no idea where they are really from - are they using such
>>>addresses because they are afraid their university will catch them
>>>plagiarising,
>>
>>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>>or are they blocked in china?) and they do more harm than good.
>>
>>                                               ^^^^^^
>>
>>I'm very, very upset to see this kind of language, not to mention at a
>>least expected place, a technical discussion list.
> 
> Well, if you are reading this list since several years, you probably
> noticed it's not "purely" technical, probably because there is no such
> thing in this field.
> 
> Of course I agree with you that we are still way off-topic right now.

Although the definition of 'technical' on this list is somewhat vague,
the definition of appropriate behaviour should not be. We have not
stated a list policy on this, but we have in the past tended to emulate
the ACM and IEEE Codes of Conduct on such issues.

On the current point, see section 1.4 of the ACM, and item 8 of the IEEE
code of ethics on this point.

>>[...]
>>
>>To check the validity of your claim that these guys (at least most) are
>>from china, I did a quick sampling on ns-users 2005 Aug archieve.  At the
>>end is a sorted list of those who used yahoo addresses. Of these 31 guys,
>>only 4 have chinese names. I can reasonably say that nearly 90% of them
>>are NOT from china.
>>
>>So how did you find out
>>1) they're plagiarizing
>>2) they're from china?
> 
> I suggest you carefully (scientifically?) read every word/sign of Jon,
> in order, and not only the ones that tease you/support your thesis.
> 
> The whole sentence you are basing your analysis on was between
> parentheses, which quite clearly demonstrated IMHO the lack of
> conviction, importance and exhaustivity of the enclosed conjectures.
> 
> But probably the main interpretation mistake you make is skipping the
> "or" link word between "plagiarising" and "China":  they quite clearly
> had no relation to each other!

The whole sentence, IMO, is an epithet against groups of people, some of
which are identified by country, who do "more harm than good". While not
as strong as accusations of plagiarism (which is, by my read of Jon's
comments, a separate issue), let me be clear that it is ALSO
**unacceptable**.

> According to my understanding, the only visible reason Jon spoke of
> China was because he was looking for an example of a well-known and
> developed country where censorship still exists.

While his post, IMO, was probably trying to say that the reason a group
of people would get hotmail/yahoo addresses, it *also* asserts that this
group is doing more harm than good, again.

> All this is of course totally off-topic but I felt the need for at
> least one public third-party interpretation of Jon's words, answering
> your (quite severe I think) accusation. Hopefully there won't be many
> concurrent other answers.  I won't complain if the editors filter this
> message out of course.

I won't, but I would prefer if we could just agree NOT to use China as
an example of anything other than a country ;-)

Joe
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