Bit of a shame

[Vann]

When I first joined this forum (~2008) he was posting as Mr Grimsdale - and I believe that was at least his second persona - having been banned under a previous name.

I think he was banned again under the Grimsdale name, and when eventually allowed back used his own name.

From a 2009 thread

I was going to, just to wind up Mr Grimsdale

...always good, 'specially if you can get him to snap :lol: - Rob

And to think that he got banned from here because of accusations that he was trolling.

:shock: :shock:

So I guess there's a long history of him undertaking troll-like activities - and of others baiting him.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[shed9]

There's two ways of discussing/ arguing: you can stick to the facts, or you can get personal. As soon as you start talking about the other person, and about your superior abilities/ knowledge/ whatever compared to that person, then you've lost the argument, and you are susceptible to the accusation that you are trolling. To tell anyone that you know more than they do about a subject you have to actually know how much they know. The way you approach these discussions, though, isn't in the spirit of finding out what the other person knows, and so you are logically unable to sustain any sort of claim of superior knowledge/ skill/ experience. You don't do discussion so much as lecture, and you pay no attention to the level of expertise in your audience (you've just admitted as much with Charlesworth, for instance). And yet you're the first to call people trolls. Anyone who questions you is a troll. You've said pretty much that in one of your videos. It's a very strange approach to the idea of a discussion forum.

The irony meter is off the scale here, yet again. Would that be discussing like;

Oh for goodness sake. Far too many broad statements. I've had a cheapie for over 30 years that is 100%. It hasn't changed at all. Look, I don't give a damn if you want to waste money on pointlessly expensive kit, but don't try to justify it to me by making stuff up.

Or

Do you not bother actually reading what people write? Or is it that you simply assume that anyone who says anything which contradicts your viewpoint must be lying? I've already told you that this claim of yours is wrong. My language will get stronger if you keep repeating such nonsense in the face of the decades-long experience of others. You've obviously never bought anything at the lower end of the price range, so you quite clearly don't have the first idea what you are talking about.............so why pontificate, when all you do is show your ignorance to those of us who have bought cheaper squares than you? Stop, think, and maybe, just maybe......learn.

Or

Stop making stuff up and you won't induce strong reactions. You are about to join a very short list of mine which means our interactions on this forum come to an end. There are many sphincters in the human body, but you clearly aren't talking about the Pyloric sphincter, Glissons sphincter, or the cardiac sphincter. Ta ta.

Or

Do you not see that there is an arrogance inherent even with a comment like that? You're on a forum of woodworkers. I very much doubt that there is a single one here who hasn't got a plane, but more than that, there are professionals here who have been trained at length in hand tool work and who use a plane for hours every day in their working lives. The equivalent in architecture would be me going on an architect's forum and telling the other architects that I knew better than them, and they should be doing it my way. If I did that I would expect some push-back from the other forumites...........and I really wouldn't be calling those who questioned me trolls. That is what you are doing. If you were on a forum of pastry chefs or plumbers or whatever and the subject of planing somehow cropped up, you might well feel entitled to give a gentle lecture, and you might well feel it unlikely that anyone knew enough about the subject to question you. Not, however, on a forum of woodworkers.

Or

You just don't help yourself, do you. Can you think of any reason at all why David Charlesworth might have called you arrogant?

Asking for a friend....

Oh and stop the constant jibes at moderators, it's a thankless task made worse by jibes.

Been absent for while, hope everyone is safe and staying safe.

 

[D_W]

.......... Could I be called a troll? I guess. David Charlesworth said something along the lines to me about being the most arrogant person he's come across because I was insistent I knew more about plane design and use than he does..........

There's two ways of discussing/ arguing: you can stick to the facts, or you can get personal. As soon as you start talking about the other person, and about your superior abilities/ knowledge/ whatever compared to that person, then you've lost the argument, and you are susceptible to the accusation that you are trolling. To tell anyone that you know more than they do about a subject you have to actually know how much they know. The way you approach these discussions, though, isn't in the spirit of finding out what the other person knows, and so you are logically unable to sustain any sort of claim of superior knowledge/ skill/ experience. You don't do discussion so much as lecture, and you pay no attention to the level of expertise in your audience (you've just admitted as much with Charlesworth, for instance). And yet you're the first to call people trolls. Anyone who questions you is a troll. You've said pretty much that in one of your videos. It's a very strange approach to the idea of a discussion forum.

Can you imagine someone who didn't really know that much about architecture (but perhaps they've built a few things and may even be a decent builder) telling you what's what about architecture? It's kind of like that.

You don't need to have a pleasant discussion when they're ignoring your advice, you need to get them to stop and try your advice so that the discussion can progress.

I tend not to comment on things I don't know much about, which probably compounds the perception. I'd prefer that the discussion advances rather than getting stuck in mediocrity, but if someone is OK with just treading water, I'd prefer they inform me of that, too.

I would also prefer that the people who are experts in a narrow area tell me they are, give me something provable and I'll go try it rather than arguing with them. I can think of a few folks on other forum who like provable things - I guess that rubs some the wrong way because they're really here to be in sort of a woodworking theme park.

 

[nabs]

well, I miss Jacob. I don't miss all the carping and moaning that ensued pretty much every time he offered an opinion. Bizarrely this aspect of the forum continues unabated even now he is no longer posting. Most odd!

 

[Bm101]

Lurked nailed this thread in the first post in two sentences a month ago.
I used to be a bit baffled by some of his posts and the fact that he obviously enjoyed baiting people he had never met was alien to me. He talked some real sense about some stuff mind especially puncturing the myth of posh tools and in this climate I'm very glad to hear from Doug he is well.
But he also took real enjoyment out of baiting people. It worked. Look at this thread.
A month later its still going amid a global pandemic. Wtf. I'll have a bet he checks up on this thread and has a good old chuckle that some of you are still irritated even now.
Be honest I reckon if he was a local in your pub (remember them? ) he'd probably be a bit of a craic to have a pint with tbh. Interesting. Maybe just not every day.

 

[Steliz]

I assumed it was a measure of just how bored the forumites have got under the current situation when they are resurrecting old threads. LOOK! Now you've got me doing it.

 

[MikeG.]

........Can you imagine someone who didn't really know that much about architecture (but perhaps they've built a few things and may even be a decent builder) telling you what's what about architecture? It's kind of like that.........

Do you not see that there is an arrogance inherent even with a comment like that? You're on a forum of woodworkers. I very much doubt that there is a single one here who hasn't got a plane, but more than that, there are professionals here who have been trained at length in hand tool work and who use a plane for hours every day in their working lives. The equivalent in architecture would be me going on an architect's forum and telling the other architects that I knew better than them, and they should be doing it my way. If I did that I would expect some push-back from the other forumites...........and I really wouldn't be calling those who questioned me trolls. That is what you are doing. If you were on a forum of pastry chefs or plumbers or whatever and the subject of planing somehow cropped up, you might well feel entitled to give a gentle lecture, and you might well feel it unlikely that anyone knew enough about the subject to question you. Not, however, on a forum of woodworkers.

 

[D_W]

Sure, I get that. I don't know how many woodworkers are planing every day for hours but I would embarrass most of the people you're talking about if it came to using planes and measuring results.

All I need is something provable otherwise. Like the following:
* i learned to use the cap iron in isolation. A video subsequently came out and I advised to ignore the numbers in it and avoid making jigs to set a cap iron. Almost decade later, someone had a paper translated from the makers of the video that advised setting a hand plane (the video was for a power tool) and it matched my advice.
* i've advised professional woodworkers on reducing labor planing and made planes for some that were used for paying work (to my knowledge, their businesses have grown and now they're using machines). At least one of these woodworkers was planing to finish for commission work in solid wood
* I've subsequently found that everything that I've advised (from experience) is in nicholson's text except for one thing (i expect to find out now why I'm wrong about that - it has to do with contouring a cap to follow an iron on a plane with a flat sole).

You may not grasp the subtleties here because it's not economically or effort important if you're not using planes that much. It's not by chance that I figured out the same things that nicholson advises, and came to prefer plane designs that were necessary to compete economically. I have the experience to get to that point - most don't. I don't have the option to turn to a thickness sander, I don't have a power jointer or dust extraction. If someone doesn't do enough planing for my advice to matter, that's fine. If they do and they ignore it, then that's too bad for them.

I can spot people who don't know as much about this stuff easily - it's because they haven't sweated it out.

This isn't an american thing, by the way - most americans also avoid conflict and try to be conciliatory, even if it means other people are misled about statements of fact.

I tend to know more about sharpening media than most people, too. Almost everyone. There's a reason for that. People ignore my advice all the time - that's OK. If they're going to, I wish they'd tell me ahead of time so that I wouldn't waste my time. I"m not looking for groups of beginners to advise - if I wanted to do that, I could teach those people here. I don't make planes for beginners, either. For a very good reason.

 

[D_W]

add one person I forgot about -I've heard graham blackburn put a talk on at CW here in 2010 where he used a common plane and planed anything that was put in front of him.

I'm not sure how nobody in the room grasped the importance of it, but literally nobody was able to make anything of it until years later.

 

[MikeG.]

.......I would embarrass most of the people you're talking about if it came to using planes.......

........You may not grasp the subtleties here......

.........I have the experience to get to that point - most don't..........

....I tend to know more about sharpening media than most people, too. Almost everyone.......

....... I"m not looking for groups of beginners to advise - if I wanted to do that, I could teach those people here......

You just don't help yourself, do you. Can you think of any reason at all why David Charlesworth might have called you arrogant?

 

[Andy Kev.]

.......I would embarrass most of the people you're talking about if it came to using planes.......

........You may not grasp the subtleties here......

.........I have the experience to get to that point - most don't..........

....I tend to know more about sharpening media than most people, too. Almost everyone.......

....... I"m not looking for groups of beginners to advise - if I wanted to do that, I could teach those people here......

You just don't help yourself, do you. Can you think of any reason at all why David Charlesworth might have called you arrogant?

I think you have to cut DW a bit of cultural slack here. While those sort of remarks are completely beyond the pale in British circles and could even earn you a punch in the teeth from some people, it is much more normal in US culture to make very blunt - and to us brash - claims about where you stand and what you represent. The only point is if it's BS or not. In the case of DW it is probably not and certainly with regard to his experience of sharpening it definitely isn't.

The other side of the coin is that Americans can sometimes take our politeness when expressed obliquely as being a bit false. And they don't do irony, never, ever. What for us could be a devastating ironic put down would probably go completely undetected in Yank circles. That's not to have a go at them. It's just a cultural difference.

 

[D_W]

.......I would embarrass most of the people you're talking about if it came to using planes.......

........You may not grasp the subtleties here......

.........I have the experience to get to that point - most don't..........

....I tend to know more about sharpening media than most people, too. Almost everyone.......

....... I"m not looking for groups of beginners to advise - if I wanted to do that, I could teach those people here......

You just don't help yourself, do you. Can you think of any reason at all why David Charlesworth might have called you arrogant?

About planing? Of course. As a friend of mine would say, it's not boasting if you can do it. I don't know why he says that, I always thought it was still boasting, but I am saying those items as statements for two reasons. To put them out there (i care less about someone thinking that I have false humility about them. I actually despise the "me so humble, let me prove i'm more humble than you" crowd), and second, to have them tested by someone else who can disprove them (I'm happier to be wrong and learn than to do nothing and not).

 

[MikeG.]

....... Of course. As a friend of mine would say, it's not boasting if you can do it. .........

It is here. It is possibly our biggest social taboo. You simply do not, in any circumstances, blow your own trumpet. It's worse than queue-jumping, or urinating in your mother-in-law's fireplace on christmas day. Do it here (Britain) and your witnesses immediately hold you in contempt.

 

[D_W]

The other side of the coin is that Americans can sometimes take our politeness when expressed obliquely as being a bit false. And they don't do irony, never, ever. What for us could be a devastating ironic put down would probably go completely undetected in Yank circles. That's not to have a go at them. It's just a cultural difference.

You're right. In the US, people tend to be distrustful (not all - the south comes to mind where this kind of thing is standard fare) of someone who says one thing to them and something to someone else. I learned the hard way in the south that this is common. There are some mannerisms that aren't that common here (one comes to mind from a youtube channel, the habit of some folks in the UK to smile when they're talking to you when there doesn't seem to be a reason to smile).

You're also right that the slights don't really work from UK to US.

In all of this, strangely enough, the most literal and blunt person I know is English. But he's in the United States because he prefers it here. He's definitely a unique case (in more ways than one).

The things I know well (planes probably better than sharpening, but because they can reduce labor more to me), I know well. But they're limited to that. If you asked me about the fastest way to make a piece of furniture, outside of the planing part, I couldn't tell you much. As much as I'd embarrass a lot of professional makers planing, if it came to making an entire piece of furniture, I don't have the experience to begin to compete.

The flip side to this also, is I doubt that most professional makers would care as they're focused on the furniture and not the planing or making of the planes. I think that's perfectly reasonable, and if you said "your fascination with planes and planing is dumb", I'm not bothered by that, and from your point of view if they're not important to you, I'd even agree.

 

[D_W]

....... Of course. As a friend of mine would say, it's not boasting if you can do it. .........

It is here. It is possibly our biggest social taboo. You simply do not, in any circumstances, blow your own trumpet. It's worse than queue-jumping, or urinating in your mother-in-law's fireplace on christmas day. Do it here (Britain) and your witnesses immediately hold you in contempt.

This is strange, as folks from England and Scotland who make it over here are quite eager to tell us why the UK is better (houses cost more, country is much older, etc). But I don't doubt what you say. It sounds like a secret game.

In the US, if you do it, people will probably say "prove it", and they're fine with it if you can, but we do have some "sore cheeks" type folks who don't like anyone who can do anything well. That's human nature. They populate forums to some extent and their objective is to find people who are bold and good at things and bury their threads until they get banned so that the level of discussion on the forums stays low and unthreatening.

http://www.cybozone.com/fg/wilson1.html#wilson6

It reminds me of something George had once said. The lute rose at the top of this page is a level of work I'll never achieve, most won't. Most professional makers own't ever be able to design, make the tools for and execute something like that. Someone accused him on the forum of taking credit for his apprentices' work, and he flatly said "the work is mine. None of them would've been capable of it". I suppose that it would be received even less well there than it was here, but eventually the folks who just want a woodworking site that's a false confidence booster ran him off by harassing his threads.

 

[MikeG.]

....... Of course. As a friend of mine would say, it's not boasting if you can do it. .........

It is here. It is possibly our biggest social taboo. You simply do not, in any circumstances, blow your own trumpet. It's worse than queue-jumping, or urinating in your mother-in-law's fireplace on christmas day. Do it here (Britain) and your witnesses immediately hold you in contempt.

This is strange, as folks from England and Scotland who make it over here are quite eager to tell us why the UK is better

That's an entirely different matter. It's perfectly OK to say this or that is better than the other, but to say "I am better....." Sheesh. That's the lowest of the low.

I don't doubt what you say. It sounds like a secret game.........

It's neither secret, nor a game. Everyone knows it, and everyone does it. The British simply cannot tolerate braggards. Clearly Americans can, because Trump.

 

[D_W]

I'm better at ____ and "I'm better than person X" (in general) are viewed *drastically differently* in the united states. The first is said often, usually the person saying it is willing to be disproved. I have heard it once (it must be more than once, but I can only think of one) "I'm better than ___". Actually, it was "we're better than them" and the instant reaction from my dad who was present was "don't include us in we, we're not interested in talking like that". You'd be considered dumb as far as I can recall - dumb enough to make a generalized statement like that.

I've never said that.

As far as people boasting or being a braggard, those are two different things, too. Boasting if you can prove it is intermittent, tolerated, and if your boasting isn't credible, people generally love the opportunity to lampoon. If you're not credible, you're generally disregarded rather than resented. If you're a braggard in general (about all kinds of things), people will take the whiz out of you by telling you how great you are and torpedoing your dinghy.

If you come here from the UK and tell everyone 45 things in a row that are better than something in the US, people will interpret as you saying "you're better" but they'll tell you about it.

Cultural difference, I guess. If someone said they were better at X than another person and you accused them of saying they're a better person, they'd tell you that you're being intentionally offensive.

 

[MikeG.]

.......As far as people boasting or being a braggard, those are two different things.......

Might be the case over there. Here, they amount to the same thing, and are treated with contempt. It's irrelevant whether your claims are true or not, you just shouldn't be making them on your own account. And that really is the end of the story......it's as simple as that.

 

[D_W]

It's irrelevant whether your claims are true or not, you just shouldn't be making them on your own account. And that really is the end of the story......it's as simple as that.

If i were English, it would be as simple as that, i guess.

 

[MikeG.]

As you're not English, you can use that bit of knowledge to understand why you so often generate the reactions you do. It is then up to you, of course, whether you want to keep on bumping up against those reactions, or whether you adjust your posting style when dealing with a predominantly British audience.