I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?
lOl
Quote from: NE2 on June 20, 2012, 05:29:34 AM
lOl
We don't take kindly to you imperial types around here, what with your fancy tie fighters and all.
These are two separate people:
* TEXAS is a valued member of this forum.
* The "pooing is cool" guy is also a valued member of this forum.
Moderation makes all the difference.
which one is TEXAS? bugo?
Quote from: agentsteel53 on June 20, 2012, 11:52:26 AM
which one is TEXAS? bugo?
It's the really big state at the bottom of the map.
Quote from: blawp on June 20, 2012, 02:14:23 AM
I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?
Never heard of him.
<eom>
Quote from: blawp on June 20, 2012, 02:14:23 AM
I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?
No, he would have have had the handle "New America." :-D
I honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.
I just wonder how many people here have usernames that I don't recognize, but I would know their names or the usernames they used on m.t.r. or one of the Yahoo groups.
I know the names of "bugo" and "US 71" and "dougtone" and "froggie" and many others because they have used consistent identities across many forums, or they have identified themselves otherwise.
No doubt about my identity. I don't feel the need to hide behind a
nom de plume here. I have the same name here as I do on Twitter as I do on Yahoo as I do on... Just add capitalization and a couple of periods and you have my name.
Quote from: hbelkins on June 20, 2012, 08:46:24 PM
Quote from: blawp on June 20, 2012, 02:14:23 AM
I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?
No, he would have have had the handle "New America." :-D
I honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.
I just wonder how many people here have usernames that I don't recognize, but I would know their names or the usernames they used on m.t.r. or one of the Yahoo groups.
I know the names of "bugo" and "US 71" and "dougtone" and "froggie" and many others because they have used consistent identities across many forums, or they have identified themselves otherwise.
No doubt about my identity. I don't feel the need to hide behind a nom de plume here. I have the same name here as I do on Twitter as I do on Yahoo as I do on... Just add capitalization and a couple of periods and you have my name.
Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.
dougtone was always really high and mighty and arrogant
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on June 20, 2012, 09:30:29 PM
Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.
Yeah, but we know you too. :bigass:
Actually, you can ask the admins to change your username if you so desire.
Quote from: blawp on June 20, 2012, 09:55:23 PM
dougtone was always really high and mighty and arrogant
You're trolling, right? Doug's the salt of the earth. He even bought small bottles of pure Vermont maple syrup for gifts for those who attended his Bennington meet, and gave me an extra to bring home to my wife.
(Up until I saw him at Joliet, my last sighting of Steve was him chugging his syrup bottle like it was an airplane liquor sample).
Quote from: hbelkins on June 20, 2012, 10:08:03 PM
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on June 20, 2012, 09:30:29 PM
Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.
Yeah, but we know you too. :bigass:
Actually, you can ask the admins to change your username if you so desire.
But this isn't the social security agency, I shouldn't need anyone's permission to be a Blues Geographer one week, a Magyar another week, or any other turn of the phrase that catches my fancy at any given time.
But I'm glad to see that no matter what I call myself, that my style is always self evident. :-)
Quote from: hbelkins on June 20, 2012, 10:08:03 PM
(Up until I saw him at Joliet, my last sighting of Steve was him chugging his syrup bottle like it was an airplane liquor sample).
Not only that, but I was hung over when I did it. :-/
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on June 20, 2012, 10:55:09 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on June 20, 2012, 10:08:03 PM
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on June 20, 2012, 09:30:29 PM
Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.
Yeah, but we know you too. :bigass:
Actually, you can ask the admins to change your username if you so desire.
But this isn't the social security agency, I shouldn't need anyone's permission to be a Blues Geographer one week, a Magyar another week, or any other turn of the phrase that catches my fancy at any given time.
But I'm glad to see that no matter what I call myself, that my style is always self evident. :-)
We decided that the need to have the continuity between posts given by consistent names outweighed that of allowing people the freedom to change their name whenever. Put simply, if someone changes their name on a frequent basis, it's hard to keep track of who is what name this week. That makes it harder for the forum to feel like a real community, because it is harder for you to get to know people when you have to stop and think "Right, Bill Stickers is going by the name 'Bumcivilian' this week" (it also makes moderation a little bit more difficult too, though of course we would be able to figure it out eventually by post history). If you wish to change your display name we are more than willing to do that for you. But we want to have the ability to step in and say "right then, this is your third name change in as many months, you're overdoing it just a tad."
Quote from: hbelkins on June 20, 2012, 08:46:24 PM
I honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.
I thought BigMatt was the 'Texas guy', or it was someone completeley different.
On the general question of noms de écran: I use this one ("J N Winkler") on all of the Web forums I frequent. When I was posting to MTR, however, I generally used handles which were variants of "Argatlam" (meaning "silver-handed" in Irish Gaelic) for three reasons. First, I lurked on MTR for several months before I started posting and realized that it was routine for people to post from spamtrap addresses. Second, I saw that a number of MTR regulars had poor self-control and I wanted those people to have to do some work before they started harassing me at an email address where I actually read mail. Third and finally, I also observed a tendency for professionally trained MTR regulars to stand on their dignity and say things along the lines of "I am a licensed professional engineer, and you are . . . pond scum?" I believed that this was wrong and that anything said in MTR should be evaluated on its own terms, and not on the basis of any professional training or credentials the person who said it might have had. I thought that by posting from an anonymized address, while consistently using the same identity in MTR, these people would be forced to ignore who I was and pay attention instead to what I was actually saying.
I created the "J N Winkler" identity when I signed up for SABRE in 2003. By then I had had two years' experience of MTR under my belt, and had come to appreciate the value (both to the community and to the individual poster) of accepting the constraints of an online identity which was visibly and closely related to one's real-world identity and thus had a reputation which needed to be maintained. I also realized that if I were harassed by email or PM, I would be able to appeal to management for recourse, an option which is not available in unmoderated forums like MTR.
I have also come to see the problem of PEs and other professionally trained people standing on their dignity as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. First, I discovered that if I responded to these disguised appeals to authority by pointing out that an independent authority would have to evaluate technical claims on these merits, regardless of the licensing status or professional training of the people making them, that left them with nothing to say. (This is not the only rebuttal that can be made, by the way--a close study of engineering practice legislation suggests others.) Second, I eventually realized that the true purpose of these appeals to licensure was to goad specific regulars who would be provoked by them. Since they never worked on me, there was never a reason to try them more than once.
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on June 20, 2012, 10:55:09 PM
But this isn't the social security agency, I shouldn't need anyone's permission to be a Blues Geographer one week, a Magyar another week, or any other turn of the phrase that catches my fancy at any given time.
But I'm glad to see that no matter what I call myself, that my style is always self evident. :-)
It used to be possible to change your display name at will here; it got abused, hence the current policy.
Regarding comment about PEs on MTR --
About appeals to authority being an attempt to provoke certain posters -- I wouldn't go that far, I think in most cases it was simply an attempt to silence the other poster, "I am the expert by profession in this matter, and I am right about this point, so you are wrong, and you need to stop arguing about it".
The PEs on MTR went a long way to damage my trust in professional highway engineers. While there is perhaps some fallacy there, there is at least some truth there. Civil engineering is considered by many of its members to be the "noble profession", that is their guideline.
Some of the MTR PEs were blowhards who constantly "rah rah-ed" their highway departments where they work, and a few frequently got into terrible arguments with non-PE posters, and none of the other PEs ever made any attempt to step in and try to calm things down with a PE that was out of control and putting shame on the profession. They basically "hid" by not posting when that stuff was going on. Weasels ...
In over 10 years of my reading MTR, I never saw any PE ever get into an argument of any significance with another PE, or seriously contradict an opinion of another PE, and that is surely part of their "culture" not to do that in public. They are cliquish, I know that as a fact having dealt with many of them in the past.
Bottom line, IMHO, the 8 or 10 PEs posting over the years on MTR added very little value if any, on the balance, to MTR. And that is assuming at face value that they are indeed PEs working in highway engineering.
I'm a PE in mechanical engineering. It's not that hard to get. Those who gloat about it worry me.
Only two or at most three of the PEs on MTR really flaunted it or used it as justification for everything they say. To me, the only thing being a PE gives me is greater responsibility to think about what I type here or on my site, making sure that it's sound engineering or at least a good guess. It comes into play very rarely, and only if someone really starts questioning me or naysaying for the point of being a prick will I bring out the PE card.
Quote from: blawp on June 21, 2012, 05:49:26 PM
I'm a PE in mechanical engineering. It's not that hard to get. Those who gloat about it worry me.
Now that, I'll toast to. I'm a PE in environmental engineering (in 2 states so far). I'd consider it hard to get (at least the exams and time spent working under a PE in Illinois). I will gloat about passing both the FE and PE exams on the first try. :bigass:
That said, humility is a good thing to also have, and that means not rubbing someone else's face in your PE license.*
*Unless they've proven themselves to be a complete idiot, at which time rubbing anything in their face is well worth it.
Steve, +1. :thumbsup:
Quote from: Beltway on June 21, 2012, 04:08:06 PM
Regarding comment about PEs on MTR --
About appeals to authority being an attempt to provoke certain posters -- I wouldn't go that far, I think in most cases it was simply an attempt to silence the other poster, "I am the expert by profession in this matter, and I am right about this point, so you are wrong, and you need to stop arguing about it".
The PEs on MTR went a long way to damage my trust in professional highway engineers. While there is perhaps some fallacy there, there is at least some truth there. Civil engineering is considered by many of its members to be the "noble profession", that is their guideline.
Some of the MTR PEs were blowhards who constantly "rah rah-ed" their highway departments where they work, and a few frequently got into terrible arguments with non-PE posters, and none of the other PEs ever made any attempt to step in and try to calm things down with a PE that was out of control and putting shame on the profession. They basically "hid" by not posting when that stuff was going on. Weasels ...
In over 10 years of my reading MTR, I never saw any PE ever get into an argument of any significance with another PE, or seriously contradict an opinion of another PE, and that is surely part of their "culture" not to do that in public. They are cliquish, I know that as a fact having dealt with many of them in the past.
Bottom line, IMHO, the 8 or 10 PEs posting over the years on MTR added very little value if any, on the balance, to MTR. And that is assuming at face value that they are indeed PEs working in highway engineering.
What killed me was one in particular who insisted on using his P.E. designation in his signature. I find that to be a bit pompous. I would never think about using my college degrees in my sig. "H.B. Elkins, MA; AB" -- for some reason, my college refers to a Bachelor of Arts degree as an AB rather than a BA -- is too pretentious and proves nothing.
He got into some pretty heated arguments with an employee of an adjoining state's DOT, but I don't know if his neighbor was a PE or not. He didn't find it necessary to fluff himself up by referring to it in every post if he was.
I ended up killfiling that one certain PE because of his pomposity and because of his politics. But I don't hold him against I-26 in North Carolina. :-D
And I would never hold the actions of one PE against everyone else in the profession. I work with a number of them on a daily basis and find them, for the most part, to be conscientious employees and decent people.
Quote from: Steve on June 21, 2012, 09:48:43 PM
To me, the only thing being a PE gives me is greater responsibility to think about what I type here or on my site...
Why's that? Your being a PE in no way should affect your expression of your opinions. I certainly don't let my job affect me. Just the other day, I publicized a decision that I don't agree with. I managed to keep my personal feelings about the subject hidden when interviewed for television. But on my own personal space, I voiced my disagreement with the decision. I didn't give up that right when I took my job. Your profession shouldn't make you have to temper or adjust your own thoughts.
Anything I post here or on Facebook or on m.t.r or anywhere else is my own opinion. Only when my job title is attached to it or it's issued through officials sources does it have anything to do with work. My work life and my private life are two completely different things.
Quote from: Brandon on June 21, 2012, 10:49:18 PM
Steve, +1. :thumbsup:
Back at you. The FE exam is just a comprehensive first-year college exam. I probably could have passed it out of high school (AP courses and all), but it's far from easy given the wide scope, so I'm not surprised at the success rate. The PE exam I found quite easy - the studying was the hardest part - because I use so much of the material on a daily basis. And that's how it's supposed to be. If you don't know it, you're clearly not ready to be an engineer. A lot of people take it because they've been in the industry, but that doesn't necessarily qualify them...
Quote from: Beltway on June 21, 2012, 04:08:06 PMAbout appeals to authority being an attempt to provoke certain posters -- I wouldn't go that far, I think in most cases it was simply an attempt to silence the other poster, "I am the expert by profession in this matter, and I am right about this point, so you are wrong, and you need to stop arguing about it".
There is a specific person who is the first to come to my mind, and--I am sure--yours as well, when we think about PEs posting as PEs on MTR. Though this person has been a protagonist in many heated debates, he has for the most part impressed me as someone who is able to foresee the consequences of his actions.
I have lost count of the times I have seen him set off other MTR posters (including RAD cross-posters who agitate for higher speed limits) by appealing to professional expertise. When I got into it with him about some aspect or other of Green Book policy, he tried to play the professional-expertise card by suggesting that FHWA was more likely to listen to a PE than some ill-informed member of the general public. My response to that was that the FHWA rulemaking process is open to all comers, and that (as shown by, e.g., the rulemaking that led to the 2003
MUTCD), FHWA considered individual comments on their technical merits, without regard to the professional or institutional standing of the entity making them. This meant that a private-citizen commenter who had studied an issue sufficiently to develop technical expertise in it, and could make a well-reasoned argument for one position or another, would be taken seriously whether he was a PE or not.
The person we are both thinking of offered no rebuttal.
QuoteThe PEs on MTR went a long way to damage my trust in professional highway engineers. While there is perhaps some fallacy there, there is at least some truth there. Civil engineering is considered by many of its members to be the "noble profession", that is their guideline.
In assessing the authority or otherwise of PEs, it is important to keep in mind precisely what engineering practice is. A PE is someone authorized by law to accept formal legal responsibility for engineering designs and analysis and to indicate that acceptance by affixing a distinctive seal to documents which formally communicate a given design or analysis. Because engineering is one of the traditional professions, holders of PE licenses are expected to abide by certain moral and ethical standards even outside the narrow context of professional practice, similarly to how doctors and lawyers are expected to be pillars of the community by modelling good conduct, performing charitable good deeds through taking on a certain number of cases
pro bono or doing medical mission work, etc. But that is just expectation--it has no formal legal backing--and it simply cannot be enforced in unmoderated forums like MTR.
Examples of documents which are products of engineering expertise and bear PE seals include construction plans, reports of traffic investigations and structural inspections, etc. The PE affixing his seal to these documents can expect them to be taken seriously because he has accepted legal liability for the conclusions they express or the designs they convey.
MTR posts, even when reporting engineering design activities at second hand, do not fall into this category. For this reason I have always felt that appeals to engineering licensure are beside the point and should be quietly ignored. I have never approved of MTR regulars putting "PE" in their signature lines or making appeals to authority along the lines of "I am a PE, so I hold a monopoly on the truth," but I generally avoided challenging these behaviors directly because I felt to do so would be to step into a rhetorical trap. If they were spoiling for a fight, I reasoned, I would not give it to them, especially not in an unmoderated discussion group where the only way to "win" arguments is to encourage the other party to look at the issue from a different vantage without encouraging him to dig a trench to defend his or her own position.
QuoteSome of the MTR PEs were blowhards who constantly "rah rah-ed" their highway departments where they work, and a few frequently got into terrible arguments with non-PE posters, and none of the other PEs ever made any attempt to step in and try to calm things down with a PE that was out of control and putting shame on the profession. They basically "hid" by not posting when that stuff was going on. Weasels ...
I don't think they were weasels. I think they just reached the same conclusion I did: it is completely pointless to police behavior on an unmoderated forum subject to First Amendment protections, even when some of the misbehavior emanates from professionally licensed individuals who should know better. (I usually interpreted it as a bad sign when a MTR regular put "PE" in his signature line. Only a small minority did--two or three, as noted upthread--and of this group an even smaller number engaged actively in heated discussions. I knew many others who had PEs but normally didn't refer to them in MTR, and I also know one or two others who have engineering-related positions in state DOTs for which professional licensure would presumably be a compulsory qualification, but have never come out and said they are PEs.)
I also tried to filter out the state DOT jingoism. For a long time I took a rather dim view of most state DOTs simply because they weren't yet putting construction plans online, so most of those debates were easy for me to write off as empty choices between bad and worse.
(On the topic of state DOTs: did anyone ever notice that many state DOTs never had PE representation on MTR--whether hidden or overt? I suspect this was because the office culture at many state DOTs is so restrictive that PEs working for those DOTs would have felt they were endangering their jobs if they posted to MTR. I could not imagine working for Kansas DOT, for example, and feeling free to post on MTR.)
QuoteIn over 10 years of my reading MTR, I never saw any PE ever get into an argument of any significance with another PE, or seriously contradict an opinion of another PE, and that is surely part of their "culture" not to do that in public. They are cliquish, I know that as a fact having dealt with many of them in the past.
To outsiders it can look like cliquishness, but from the inside looking out, it is a question of professional etiquette. Part of being a professional is being willing to provide genuinely independent second opinions when they are requested by outsiders, but not to attack other professionals unless their work manifestly falls below the standards expected for the profession as a whole. Colleagues in the same profession are otherwise expected to offer their criticisms, if they have any, in a facultative manner. It is also just not done to wield the club of professional responsibility against informally expressed opinions because that is seen as unduly restricting the practitioner's ability to deliberate possible approaches before committing to one in particular.
It is not true to say that there were never robust discussions between fellow self-declared PEs on MTR. I can remember many dealing with speed limits since one of the self-declared PEs was very interested in higher speed limits. There was also a thread dealing with bicycle lane provision in North Carolina and Arizona because PEs licensed in these two states had divergent views on this issue. But it did surprise me that there was this much frank discussion among the PEs about engineering-related issues on a general-interest forum.
Quote from: Steve on June 21, 2012, 09:48:43 PMTo me, the only thing being a PE gives me is greater responsibility to think about what I type here or on my site, making sure that it's sound engineering or at least a good guess. It comes into play very rarely, and only if someone really starts questioning me or naysaying for the point of being a prick will I bring out the PE card.
I think it is even better not to play it at all. Good engineering analysis sells itself; if the other party neither recognizes it as such nor counters it on its own terms, then that is a good discussion to just walk away from.
Quote from: J N Winkler on June 22, 2012, 12:04:10 AM
(On the topic of state DOTs: did anyone ever notice that many state DOTs never had PE representation on MTR--whether hidden or overt? I suspect this was because the office culture at many state DOTs is so restrictive that PEs working for those DOTs would have felt they were endangering their jobs if they posted to MTR. I could not imagine working for Kansas DOT, for example, and feeling free to post on MTR.)
I suspect it was because they were unaware of m.t.r. or of Usenet in general.
I was active on m.t.r. and the Yahoo forums long before I got my present job. I feel no restrictions whatsoever about posting my personal opinion or observation anywhere as long as I am doing it under color of me as an individual and not with my job title attached.
<<< I suspect it was because they were unaware of m.t.r. or of Usenet in general. >>>
Most likely so. A handful of DOT PEs out of 50 states is too few to make any theory about as to why so few posted. I don't think that MTR ever had more than about 100 regulars who actually posted, in totality, ever.
Let's all keep in mind that a web forum is much more accessible through Google search, compared to the legacy protocol island which was Usenet. And, any newcomers interested in roads don't care about the old drama.
I've never been involved in MTR politics, but there clearly is some baiting going on here. If you really care that much, fire up the old NNTP client and party like it's 1999.
While we are talking about m.t.r., it should be known that Jason Pawloski posted there yesterday that he was banned from even joining this forum.
Quote from: flowmotion on June 24, 2012, 02:06:49 AM
Let's all keep in mind that a web forum is much more accessible through Google search, compared to the legacy protocol island which was Usenet. And, any newcomers interested in roads don't care about the old drama.
At least until Google Groups came along.
There's one forum I'm on where the top results to some of my Google queries are my own threads asking just that question on the forum! Kinda spooky if you ask me.
Quote from: hbelkins on June 24, 2012, 12:29:30 PMWhile we are talking about m.t.r., it should be known that Jason Pawloski posted there yesterday that he was banned from even joining this forum.
He might say that; frankly, I disbelieve it.
Quote from: hbelkins on June 20, 2012, 08:46:24 PMI honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.
I do I do!
From the #roadgeek days, even! Circa 1999. PAWTY LIKE IT'S 1999!
Anyway, yeah, he's on this forum. I'll let him come forth if he so desires.
Oh and those who remember...my first #roadgeek handle was ConcreteHwys. Now THERE are some memories. Damn, I was 14 then. Sure doesn't doesn't seem like that was 13 years ago.
Quote from: J N Winkler on June 24, 2012, 07:35:17 PMHe might say that; frankly, I disbelieve it.
I don't for even a second. Jason Poologski was who finally killed #roadgeek, and subsequently #echm, with his chat flooding script and his many proxies that prevented both us and the server admins from permanently banning him.
I am not aware of any ban currently in effect that specifically targets Pawloski. It is possible he posts from an IP range that was used by someone else who was banned (or operated a sockpuppet that was banned without our realizing it), and thus was unable to join.
Update: Apparently I forgot what all was in the ban list. It looks as though there is indeed a ban on Pawloski.
Quote from: national highway 1 on June 20, 2012, 11:53:05 PM
I thought BigMatt was the 'Texas guy', or it was someone completeley different.
Considering I don't really even know what MTR is, I don't think it's me.. :crazy:
BigMatt
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 24, 2012, 09:15:56 PM
Update: Apparently I forgot what all was in the ban list. It looks as though there is indeed a ban on Pawloski.[/color]
Why? Did he ever conduct himself inappropriately here?
If he's going to be banned, then I can think of a few others that should be banned as well, if the ban is based on behavior elsewhere.
Quote from: hbelkins on July 02, 2012, 10:24:28 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 24, 2012, 09:15:56 PM
Update: Apparently I forgot what all was in the ban list. It looks as though there is indeed a ban on Pawloski.[/color]
Why? Did he ever conduct himself inappropriately here?
If he's going to be banned, then I can think of a few others that should be banned as well, if the ban is based on behavior elsewhere.
It's more than just behavior elsewhere, it's his potential to cause harm to websites as he has demonstrated before.
Quote from: Steve on July 02, 2012, 11:15:26 PM
It's more than just behavior elsewhere, it's his potential to cause harm to websites as he has demonstrated before.
That's news to me...
You just like him because he hates pooing.