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Linux filesystem defragmentation flame war
Earlier this week I’ve read this article: “Defragmentation of Linux Filesystems“. The title and the headline made me interested enough, to go ahead and read it and see if there was something there to show me that linux filesystems do need defragmentation. The result was that I was not convinced at all, and on a quick check on some of my most used systems I could not see any defragmentation issues.
Still the reason for this post is not a technical one, but a human one. Let’s see what was my reaction to this particular article:
- I noticed it somehow, doesn’t matter how, and decided to read it
- I didn’t agree with the author and what have I done? well since I am extremely busy I have obviously moved quickly away to something else, without even looking back…
- But what if I did had some time to kill? What could I do? Well if I had a useful addition to the post I could have added my opinion. But what if I didn’t had anything useful to add? and nothing to do… Should I start an injury comment and crush the author? Who would benefit from this? This is what I am trying to respond in this post… just check out the comments and you will see what i mean.
This happened to me also, and some of my articles (mostly the ones that were featured on digg) where I have seen a lot of injuries and flame created by some peoples. This really hurts the person writing something and trying to do something useful and publishes an original article.
Reading a comment like this:
“We’re very thankful for that and we don’t really need your crappy tools and your BS FUD articles. Seriously. WTF are you thinking??? Any newbie on UbuntuForums could have done a better job at researching the facts before posting this pile of nonsense that you dare to call “article”….”
made me think… what kind of a person would post such a comment? And even more, why? The first question, is best answered by the commenter himself: “YES, I AM AN A$$HOLE. I am not even trying to hide it.”
But what kind of value would bring such a comment to an article? Probably the poster feels good that he said something ‘great’, but what about the users reading the site? Does this show them the ‘right’ way to do it? Does it bring any arguments against the author’s conclusion? If this would have been from a well known authority then I could have said that we can’t understand geniuses, and they can be strange sometimes. But do you think these guys are kernel guru’s patching the ext3 code regularly? I thought so… They don’t even include a website address for us to see their great achievements and works done during their ‘careers’. It is very easy to be anonymous and insult anyone, right?
Well, in such cases, personally I would delete those comments. Period. Without any concern… If this is a user that has posted at least his name, and/or site, I would leave it on, for peoples to see who he is and what authority he has talking like that, but if he calls himself, xhatever123 I would hit delete without any concern. It you don’t want to read my articles and don’t have anything useful to add, I would not even want you on my site at all. Really, it is not worth it…
The author of the article has already found out that when you post something on the web, you need to be prepared for such reactions. There are strange peoples out there, that even if they don’t have anything useful to say, they will start insulting you, for their own pleasure. We all know that comments add value to blogs, but I don’t think such comments add anything valuable to anyone. And keep in mind that it is always much easier to just destroy something than to help build something useful. optimizationkit don’t let this take you down! This happened already to many bloggers.
Tags: stuff
29th May 2008, 11:59
Great article!
I have always been shocked by brutal useless comments.
I suppose that they mostly come from teenager without experience… they’ll get more educated when they grow up
Keep writing!
Jo
29th May 2008, 14:39
We need a new paradigm: Those who can write, those who can’t flame.
30th May 2008, 04:09
And yet, these factually inaccurate articles continue to be posted anonymously…
30th May 2008, 06:07
Great article. I myself have been a victim of that kind of people. Seriously, those folks need to be forbidden from ever using the Internet –or a computer, for that matter– again (I know, that sounds impossible).
How much stupidity can get inside so little brains?
30th May 2008, 07:58
Perhaps you forgot something, or perhaps you just don’t care about it, but sometimes it’s very funny just answering those trolls with reasoned and polite messages, showing them how much they’ve been idiotic and useless, and then watching their responses
30th May 2008, 10:42
Hi there,
it’s me, the “a**hole” you refer to. You have absolutely valid points, and usually I’d fully agree to all what you write. Yes, my posting was brutal. That was the whole point of it. And it was useless too. But I honestly don’t really care. But as for the article in question: First of all: It really was an idiotic article. And others tried in polite ways to question the numbers the author of said article produced “out of thin air”. My first posting (further down in the page) was harsh too but still within limits of what I’d call a “still somewhat polite response”, but what really made me angry was the IMHO arrogant response the author gave (kind of “I wrote those tools for myself and I am not going to publish them …. ”
) to absolutely valid questions. I mean really …. There is so much information out there about how file system fragmentation is a non-issue on Linux and yet this author –who obviously lacks any qualifications– gives such responses to people who obviously know better? Yes my response was brutal, harsh, and downright childish. But honestly, I honestly don’t care given the lack of quality the said article had and how technically totally inaccurate it was. If you write stuff on the net you have to deal with criticism too, you have to be prepared for the fact that other people who know better will question what you write and especially so if you produce numbers out of thin air like the author over there did. And the author over there didn’t really seem to be interested in that, instead he wrote just BS and more BS and talked of his oh-so-superior tools like the world needed them, like he knew something the kernel devs didn’t. That simply wasn’t the case and he got the response he deserved. Your criticism of my “brutality” is absolutely valid, yes. But given the valid points in what you write you are also unlikely to see any of that here 
30th May 2008, 11:06
scorp123: thanks for your comment. I really appreciate your input and I just want to clarify that the post I was referring was just given as an example, the same as your comment. I have seen this way to many times on mostly any article that gets a lot of publicity. I never said that the article or the author are good, I just tried to show how such comments could hurt writers feelings without bringing much value to anyone.
Also by all means this is not a general thing, as many many comments bring in valuable additions to the original post, and sometimes you can find more value inside a comment than in the post.
Cheers,
- Marius -
30th May 2008, 14:12
Marius,
> I just want to clarify that the post I was referring was
> just given as an example, the same as your comment.
I don’t have issues with that at all. I even have to compliment you on your downright polite blog post here. And you have every right to use whoever as valid example –be that good or bad examples– for the perfectly valid things you say here.
Another thing:
Had the author formulated his “article” (honestly, I still think it’s a pile of cow dung, and I don’t even feel sorry to say so!) in ways that would invite an open discussion and had he offered facts or insights that the other posters asked him about, I would not have posted the childish BS I posted over there. Or had the author posted this in a forum and formulated it as question (e.g. “I did some tests, my test results are this and that, I have these and these numbers, so: does it mean I need to defrag my Linux filesystem?” ….) I would have again reacted in a different way (go to the Mint forums or the UbuntuForums and search for my name … ). But this entire load of nonsense was sold to a wide audience as *ARTICLE* and the “findings” of the author were offered as “hard facts”, even when it was very easy for the other better-informed posters to challenge or even disprove most if not even all arguments the author offered …. And it’s not like Linux is “new” or anything, there have been many hundred discussions about filesystem fragmentation on Linux … So my expectations in an article on web sites such as LinuxToday or PolishLinux are *HIGH* …. I expect authors to offer valid points and I expect them to at least do their homework by doing some basic research. I obviously don’t expect that from a “newbie” posting his questions in a Linux forum. But this wasn’t a Linux support forum, this was sold to us (to everyone going to that site) as being an opinion of an “expert” who supposedly has found something “new” … And then the arrogant remarks of that self-proclaimed “expert” to the requests of the other posters to backup his article with hard numbers did the rest for me and I turned into “troll mode”. Do I feel sorry about it? Nope. If you write stupid BS you deserve stupid BS comments. Simple as that. Same is of course true for me. All the other comments here who criticise me …. Yes, all perfectly valid comments. I wrote silly nonsense and I deserve those comments and the criticism. But you see, this here … this isn’t the “real life”. That article is irrelevant. So is the self-proclaimed “expert” who wrote that nonsense. And me? Am I irrelevant? Of course I am. Totally irrelevant. And regardless of what brutal, harsh, childish nonsense I wrote back there: Nobody’s life or existence was threatened for real. So I suggest we leave this topic and move on with our lives. There are more important things in life than myths about filesystem fragmentation, tools nobody needs, and silly trolls responding to such articles
30th May 2008, 16:03
Despite your suggestion that it is time to move on, I cannot help commenting on this thread which I came upon minutes after posting my first-ever complete trashing of a different poor Linux Today article. We have here another example of the impersonal quality of computer-based fora (as opposed to meetings in person) tempting us to suffer fools less and less gladly. Yes, this is “do as I say, not as I do”, but the most crushing criticism of a fool is sometimes to say nothing, or to limit oneself to a dry challenge of one crucial fact. Bad language makes only the writer look bad; not the person whom he is criticizing.
30th May 2008, 16:32
Base, crass language never really gives a good impression of the post’s author and does little to incite thought in his target. The original author instead will either ignore the post completely, as stated in this particular commentary, or become defensive causing him to dig in even further.
Thoughtful, polite criticism - and I vigorously stress those adjectives - of an article will give the commenter what was probably wanted, a more in-depth review by the article’s author of the original content. You gain respect and perhaps a brother in arms when you may need it yourself later on.
Otherwise, it is little else than childish noise, good only to be dismissed for the drivel it is.
30th May 2008, 17:30
TK,
> Thoughtful, polite criticism - and I vigorously stress those adjectives -
> of an article will give the commenter what was probably wanted,
> a more in-depth review by the article’s author of the original content.
I think that article went beyond that point the moment the author started posting his arrogant remarks to those who criticised him and challenged his findings. There is nothing wrong with “thoughtful, polite criticism” but it has to be *both ways* IMHO
30th May 2008, 20:44
Honestly, your article makes me think that the people that post nonesense things are the ones that don’t know nothing, because they only insult and don’t have solid bases about the things they say.
I like to read the posts when they say “I think you are wrong because this, this and that” that kind of post makes people at least think, don’t you think ?
31st May 2008, 11:09
TK said it very well… and scorp123 even if I agree that the author should also respond polite and professional, just keep in mind that sometimes authors will react quickly and respond on the first impulse. They might regret it afterwards as their response comes from their frustration.
McLobo: I agree with your conclusion, and again this particular post was just given as an example.
1st June 2008, 09:32
I am writing in support of everything scorp123 has said, how he said it and how he has subsequently explained his actions. The reason I feel this way is that sometimes a complete pile of doggy poo masquerading as expert opinion does turn up on the ‘net, unfortunately, and in these circumstances I feel that it is entirely appropriate to use the relevant strongest language and style to clearly point this out, in the hope that the author will get a big jolt that hopefully he will remember the next time he thinks it is a good idea to perpetrate the same misinformation dissemination. The open-source world, like the real world, needs truth, and misinformation must be stamped out wherever it occurs.
The opposite is called ‘diplomacy’. Diplomacy was alive and well when Hitler marched through Europe and started killing the Jews. Its alive and well in a hundred places where the weak let the evil prevail, because its impolite to call a spade a spade. Its alive and well as the Japanese slaughter whales and call it research and the diplomats get paid to sit around making pathetic excuses for not calling a spade a spade.
You people that object to someone making a stand need to wake up to yourselves, and I have nothing but loathing for your ilk. Scorp123 bluntly alerted us to what he thought it was. Good on him for having the guts, and piss on you pathetic weaklings that can’t take it.
3rd June 2008, 21:37
Oh dear …. the same silly author just did it again and posted more nonsense, LOL.
http://polishlinux.org/apps/cli/ext4-defragmentation-with-e4defrag/