By Reza Ganjavi
I have participated in many internet communities, and have seen the A to Z range of behaviors which reveal state of mind of people who hide behind screen names. Their real personality comes through. I often participate with my real name or in an identifiable manner, because I stand by what I say, and if I use a screen name, the values of that screen name are not different than my own. However I've seen many people abuse anonymous speech which in the USA and some other countries is a right implied from the right to free speech. But as with other rights it is not absolute and when abused one can lose that right. That's the basis of identifying abusing identities, which I have done several times via legal channels and in every instance the perpetrator who was a big bad bully behind the screen name, once his identity was revealed, turned into a mouse that looked for a hole to crawl into.
Role of moderators in internet forums is crucial, to keep the forum civil. Usually forums have a set of rules, a code of conduct, which users agree to abide by.
Apple Computer is a horrible company in terms of culture, but they make a great computer, which in reality is great because it's based on a great operating system which is based on an open source operating system. Unlike the Windows world which is based on a horrible operating system (and I say this as a veteran computer scientists who has written operating system code, and worked with many OSs in my career.
I had a legal claim against Apple Switzerland and their big shot lawyers, and I prevailed and "robbed their arrogant chins to the ground" as the Persian saying goes. Details are the here: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/law-ethics/won-case-against-apple
So after that kind of win against Apple Computer, I consider Apple a Lose, and I do not need to win against it again.
Today I had a horrible experience, where I reported a serious MacOS defect that I discovered to Apple, and then posted it on the Apple Community Forum. I came across one guy, using a nickname, who was obviously incompetent about the topic, but arrogantly, hiding behind his ID, he started defending Apple !! Us software developers know that software can have defects. We fix them and move on. I even participated in a debuggathon where for months we debugged spaghetti code written by John Mather of PCI to port project management software to a new platform.
The chap on Apple Forum started babbling, defending Apple on one hand, saying this is a "feature" not a bug (it is a bug), and that it's been there since 2018 (6 years) and nobody has reported it before. Then he started defending the bug, by saying a file replace (overwrite) of a copy command without warning is the "default" behavior -- which absolutely makes no sense, and I can confidently say, as an expert software developer, software architect, solution architect with decades of experience that he is WRONG.
I challenged his irrational statements. Another person also challenged him when he said Apple would never fix bugs and would drag the bug reporter in Beta process nightmare, blah blah -- the person said no, he's reported bugs many times and was never dragged into Beta test processes and some bugs were fixed. So he put the idiot in his place.
I went for the idiot from an architectural standpoint and crushed his faulty logic, politely.
He came back and changed his tune. After I put him in his right place, rationally, he came back and suddenly said things that were totally contrary to what he said earlier. Suddenly, other people must have reported the same bug; suddenly it was a "bug" not a feature!
But what I witnessed about Apple Community moderation was enough to want to close my account and NEVER post on that pathetic community again. I was 100% compliant to the forum's rule; 100%, and so were some others who had challenged the idiot. But Apple, being the pathetic company that it is acted in a way that is totally in line with the arrogant way I had seen it in this experience: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/law-ethics/won-case-against-apple
In this forum discussing the Apple Computer operating system bug, Apple turned out to be the bully. Apple Computer itself was the biggest, stupidest, most irrational, most disrespectful entity on that board. So what do you do when you are dealing with a disgusting bully that owns a message board? YOU LEAVE !! So I wanted to delete my entire account and never post again on that forum (I only posted a few times over the last 8 years anyway). But unfortunately Apple doesn't provide a way for people to disable or delete their accounts. The thug wants you to stay. It's like Hotel California. Once you sign up, you can never leave. But I left despite having an account there, and will never ever post on that pathetic form again.
If Apple management reads this article, I have saved all the records to prove what I say to be true. But that may lead to firing the top dog Apple Executive in charge of "Apple Community" service. I decided not to waste my time reporting this nightmare to Apple Executive Office because I have dealt with those bozos before, and they are hopeless. Having had robbed their shoulders to the ground once already, I can walk away and smile.
Related article: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/law-ethics/won-case-against-apple