Thursday, October 25, 2007

Who's Who at Oracle Forums

The more time I spend on the Oracle forums the more people I get to know, even though I have never physically seen most of them, only by the kind of regular answers I have been able to 'see' Who's who.

Sybrand Bakker AKA sybrandb
It's funny to see people on the forums who are self qualified as 'Senior Oracle DBA', and when trying to google them on the web the only kind of references obtained so far are at an extreme poor, simple and moronic (thanks Howard for this vocabulary addendum), no white papers found, no meaningful forum participation, no semminars, no references, no history, no blog, no personal web page, no nothing but simple racist, aggressive and rude answers at the Oracle related forums.

I have always said that reading the manual is the first source of Oracle information, but for heavens sake!, RTFM is not a 'Senior DBA Level Answer' I would like to hear, and guess what, just issue a search at the Oracle forum for the RTFM string, and you'll see who is one of the posters who most frequently provides this as an answer.

I though this gentleman was participating at the Oracle forums only, but when googling for 'Sybrand Bakker' I have found several other interesting references on the web with the same signature and the same 'Seior Oracle DBA' Level Answers. Just a xenofobic who shows a lot of aggressivity, lack of manners and lack of knowledge. I couldn't even say if this fellow poster has the OCA and I have not been able to find someone who makes a good reference for Mr. Bakker.

I still cannot understand why someone who definitely hates to write for free and whose contributions are less than binary rubbish, wastes his time writing for nothing but to build up a very ugly reputation.

9 comments:

Eduardo Legatti said...

Regardless of the lack of manners of some members in our community (shame on them), I was reading at Wikipedia about RTFM and I guessed interesting that the Ubuntu Forums and LinuxQuestions.org, have instituted "no RTFM" policies to promote a welcoming atmosphere. I thought a great idea!

Congratulations for the article.

Cheers

Legatti

Eduardo Legatti said...

Regardless of the lack of manners that some members in our community (shame on them), I was reading at Wikipedia about RTFM and I guessed very interesting that the Ubuntu Forums and LinuxQuestions.org, have instituted "no RTFM" policies to promote a welcoming atmosphere. It was a great idea!

Congratulations for the article.

Cheers

Legatti

Hector R. Madrid said...

Thank you Eduardo. It is great that most of the people who participate at the Oracle Forum adhere to an implicit Code of Conduct where respect is the key stone for it to work. Unfortunately people like Sybrand happen to be the exception. Tracking his nearly 2,000 postings in the forum I have been able to gather less than 10 fairly good postings, so more than 99.5% of his participation is simply bumping rubbish. It's A shame for him. Wasting precious time destroying his own reputation ...

The "Oracle Senior DBA" is a tag hanged by the community in recognition to the professional quality not a tag hanged by itself.

Anonymous said...

I stumbled across your post only today. I think you hit the nail on the head. I have never understood what motivates someone to spend 99% of their time going to the trouble of posting, 'I'm not going to go the trouble'...especially when, in most cases, it's rather ruder, brusquer and more racist than that! Bizarre indeed.

Hector R. Madrid said...

Dizwell? Howard Rogers? I'm pleased to have you here. With all respect, but I don't understand why you left the Oracle community the way you did. I miss your postings and I liked your site. Without a warning, it was surprising to find a day I couldn't access a link I was referring to regarding what happens when a hot backup goes on.

Best Regards.

Anonymous said...

I left the Oracle Community, if you want to put it that way, because it suddenly became apparent to me that the Oracle Community was full of ill-mannered ego maniacs with more interest in playing blog tagging "games" -and not caring who they hurt in the process- than in actually trying to engage in *meaningful* personal or technical discourse.

When large sections of a community of any sort start behaving inconsiderately, you have to question your continued participation in such a community.

Thus, on the one hand, we have the likes of Sybrand and Daniel Morgan (to name but two) who love to disparage, put down and demean the people they purport to help; on the other, we have the people that thought swamping blog aggregators with mere noise was a useful social service.

There's not much to do when confronted with those extremes of behaviour than to throw up one's hands in despair and start walking.

Hector R. Madrid said...

Each and every individual, no matter how big or little is, has an important contribution when that individual happens to meet in your way. We may have or may have not agreed on some particular topics, but I certainly did include another very important point of view in my professional life after the comments you took the time to personally address me.

There was a day, when without a warning, I saw you have discarded the ACE Logo from your id at Oracle forums, and then I saw dizwell shutdown from public access. It was after a couple of days after trying to access dizwell when I realized there was something wrong. I understand now. I know taking such professional decisions are very hard for anybody.

You did have your own motivation to take such a difficult decision. But I should add other kind of community you seemed to forget to include when taking this decision, a community where -of course- I am included, the one who thank you for all your effort and dedication to the Oracle community, the one who really appreciates your contributions and the one who will always leave the door open for the time you want to come back.

samtran said...

Totally agree with the post.

samtran said...

Well said