In message <4.3.2.7.2.20010119101922.0485c720@localhost>, Brett Glass writes:
>I'm terribly sorry if you find it "annoying and tedious" that I will
>not sit idly by while others attack me. I think it's my right to respond.

Sure, but the way you do it will, of course, affect peoples' intentions.

>Another common element of the piling-on and shunning that occurs
>frequently here: a dramatic declration that the attacker is adding the
>person being attacked to his kill file (and an implicit request to others
>to do likewise).

I see no implicit request here.  I am also unsure what this "piling-on" and
"shunning" is.  I haven't seen any.

>Funny: looking back at this thread, it looks more as if you and a few others
>have been generating noise about me. When I entered the conversation, I
>merely agreed with a previous poster that the FreeBSD community had problems
>with hazing and shunning. It's ironic that the exchange has become 
>self-referential. Add me to your kill file (which, of course, you're free
>to do), and you'll prove that you're part of the same phenomenon.

Not necessarily; there could be other, independant, reasons to killfile you.
(For instance, I might killfile you for drawing a conclusion which does not
follow from the premises.  ;-))

I admit, I'm mostly on the Net side, not the Free side, but I haven't seen
a whole lot of "shunning" or "hazing", and indeed, I'm not sure I've ever
seen anything that I'd qualify as either.  I showed up out of the blue, I
asked a couple of questions on a FreeBSD list, and I got useful, informative,
answers that directed me to an effective solution to my problem.  I see no
hazing here.

-s