⚓ Prelude

On 29 march 2019, I launched the Common Lispers list.

Almost immediately, just before going to bed, I saw that Daniel Kochmański (jackdaniel) had requested to be removed from the list.

It had always been obvious to me that some people would request to be removed from the list, mostly or entirely for political reasons, and that I couldn't simply grant their request, for a host of reasons that were pretty clear to me but that I had not yet had time to lay down explicitly in the policies. I did not want to provide Daniel Kochmański (and the world) with a sloppy unconvincing explanation that through its weakness would incite challenge, so instead the next day I applied the Pending further processing label with description This issue has been seen by the BDFL and is being worked on internally. Stay tuned for details. to give me some time to work on a major policy update that would address the removal issue.

When Daniel Kochmański understandably expressed impatience a little more than a week later, I apologized for the delays and calmly explained the situation. The next day, I delivered the major policy update, as promised. This added two crucial, foundational sections to the policies, "Tenets" and "Removal", which extensively explained the rationale for why I can't simply remove people from the list upon request. I believe it is obvious that quite some thought and energy was put into this major policy update, and that the delay of a little more than a week was retrospectively justified.

Taking all publicly known context into account (see above, links especially), it is clear that I have been as responsive and courteous to Daniel Kochmański as the circumstances have allowed.

⚓ Malicious misrepresentations

A mere 6 hours and 3 minutes after informing Daniel Kochmański that I unfortunately could not accede to his removal request (backed by extensive rationale), I received notification from Cloudflare that he had sent them a formal complaint about my site. I quickly determined Daniel Kochmański's complaint to be MALICIOUS, LIBELOUS AND FRAUDULENT, as he knowingly made some malicious misrepresentations and made a few dubious or misleading statements.

From: Cloudflare <abuse@cloudflare.com>
To: Jean-Philippe Paradis <hexstream@gmail.com>
Subject: [6bf84d2f1cd56a5b]: Cloudflare received an abuse report regarding your site.
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2019 05:32:08 +0000

Cloudflare received an abuse report regarding:

hexstreamsoft.com

Below is the report we received:

Reporter's Name: Daniel Kochmański
Reporter's Email Address: dkochmanski@turtleware.eu
Reporter's Title: privacy violation
Reporter's Company Name: TurtleWare

Reported URLs:

        https://common-lispers.hexstreamsoft.com/

Reported Source IPs: {104.18.44.239}
Logs or Evidence of Abuse: Server owner publishes without my consent and knowledge my private information aggregated from different places on the internet. After direct demand to remove it from the list they rejected the issue:

https://github.com/Hexstream/common-lispers.hexstreamsoft.com/issues/2

Please note that entries on the list

https://common-lispers.hexstreamsoft.com/

were gathered, processed and published without consent and agreement of  any people on this list. I believe it falls well under abuse category hence I'm writing to you after unsuccessful try to report it directly to the site owner.

We have forwarded this complaint to your hosting provider.

Regards,

Cloudflare Abuse

(See raw complaint notification email with headers.)

⚓ Rebuttal

⚓ Rebuttal » Willingly publicly disclosed information only, nothing private.

Daniel Kochmański maliciously misrepresents the situation as a privacy violation, saying that his private information was published, while he knows full well that all information in the Common Lispers list is aggregated from public sources only. He has had 3 great occasions to realize this:

First, Daniel Kochmański has had a little more than AN ENTIRE WEEK to realize that his entry in particular was assembled exclusively from public information that he had willingly published about himself.

We know for a fact that he became aware of the Common Lispers list no later than 30 march 2019, and then he sent his grotesque complaint on 8 april 2019.
Second, the very policy update that Daniel Kochmański sent his grotesque complaint in response to refers to this fact in two separate places, IN BOLD NO LESS:

In the Tenets section:

All content featured in the list is assembled from publicly available sources.

In the Removal section:

Anyone who thinks that aggregating their willingly publicly disclosed information
constitutes affront or prejudice to their dignity may want to reconsider their life choices.
Third, someone helpfully pointed out the following on reddit:

[...] I seriously doubt that, for example, writing an article including among other things a statement to the effect of "person XYZ is involved in project ABC" based on freely and publicly available information requires "explicit consent" from anyone. At point, journalism would break down.

It is clear that Daniel Kochmański (widely known as "jackdaniel") has seen this comment, since we can see his reply very close downthread, and this is even his only comment in the entire comments section (emphasis mine obviously):

At the time of publication of this article, Daniel Kochmański's GitHub account prominently links to his website, which itself prominently links to his Twitter account, which itself prominently links to his Mastodon account, which itself prominently links to his Patreon account. (All emphasis mine in the screenshots, obviously.)
His website's "About us" page prominently displays his real name, and his aforementioned Twitter, Mastodon and Patreon accounts (transitively linked to from his website) in turn link his real name to his "jackdaniel" nickname.
There can be no reasonable expectation of "privacy" regarding information that one willingly and prominently publishes about themselves.

(I also just now easily found his GitLab through a simple google search, I had missed that, I'll add it to his entry, of course. ;P)

⚓ Rebuttal » I have been as responsive as circumstances have allowed.

Taking all publicly known context into account, it is clear that I have been as responsive and courteous to Daniel Kochmański as the circumstances have allowed.

I went above and beyond, even continuing to be responsive to the creator of the corresponding pull request after they closed (retracted?) their pull request.

Even after providing Daniel Kochmański with an extensive rationale for why I can't simply remove him from the list, I did not even close the issue, as I did expect some sort of healthy public debate.

Yet Daniel Kochmański disingenuously claims that I rejected the issue and that he has unsuccessful[ly] tr[ied] to report it directly to the site owner.
I don't understand how his report could have been any more successful in the circumstances.

I was obviously ready to rationally respond to any criticism, as I have always done, yet Daniel Kochmański thought that the best course of action was to threaten to knock me off the internet.
What Daniel Kochmański did is simply irresponsible, immature, grotesque and worthy of denunciation, hence this article.
I think a public apology would be in order.

This episode serves to once again illustrate the usual insanity of my detractors.