Some Charles Carroll garbage Thursday, May 08 2008
I don't know if anyone out there knows who Charles Carroll is, however if you've ever been to learnasp.com or aspfriends.com, then you've likely seen his mug plastered at the top of nearly every page and banner ad on those sites (granted, I'm having trouble now finding a picture of his mug). Charles writes code and attempts to display best practices (I hate about 99% of his code, it's ugly, there's no consistence in naming, capitalization, etc). He also teaches ASP and ASP.NET to people willing to pay for his services. He has a wife in Japan (?) and a couple kids that come and see him a couple months out of the year (I only know this because he brings it up constantly on mailing lists).
So anyway, Charles has tried to be a community leader and somehow succeeded. His communities weren't organized to my tastes: he had around 200-300 mailing lists for Microsoft development. If you accidentally asked a question in aspngcsharp that was too datagrid-ish (aspngdatagrid) you'd get yelled at and your post would be moved and you'd have to subscribe to yet ANOTHER mailing list. If you asked too much of a "how to in C# work with a datagrid" in a web control related list, again you'd get yelled at and have to subscribe to a new list to get an answer to your question. Take for instance my favorite community as of late, DevelopMentor's .NET mailing lists. There are maybe 7 lists I think. Broken up at a macro level to where you don't get too many emails in any one day but you are able to get your questions answered on obvious lists (without having to go through an enormous list to guess where exactly your question fits in).
So anyway, I think these lists are really poorly organized and as such, few people can get anything answered other than the most basic questions. A couple years ago I got an email from Charles (it was automated) inviting me into this group called "AspAce". Now, while I thought it was a bit presumptuous to be on a list called AspAce, I joined because of the promises of being "close to Microsoft". And close I was, along with the rest of us. We got invitations to a private screening of V2 of ASP.NET (which I won't be able to make, I think my date passed anyway) on the Microsoft campus. We got to beta-test Web Matrix back when it was still called Project Saturn. I no longer participated on Charles' lists, but I stayed on the AspAce lists to see what I could get out of them.
So anyway, a while goes by and Charles starts sending emails to the AspAce mailing lists indicating that he was done running the lists and they were closing down because Microsoft was "screwing him" by proposing to give him money to help run the lists. Okay, now I didn't know charles before my membership in the AspAces, however I started to wonder if there were any serious issues this man had. I already knew he wrote horrible code (take a look at any of his old VBScript/ASP stuff, it's garbage), but I never realized there might be some other problems this guy had. I watched the Charles/Microsoft thing unfurl and Charles sent a copy of the contract Microsoft wanted him to sign to the AspAce mailing lists. He claimed Microsoft would take ownership of his community and screw everyone in the long run. I took a look and it looks exactly like every other TOS that Microsoft puts up when you give them things. Take the GotDotNet.com user upload agreement. You have to give Microsoft the right to use and publish what you put up there. If Microsoft gave Charles money, they wanted the ability to take information from his lists and publish them on their sites. Honestly I see no problem with that.
Anyway, Charles freaked out and emails between him and Scott Guthrie (I'm pretty sure it was Scott) flew back and forth. Charles effectively whining ("Waaaah, give me money but don't ask for anything in return") and the Microsoft employee trying to calm him down ("We haven't been able to get a hold of you. You hung up on us three times. Please, let's discuss the contract and maybe rewrite it"). A day or so of that and Microsoft shut down the aspfriends lists and website. Some more time goes by and eventually everything turns back on and charles says something to the effect of "Waaaah, I'm putting it back up, but I won't promise anything, Microsoft sucks". AspAces turn into the AspElite and then team up with AspAlliance to create some mailing lists (aspadvice.com or something like that). Throughout this whole process, Charles repeatedly sends "I'm pulling out" emails, indicating he wants out and will no longer be a visible member of any of this.
Then about six months goes by and he keeps getting involved. He goes out and creates a bunch of Yahoo groups to replace his plethora of aspfriends lists. He tries to start up a new community using a bunch of disparate Yahoo groups/mailing lists. All the while another group of people start up a new community using the ASP.NET Forums and the AspInsiders (and of course the MVPs). Charles is incredibly offended by this and repeatedly states that he doesn't support their efforts (I'd like to point out that Charles is a very whiny, spoiled type of person -- It's hard to convey exactly how he is without seeing the emails yourself). So the AspInsiders get created, Charles tries to create his Yahoo groups (and with the help of other people creating groups) and tries to "beat out" this new community that created itself simply because of the drama he stirred up. Mostly he's failed and just a few minutes ago he sent out an email once again stating that he was "pulling out" of all AspElite lists and no longer wants to be associated with them. Here's some excerpts, they're very nice:
"I will not be readily available by chat or email for next 2 months. My kids are back from Japan for 2 months and I am devoting my time to them. Though after those 2 months permanent caretakers will be assigned to ensure AspElite.com exists 24 x 7 x 365 but I am done with all the community shit forever.
...
MS (as represented by Scott Guthrie, Rob Howard, Ben Miller, et al.) and Steve Smith and the majority of the AspElite (here and gone) have thoroughly convinced me what a waste of time and money helping the community is - I had already announced my retirement from public life and community involvement months ago to my closest friends - it is time the rest of you know.
...
In 2 months, AspFriends.com will focus on my 2 lists on main page, and link to the revived ones on a secondary page. I had more than $100k and massive time invested in AspLists/AspFriends and will link to the revived lists but am not about to give up that domain to anyone. AspElite I invested time in choosig the principals but mostly chose wrong and miscalculated so there is nothing to be proud of there; I am willing to throw away that time and leave the community and you all to deal with the MVPs and AspInsiders (the looters and secondhanders) since most of you were not happy with my leadership anyway."
First off, I highly doubt Charles makes so much money that he could have ever afforded $100K on these lists. I highly doubt his teaching career could have garnered that much in his entire lifetime. He got advertising money, donations, etc. He could NOT have spent as much as he tries to claim. Besides, that number keeps growing with every email he sends out. Also, note the bitterness about Steve Smith and the Microsoft employees. I saw a lot of the emails between the two (they did them publicly on the lists) and Charles was always irrational and the Microsoft guys were always very calm and cool and willing to work with Charles to resolve any issues. Also note the "looters and secondhanders" when referring to the MVPs and AspInsiders. That part is my personal favorite. The best Charles can do is reduce himself to infantile name-calling. Tsk tsk Chucky. Good luck in life, please stay away from any communities in the future.
So anyway, Charles has tried to be a community leader and somehow succeeded. His communities weren't organized to my tastes: he had around 200-300 mailing lists for Microsoft development. If you accidentally asked a question in aspngcsharp that was too datagrid-ish (aspngdatagrid) you'd get yelled at and your post would be moved and you'd have to subscribe to yet ANOTHER mailing list. If you asked too much of a "how to in C# work with a datagrid" in a web control related list, again you'd get yelled at and have to subscribe to a new list to get an answer to your question. Take for instance my favorite community as of late, DevelopMentor's .NET mailing lists. There are maybe 7 lists I think. Broken up at a macro level to where you don't get too many emails in any one day but you are able to get your questions answered on obvious lists (without having to go through an enormous list to guess where exactly your question fits in).
So anyway, I think these lists are really poorly organized and as such, few people can get anything answered other than the most basic questions. A couple years ago I got an email from Charles (it was automated) inviting me into this group called "AspAce". Now, while I thought it was a bit presumptuous to be on a list called AspAce, I joined because of the promises of being "close to Microsoft". And close I was, along with the rest of us. We got invitations to a private screening of V2 of ASP.NET (which I won't be able to make, I think my date passed anyway) on the Microsoft campus. We got to beta-test Web Matrix back when it was still called Project Saturn. I no longer participated on Charles' lists, but I stayed on the AspAce lists to see what I could get out of them.
So anyway, a while goes by and Charles starts sending emails to the AspAce mailing lists indicating that he was done running the lists and they were closing down because Microsoft was "screwing him" by proposing to give him money to help run the lists. Okay, now I didn't know charles before my membership in the AspAces, however I started to wonder if there were any serious issues this man had. I already knew he wrote horrible code (take a look at any of his old VBScript/ASP stuff, it's garbage), but I never realized there might be some other problems this guy had. I watched the Charles/Microsoft thing unfurl and Charles sent a copy of the contract Microsoft wanted him to sign to the AspAce mailing lists. He claimed Microsoft would take ownership of his community and screw everyone in the long run. I took a look and it looks exactly like every other TOS that Microsoft puts up when you give them things. Take the GotDotNet.com user upload agreement. You have to give Microsoft the right to use and publish what you put up there. If Microsoft gave Charles money, they wanted the ability to take information from his lists and publish them on their sites. Honestly I see no problem with that.
Anyway, Charles freaked out and emails between him and Scott Guthrie (I'm pretty sure it was Scott) flew back and forth. Charles effectively whining ("Waaaah, give me money but don't ask for anything in return") and the Microsoft employee trying to calm him down ("We haven't been able to get a hold of you. You hung up on us three times. Please, let's discuss the contract and maybe rewrite it"). A day or so of that and Microsoft shut down the aspfriends lists and website. Some more time goes by and eventually everything turns back on and charles says something to the effect of "Waaaah, I'm putting it back up, but I won't promise anything, Microsoft sucks". AspAces turn into the AspElite and then team up with AspAlliance to create some mailing lists (aspadvice.com or something like that). Throughout this whole process, Charles repeatedly sends "I'm pulling out" emails, indicating he wants out and will no longer be a visible member of any of this.
Then about six months goes by and he keeps getting involved. He goes out and creates a bunch of Yahoo groups to replace his plethora of aspfriends lists. He tries to start up a new community using a bunch of disparate Yahoo groups/mailing lists. All the while another group of people start up a new community using the ASP.NET Forums and the AspInsiders (and of course the MVPs). Charles is incredibly offended by this and repeatedly states that he doesn't support their efforts (I'd like to point out that Charles is a very whiny, spoiled type of person -- It's hard to convey exactly how he is without seeing the emails yourself). So the AspInsiders get created, Charles tries to create his Yahoo groups (and with the help of other people creating groups) and tries to "beat out" this new community that created itself simply because of the drama he stirred up. Mostly he's failed and just a few minutes ago he sent out an email once again stating that he was "pulling out" of all AspElite lists and no longer wants to be associated with them. Here's some excerpts, they're very nice:
"I will not be readily available by chat or email for next 2 months. My kids are back from Japan for 2 months and I am devoting my time to them. Though after those 2 months permanent caretakers will be assigned to ensure AspElite.com exists 24 x 7 x 365 but I am done with all the community shit forever.
...
MS (as represented by Scott Guthrie, Rob Howard, Ben Miller, et al.) and Steve Smith and the majority of the AspElite (here and gone) have thoroughly convinced me what a waste of time and money helping the community is - I had already announced my retirement from public life and community involvement months ago to my closest friends - it is time the rest of you know.
...
In 2 months, AspFriends.com will focus on my 2 lists on main page, and link to the revived ones on a secondary page. I had more than $100k and massive time invested in AspLists/AspFriends and will link to the revived lists but am not about to give up that domain to anyone. AspElite I invested time in choosig the principals but mostly chose wrong and miscalculated so there is nothing to be proud of there; I am willing to throw away that time and leave the community and you all to deal with the MVPs and AspInsiders (the looters and secondhanders) since most of you were not happy with my leadership anyway."
First off, I highly doubt Charles makes so much money that he could have ever afforded $100K on these lists. I highly doubt his teaching career could have garnered that much in his entire lifetime. He got advertising money, donations, etc. He could NOT have spent as much as he tries to claim. Besides, that number keeps growing with every email he sends out. Also, note the bitterness about Steve Smith and the Microsoft employees. I saw a lot of the emails between the two (they did them publicly on the lists) and Charles was always irrational and the Microsoft guys were always very calm and cool and willing to work with Charles to resolve any issues. Also note the "looters and secondhanders" when referring to the MVPs and AspInsiders. That part is my personal favorite. The best Charles can do is reduce himself to infantile name-calling. Tsk tsk Chucky. Good luck in life, please stay away from any communities in the future.
I've seen him "speak" once and all he did was spout off about he was leading AspElite and how cool you had to be to be part of it. He then tried to show us the "ultra cool" admin section of his lame-ass list and couldn't even login. The moron didn't even know a valid username/password to his own fuckin' app.
Then, all he could "speak" about was how a normalized database is "BAD" and we should adhere to his dumb ass rules of a "relational" database in which he proceeded to show us how everything in one table is "the way" to do it.
I seriously can't believe that man made any money "speaking" about development. He was such a pompous ass, I wanted to kick his teeth in. And his code is crap to boot.
I also remember being on his lists and being yelled at and subscribed unwillingly to more lists because some questions were not completely on topic. Shit, I remember being subscribed to another list because of my attempt to answer someone else' question that wasn't completely on target.
I say...Fuck Charles Carroll and good ridance(sp?). We don't need people like him in the community.