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Rest in peace

January 24th, 2006 | Links, Technology

At 6:00 PM EST, the Off-Topic discussion forum at Joel on Software will permanently close. This may be why.

Last Saturday, Chris McKinstry posted two suicide notes to both his personal blog and the off-topic discussion board on the Joel on Software website, a personal and professional website created by software development guru Joel Spolsky. According to Wikipedia, Mr. McKinstry was a researcher in artificial intelligence who founded the Mindpixel project, a collaborative artificial intelligence project conducted over the Internet from 2000-2005.

Members of the Joel on Software discussion board (informally known as ?off) were unsure whether these suicide notes were a joke of poor taste, or legitimate cries for help. Nonetheless, many individuals attempted to contact authorities in Santiago, Chile, where Mr. McKinstry last lived. They also contacted the Canadian embassy, as Mr. McKinstry was a Canadian citizen.

Alas, Mr. McKinstry was found dead by police in his apartment, victim of an apparent suicide, either Saturday or Sunday. (Details are still unclear.) Rumors appeared online on Monday, but official confirmation was received this morning. The discussion forum was awash with comments over this incident. Some forum members felt that they went above and beyond reasonable efforts to attempt to prevent his death. Others felt the forum handled the incident distastefully.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, Joel Spolsky declared that the forum would be closed. At about 3:00 PM EST, Mr. Spolsky announced, “This forum will close permanently at 6:00 PM New York Time. Sorry. It’s making people unhappy. Find another place to chat.” While forum members were not completely surprised, they were disappointed at their eviction from their “online home.”

I have archived some of the threads from the ?off forum, so that people can be aware of Mr. McKinstry’s passing, the forum’s attempts to locate him, and the resulting fallout from the incident. Archive snapshots were taken at 3:40 PM EST. I may try to update them again shortly before the forum is taken offline.

Update (Wednesday, 12:30 AM): Joel Spolsky posted a message to his own blog regarding the end of ?off. It’s insightful and worth pondering. Mr. Spolsky has not given a definite answer as to the specific post or posts which led to his termination of the forum.

Update (Friday, 5:30 PM): I have removed the archived discussion threads from the Joel on Software off-topic forum.  Please email me if you’d like private access to the archives.  In your email, please indicate why you’d like this access.  (My email address is at the upper right.)

  • I was following it off and on for a while and thought it was a joke until MarkTAW stepped into high gear and started tracking down IP's, the embassy officials, etc.

    After that, I was hopeful but didn't think it'd work.
  • SomeNut
    Thanks for posting this. It's a very small, but still important, form of a 'wayback' machine. It takes us back to a time before Chris' demise.

    As sad as it made me, it was a good read.
  • What a terrible tragedy. R.I.P. Chris.
  • Geert-Jan Thomas
    Ryan, thanks for salvaging this.
    Chris was a nutcase, but what would we do without nutcases? I'll miss him, RIP
  • I am one of the 200 plus members of the Yahoo! Robitron discussion group. Let me mention that Chris posted there a copy of his message "So what exacty does a web suicide note look like?" The date/time stamp on my e-mail copy is Fri, 20 Jan 2006 23:28:43, and the stamp on the Yahoo archives is Jan 21, 2006 6:28 am, although I don't know offhand what time zones those refer to.

    Members of the Robitron group took a number of steps to alert authorities, only a few of which are reflected in the posts to the group. Those efforts, however, did not seem to rise to the level seen at the ?off discussion group.

    Chris joined the Robitron group on Sep 19, 2005 and started/participated in a number of discussions in what I imagine is his usual energetic manner.

    While a "private" discussion group, Robitron membership (including the archives) are open to anyone interested in AI, chatterbots, the Loebner Prize Contest, and just about anything else within Yahoo's terms of use.

    Thanks Ryan, for your timely efforts to maintain recent communications on ?off. The saddness generated by Chris' crisis has been reflected in a number of Robitron posts. I wish I could roll back the clock, surrender my Mont Blanc pen, and have another try at reaching out to him.
  • I've got a rough half-human half-machine translation of the only "official" announcement of Chris' suicide here.
  • The ?off forum has been resurrected at http://www.crazyontap.com

    If you knew Chris you're welcome to come there to talk.
  • Chris Jack
    If you want to take anything out of this, take this:
    1) Always take suicide threats seriously, even if you suspect someone is making it up for some other reason,.

    2) Get the person talking - what changed recently that brought this on? Depression is anger focussed inwards. Validate their feelings. Give the person a way out. If you don't know how, find someone trained for the person to talk to.

    3) You are not responsible for other people's actions, but what you do and say has an impact. You only have to follow the links to know who was helping and who wasn't.
  • somaudlin
    Poor kid.
    I will never forget his line about wanting to be loved as much as a Monte Blanc pen.


    Cheers to you and what you could have been had you felt loved.
  • Christophe
    Very sad news to hear, RIP Chris. We'll miss you.
  • Barbara
    Pschizophrenia comes to mind... You were a human being on the planet, no matter how much wrong you did to others and yourself.
  • RvnPhnx
    @Chris Jack
    I hate to say it, but you just proved that you know jack about depression. It is a disease of the brain (which is treatable, both short and long term)--not some sort of "anger directed inward" (which would be better categorized as "resignation") or some other Freuding bullshit.

    @HOME :: www.stillsearching.co.uk
    [...] suicide note reveals "the mind is a maximum hypersurface and thought a trajectory on it and the amygdala and hippocampus are Hopf maps of it" - inspired genius or simply too much LSD? [...]


    Actually sounds a lot like a short strong episode of mania (not the coloquial definition, the clinical one)--part of Bipolar Disorder. Go ahead and look it up.
    A lot of people whom have had untreated bipolar disorder have committed suicide (or tried to) at the end of a depressive cycle during the onset of a mania (while they are still messed up enough from the depression to still want to do themselves' in, and at the same time have regained their motive faculties--a very dangerous mix). I know this from family and friends, their experiences, my own (being misdiagnosed--I'm just a narcolept instead, ye-ha), and at least one person whom I know committed suicide in very much the same state of mind (she hung herself in the living room of her home).
  • I just read "Alphabet Soup"s article, Mindpixel Crashes. Wow, that was really interesting, and informative. Thanks for publishing that, as it gives all of us a better insight into Mr. McKinstry. My condolences on your loss.
  • I always think if I die suddenly what will happen to my accounts and the virtual world that I am living in I must think of some one to carry ove my legacy
  • david delgadillo
    what is the aderss to get their
  • david delgadillo
    what is the aderss to get their becase i got a soccer game
  • david delgadillo
    hi
  • Dante
    Shame, really.

    RvnPhnx; ever noticed how when a new psychological condition is analysed or a new drug comes out, there are apparently millions of people with it?
    Stop treating people as a bunch of variables and labels, idiot.
  • very sad news .. RIP chris
  • Great post.. this is really a great information..This will be useful post.. I will comeback for more..

    Cheers
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