On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Antoon Pardon <antoon.par...@rece.vub.ac.be> wrote: > I don't remember making such a claim. What I do remember is > you among others claiming that the problem was not (so much) > the troll (Nikos) but the others.
Count me among those who feel this way. > And your last conclusion is unsound. You forget to include the > fact that once a troll appeared, people reacting badly to the > troll is also to be expected. So with regards to this aspect > there is no difference between the troll and the responders, > both being expected and so no ground to put the preponderance > of blame on the responders. No, I don't agree with that at all. Trolls are to be expected because there will always be those out in the world who want to have a little fun and have no regard for either the list or those who use it. There is nothing to be done about that. On the other hand, the flamers responding to the trolls are regular contributers to the list who presumably do care about keeping the list courteous, respectful, welcoming and enjoyable to participate in. Toward that end, I do not think it is at all unreasonable to expect posters not to throw those principles out the window just because a troll showed up. > Well others don't appreciate you drawing the lines for them > either. If you think others have no business drawing the line > for what is acceptable on this mailinglist/newsgroup then you > have no business drawing such a line yourself. Ultimately there is no enforcement on this list, and all of us must draw our own lines. The question then is: will one draw the line somewhere that is respectful of the list and promotes positive contributions, or somewhere that will push others toward kill-filing one and/or giving up on the list altogether? > I find this a very one-sided view. Those annoyed excessively > by Nikos can't easily ignore him without a cost. There may > be people involved in such a tread they value and like to > read. They can't easily filter the valuable contributions > in such a thread from the nth repeated answer to the same > question either. So their ideal solution is to flame him until he goes away, with the result being that the threads don't exist to begin with? If it's difficult to filter "valuable contributions" from a thread while trying to ignore every other post, think how much harder it will be to got those same "valuable contributions" from a thread that doesn't exist in the first place. Finding anything of value here is clearly not the goal of the flamers, and they might as well just kill the threads at their end -- it's the same net effect for a lot less work, and it doesn't impact the ability of anyone else to interact with those threads if they might wish to. > You ask of others they should tolerate this cost Nikos > brings on for them but you protest when you have to take > on this kind of cost yourself. It's a lot easier to ignore a thread than it is to ignore specific posters within specific threads. And per my response above, your argument that the flamers might not want to just ignore the thread doesn't fly. > I don't know it is that clear. I have the impression it can be > rather effective in cases where the whole community makes it > clear trolls are not welcome. Of course if part of the community > is more bothered by those making trolls feel unwelcome than by > the trolls themselves, such strive will of course attract them. I don't think you understand the troll mindset. They don't care whether the community does or does not welcome them, because they don't view themselves as part of the community. They just want affirmation and attention, which is exactly what they get when somebody flames them. They may even find it amusing that somebody can get so worked up over their disingenuous posts, which then spurs them on to continue trying to get the same reaction. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list