Candydoc

[Christopher Wright]

Georg Wrede wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> I agree, though, that ignoring Trolls is more productive than hurling
>>  insults at them.
> 
> Right.
> 
>> The first step to a Troll becoming a non-Troll is to apologize for
>> past trolling behavior.
> 
> Hmm. This is akin to the 12-year-old mentality, i.e., expecting that 
> they suddenly display maturity above that of the average poster here, 
> before they can be forgiven.

It's not a matter of forgiveness. If someone insulted me repeatedly, I 
wouldn't forgive them, I wouldn't help them out, and I would either 
ignore them, or if that were impossible, try to get them to shut up. If 
they later behaved nicely to me, consistently for a reasonable period, I 
might then ignore their past behavior. On the other hand, after a month 
of ruining his reputation, it'd take probably half a year for me to stop 
filtering his posts.

But flaming him just clutters the newsgroup.

> My take on how to address any Troll (especially /not/ talking about Ty, 
> but very much in general), is to give them time. They'll calm down, once 
> they feel that the community is not grouping on them. -- And, if they 
> still don't, then it's time for some action.

It's a matter of how much patience you have. I don't think any 
reasonable person would make racist comments at random to people on a 
newsgroup with good intentions. So, in Ty Tower's case, the only 
conclusion is that he has ill intentions. And in that case, I think he 
deserves no patience.

> This action would obviously be to ignore them.
> 
> But still, only as far as the uncalled-for posts are concerned. If the 
> same "troll" writes some "serious" or "proper" entries in the NG, those 
> entries should be answered with appropriate correctness, that is, as if 
> they'd been written by anybody else. And the posts the "troll" writes 
> that aren't correct, THOSE should be silently ignored (and not even 
> ridiculed or challenged or offended). Simply ignored.

The only reason I would agree with you is that other people might see 
the archives with the same question and want an answer, not a bunch of 
"go home, troll" posts.