i like cakes

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 03/29/2011 07:14 AM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> On 28/03/2011 10:03, Alix Pexton wrote:
>> try this?
>>
>> Dealing with Internet Trolls - the Cognitive Therapy Approach
>> http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html
>>
>> A...
>>
>
> Ha, I saw that article recently, I think it may work for overly excited
> fanboys, or for people involved in a flame war, but not for trolls. In
> other words I think it only works for people honest with their
> intentions (even if very emotional about it), but not with people
> deliberately spreading confusion, FUD, or just getting a kick out of
> being a troll.

(Disclaimer: I only skimmed it.) That must deal with the emotional 
reaction to trolling, but I have none. The only issue is that one 
individual is manipulating the system at reddit to spread 
disinformation. In addition, he is obsessively following Walter and 
finding fault with every word he says. We just need a principled 
approach to solving this problem. (When I'll find some time I'll do some 
stylometry - I'll create a language model from iliekcaeks' past texts 
and run it through parametricpoly's text. The styles are extremely 
similar and a language model will catch that. If the obtained perplexity 
is low, then that is indicative of socket puppetry. Not that that would 
be an Earth-shattering discovery :o).)

I posted this last night in 
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/gcmj1/digital_mars_aka_the_d_programming_language/:

=====
Registration is open for students starting today. Apply at the same 
location. We already have a strong lineup of mentors, projects, and 
students, and we're always looking for more. Good luck!
=====

When I downvote a post, I do so if it's factually incorrect or trolling. 
By that standard one would hardly find the above off-topic inside a 
thread about D's participation to GSoC 2011. Yet this morning the post 
was buried at the end of the thread with 13 downvotes canceling 14 
upvotes. This is particularly cynical because at the end of the day it's 
about some students making some money through the summer working on 
something they find fun. If e.g. the competing language Go would have a 
summer of code proposal and discussion, I'd find it heinous of me to try 
to make that information disappear or otherwise drive people away.

Also, the GtkD announcement I made last night was deleted. I just 
emailed moderators about it. Leaving aside the fact that I'm doing what 
the authors of GtkD ought to be doing, I suspect moderators would 
automatically or semi-automatically delete a post if 10-20 users would 
click on "spam" for it. It's possible some socket puppets have been hard 
at work last night.


Andrei