I NEED to TEACH you something, QUICK!

[Martijn Faassen]

Laura Creighton <lac at cd.chalmers.se> wrote:

> This always happens.  Trust me, been here many times.  This is way
> more cool that congratulating each other on how smug, er, kind you
> are, but things are about to get nasty.  What is wrong with this
> picture:?

[snip]
> YOU PIG YOU PIG IT WAS AN IRISH WOLFHOUND!!!!

> Now 12 people chime in with the complete Book of dogs detailing
> exactly how to tell the difference between those two breeds, and
> one person reports being scared by a wolf once.

Now that I can make sense of your post (there must be some kind of
attribution problem somewhere; I didn't see the thread you're
responding to)...

Note that this actually a good anti-flame technique by itself;
divert the discussion from flame topics like war and massacres to
something innocuous like discussing dogs. Happens frequently
in comp.lang.python; I've seen outright trolls being defused
and rerouted instantly into an interesting discussion on, say,
old computer displays, or whatever. It nips flamewars in the
butt. So while you can refactor your answer to the main point
and tell the poster to go away, you can also refactor the thread
into something useful, instead.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?