Responding to trollish postings.

[Terry Reedy]

[New subject line]

In response to my response to a trollish posting...

> There isn't any doubt that these 'tutorials' are generally unwelcome and 
> unhelpful. Numerous people have kindly taken the time to flag some of the 
> problems. So much so that any competent google of the archives would 
> quickly reveal the group consensus on their instructional merit.

Yes, having advised many people to use Google, I thought it appropriate to 
flag one particular section that I thought dangerous.

> I submit that continued corrections and advice of this sort are 
> counter-productive.

I agree that 'correcting' Xah's writing is useless, and so I refrained.  If 
asked 'What's wrong with the part you flagged?', I would stick with my 
original advice: "Ignore it".

> Could we try to ignore them in the hopes that without the light of 
> attention they will wither, meanwhile trusting the many extant reviews 
> and google to do their work?

I only read that particular post because it lacked the [Perl-Python] flag 
and because I was interested in the subject.  Sure, now that I have added 
my one and presumably only review, let's everyone stop ;-)

> (In case it isn't obvious: none of this is intended as a criticism of 
> Terry or any of the others who have been 'fighting the good fight'; I 
> just think a change of strategy might be in order.)

No offense taken.  My personal strategy is to read only as much of trollish 
threads as I find interesting or somehow instructive, almost never respond, 
and then ignore the rest.  I also mostly ignore discussions about such 
threads.

Terry J. Reedy