Aggressive language on python-list

[Joshua Landau]

First of all, I believe this is the *perfect* post to try and
keep discussion calm. If trusted members cannot keep a good tone of voice
and have an understanding (even if disagreeing) stance on a post
about aggressive language, it does not shine brightly as a message to
others.

On 16 October 2012 22:12, <rurpy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> On 10/16/2012 02:17 PM, Prasad, Ramit wrote:> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> >> On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:27:48 -0700, rurpy wrote about trolls and dicks:
> >> If you ignore such posts, how will the poster know they are
> unacceptable?
> >
> > I agree completely. I was about to say that I was fine with meeting
> > known trolls with silence, but what happens when new or infrequent
> > readers see the troll's writing with no one objecting? Are they to
> > ignore the troll or assume that the list condones the troll's words?
>
> You do not give enough credit to people.  The vast majority
> of people are capable of recognizing offensive posts and
> recognizing that non-response to them is intentional.


I think you are only right up to a point. Whilst some messages are obvious
trolls, it is a well known phenomena that people respond emphatically to
even the most outrageous of posts, especially if they are new enough not to
know the culture we expect.


> I think it is absurd to think that most normal people will
> see such posts and conclude that all Python programmers
> agree with them.  (No time to look it up but I vaguely
> recall a long series of anti-semitic posts here that were
> largely ignored.  I've seen no evidence that there are
> people who brand the Python community as anti-semitic.)
>

These are a brilliant example of obvious spam. A quick GMail search for
"Jew" turned up a fair few spread posts that were definitely anti-Semitic.
However, they were posts that lacked any context and had nothing to relate
to Python, this list or anyone on this list. They were so obviously
irrelevant that it would be crazy for anyone to label the list with this.

If these posts were short responses like "Your code's just broken you
stupid Jew", then your point would be more easy to accept. I can imagine
(for it is *the internet*) that someone would take genuine offence and
label *sections* of the Python-List community as anti-semetic.

However, a response of "*Qxrlt* *is a known" + ("spammer" | "troll" |
"bot") to the OP (never talking to the troll for fear of baiting) is likely
to immediately alleviate any risk and cannot, as far as I can see, propose
any significant risk.

>From that point on, every post of theirs in the thread can be ignored
safely. Which is the goal, I guess.


I am going to go on record to say I agree with you that a warning cannot
oft change a troll's behaviour, and a talking to (of any kind) will likely
act as troll bait. However, this does not mean that silence is the best
option.

* Apologies to Qxrlt, whoever may have that pseudo-random character stream
as their nickname
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20121016/b8b84a1c/attachment.html>