Don't feed the troll...

[Antoon Pardon]

Op 17-06-13 05:46, rurpy at yahoo.com schreef:
> On 06/16/2013 02:04 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>
>> Yes. Trying to start flame wars with Nikos is unacceptable behaviour. It 
>> is unproductive, it makes this a hostile, unpleasant place to be, it 
>> ruins the environment for the rest of the community, it's off topic, and 
>> it simply doesn't work to discourage trolls.
> The difficulty with trying to suppress such responses is that 
> the flamers get just as much pleasure from having a target
> to unrestrainedly spew their pent up anger and vile at, as 
> the troll gets from simulating that reaction.  The result is 
> a positive feedback loop.
>
Well if asocial behaviour of one provokes asocial behaviour in
others, you can't claim the problem is not the social behaviour
of the first. 

>   
> I could be wrong but I don't think Nikos is a pure troll -- 
> someone motivated purely by provoking reaction and discord.
> He has a real website and his problems with Python seem like 
> genuine problems many beginners have.  He seems to have little 
> knowledge, not much concern for anyone else but a lot of
> determination to get things working.  I have certainly known
> people like that in the real world.

Does that matter? I don't care what Nikos's motivation is. I
care about the result or effect of his behaviour and that seems
to differ very little from a troll. Intent is not magic. Bad
behaviour with the best of intentions still results in annoyance.
The only way it which intent makes a difference is when the
person with good intentions, upon learning his behaviour is
bothersome, tries to adapt his behaviour.


> I speculate that half of his "bad behavior" is simple "I want 
> now and don't care about your conventions".  The rest is a
> reaction to "we're the alphas, your a beta" attitude expressed
> by many here and later, overt hostility directed at him.  He 
> has changed some things -- his posting method, he's made an 
> effort to understand his encoding issues, etc.
I don't see that much change in his style. He just admitted
not reading help files (because they are too technical for
him). So essentialy he is asking we give him a beginners
tutorial in everything he doesn't understand without much
effort of him trying to understand things on his own and
without much appreciation for the time of others.

> So I think Steven's approach of responding to his questions, 
> at least those that are coherent and don't require reading a 
> dozen posts over several threads to piece together, with an 
> actual attempt to help (not a bunch of obscure hints, links 
> to wikipedia, and "you're an idiot" replies) is right.
A respons that is in effect reinforcing bad bahaviour.

> If Nikos fails to respond with better questions, then those 
> that do answer will get tired of trying to help and stop 
> answering.  In the meantime everyone else can just killfile
> or otherwise ignore him rather than egging him on by 
> intentionally provoking him (unless of course you enjoy
> the results.)
In the mean time you and steve can just killfile those you
think are just egging him on.

> So positive reinforcement for less bad behavior, negative 
> reinforcement (which for trolling is NO response, not negative 
> responses) for more bad.  Standard behavioral conditioning.
It means you are still reinforcing bad behaviour. Less bad is
still bad.

> And if it doesn't work it will still be a much nicer and 
> quieter here with only Nikos' trolling than with 10x as much 
> garbage from the local vigilantes who are more obnoxious
> than he.
But not quiet enough for some people. They hope that somehow
punishing Nikos for his behaviour, although it may make the
environment even less nice in the short term, may help to
make the environment as nice again as it was before Nikos
started his quest for spoon feeders. While reinforcing bad
bahaviour provides no hope at all for that.

-- 
Antoon Pardon