Don't feed the troll...

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

On 06/17/2013 02:15 AM, Antoon Pardon wrote:
> 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. 

Sure I can.  If you have a photodetector that activates a 
bright light when it detects a flash, you can blame the first
flash for the fact that the bright light is on all the time.
Or you can say that stray flashes are to be expected now 
and then in the environment of this system and the fault 
is responding to them with a bright light.

>> 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.

As I said (and you disagree with below), I did see some
attempts to adapt his behavior but it is not realistic to
expect immediate acquiescence to every request made here, 
especially given that a lot of them were/are bullshit.

>> 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.

See my reply to ChrisA.  
My personal feeling is that he tends to ask on the list too 
quickly, but I suspect he also does more than you're giving
him credit for.  He seems to be naive (eg the password event), 
open and honest so when he says he has been trying to fix 
something for hours I am prone to believe him.  I think his
approach to fixing is to try making changes more or less at
random, in part because he doesn't understand the docs (or
doesn't look at them because they haven't made sense to him 
in the past) and in part because he hasn't developed any 
skill in debugging (a skill that I think most everyone here 
takes for granted but which doesn't come naturally to some 
people) and which also accounts for the poor formulation of
his questions.

I'm not willing to go though twelve gazillion previous posts
to try and find examples of improved behavior so I'll leave
it as my personal impression and that you disagree.

>> 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.

Unfortunately it is not a symmetrical situation.
Nikos responds only in his own threads and is more killable
that many of the eggers who both more numerous and respond 
in many other threads that are of interest.

But then I seldom killfile people (always have found it 
trivially easy just to skip over annoying threads) so maybe
I need to explore killfile options more.

>> 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.

Unfortunately if Nikos is a troll as you say, the "punishment" 
is positive reinforcement, not negative.  And if I am reading 
Nikos right, he seems to be a "fuck you" type person: "if 
you're an asshole to me I'll be an asshole right back", so
again, "punishment" is going to be counter productive. [*1]

Now if you could hire some Sicilian mafia gangster to
visit Nikos in person that *might* be more effective but
three decades of internet experience shows that flaming 
trolls is counter productive. [*2]

----
[*1] I know the obvious response is that he is being an
 asshole prior to any responses but my point is that flames
 produce more bad behavior from him, not less.

[*2] "Experienced participants in online forums know that the
 most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore
 it, because responding tends to encourage trolls to continue
 disruptive posts – hence the often-seen warning: 'Please do
 not feed the trolls'".
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29#Usage)