Don't feed the troll...

[Antoon Pardon]

Op 17-06-13 19:56, rurpy at yahoo.com schreef:
> 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.
But that doesn't make sense. Your photodetector working as
it does, is just as expected as the happening of stray
flashes. There is no reason to differentiate between these
two in terms of being expected or not.
 

> 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 don't care whether it is realistic or not. If he can't conform
his behaviour in a reasonable way, he doesn't belong here. It
is not realistic to expect someone who is just learing to swim
to survive a jump in the deep. So we expect those people not
to jump in the deep. We don't tolerate them jumping in the deep
on the expectation that others will pull them out. That is
wat Nikos keeps doing here, jumping in the deep. And a lot of
people feel it is time we let him (metaphorically drown). 


>>> 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.
Your reply doesn't address his unwillingness to read the
documentation which was IMO rather apparant.

> 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 don't care. In the end he is still jumping in the deep
expecting others to drag him out. I don't care how much
he does. Just as I don't care how much energy someone has
put into learning to swim. If your skills are not adequate
you don't jump into the deep.


> 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 don't care whether he has trouble developping debuging skills
or not. Just as I don't care if someone has trouble learning
to swim or not. If it is reasonable to expect those skill in
a specific environment, you are just rude if you enter without
those skill and expect others to get you out of the troubles
you probably will fall victim to.

>> 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.
Can you explain how these people can egg Nikos on in threads
in which he doesn't participate? I also don't find your
assymmetry of much relevance. It is just happens how
history played out. There is no priciple difference. In both
cases we have people being annoyed by the behaviour of others.
I you want to advise others should somehow ignore the behaviour
they find annoying, you should expect to be given the same
advise.


>> 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]
It is all the same to me. I don't care much about what the most
adequate term would be for his kind of behaviour. And of course
he is too narcistic too realise he started with the asshole
behaviour. And in my opinion he will continue to be an asshole
as long as people continue to drag him out of the deep each time
he behaves like an asshole and jumps in without the necessary
skills.

-- 
Antoon Pardon