Self-defence

[Antoine Pitrou]

Zero Piraeus <z <at> etiol.net> writes:
> 
> I don't believe that killfiles are a sufficient response in this
> situation.
> 
> I can, of course, stop Nikos' posts reaching me, and without too much
> hassle also stop replies to his posts reaching me. He would, however,
> continue to pollute the list in public, and his posts, whether replied
> to or not at the volume he's now sending them, would continue to damage
> the reputation of the list and, ultimately, I think possibly kill it.

As an occasional reader (and even more occasional poster), I agree with
this. As far as I'm concerned, if I were the list owner and if it were 
easy to ban him, I would already have banned him for a long time. I 
believe it is not desirable to let poisonous posters do their thing,
even if "they might improve". The time spent trying to improve a troll
is time not spent caring about and helping other, more benevolent posters, 
which makes it really harmful to the community (not only pointless) trying
to improve a troll.

As for the "but banning him would impede free expression" argument,
I'd say that people who want a "perfectly free" discussion space can
always open their own. We'll see how well it fares in practice, but
I'm not holding my hopes very high :-)

Regards

Antoine.