Kindness

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2018 19:52:45 +0100, Rhodri James wrote:

> Honestly, I don't know why anybody bothers responding to him.  Boredom,
> I suppose.

I respond to Bart because I recognise he does bring a perspective and 
experience to the community which many of us lack.

That makes his troll-like behaviour all the more obnoxious. As far as I 
can tell, he's not just a troll stirring up trouble for the LOLs, he's 
just oblivious to the annoyance factor of having him constantly smacking 
us on the nose with a rolled up newspaper (figuratively speaking) for 
making trade-offs in our programming language of choice that he doesn't 
approve of.

Over the many months, I've tried defending Bart, engaging with him, 
patiently explaining that his choices and our choices are not always the 
same and that there's no objective "right" and "wrong" between them, 
making subtle hints, and less subtle hints that he's being a dick.

It's not helped by do-gooders who by their own admission have no idea of 
the context sticking their nose in to tell off those who chastise Bart. 
Not even Mark Lawrence is in the habit of accusing people of being trolls 
with no provocation. (I think Mark is mistaken, in this case, but I 
understand his sentiments.)



-- 
Steven D'Aprano
"Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing
it everywhere." -- Jon Ronson