Re: Sergeant at arms: please deal with [e-mail]

[Jorge Amodio <[e-mail]>]

Feed the trolls and they will keep growing, ignore them and they will dry and die

-Jorge

On Oct 25, 2013, at 9:40 PM, "John Levine" <[e-mail]> wrote:

>>> the chilling effect of vigilateism is far worse than spam or trolls. ...
> 
>> I could not agree more. By condoning such measures people are damaging the
>> diversity they are supposedly trying to support.
> 
> I could not disagree more.  The spam and trolling create an unpleasant
> environment that drives people away.  Anyone who's run mailing lists
> for a while has seen this pattern over and over, in which a tiny group
> (sometimes just one) of obnoxious subscribers ruins a list and most of
> the useful members leave.  The ones who remain are thick skinned or
> socially oblivious, and are disproportionately middle aged North
> American white guys who acted like this when they were undergrads.  We
> are all big boys and girls here.  It should be entirely within our
> abilities to be reasonably polite and relevant in our correspondence.
> 
> In this particular case, the execution was clumsy, but the action was
> entirely appropriate.  We saw messages that were utterly irrelevant,
> from an address that had never sent anything else, in a style that
> strongly suggested it was a sock for a chronic troublemaker.  Why
> should we put up with that kind of nonsense?
> 
> I also have to laugh at "vigilanteism."  There is no government
> process that vigilantes are circumventing; the sergeant at arms
> kicking people off the list IS the process.
> 
> A useful kind of vigilanteism is private messages to people
> encouraging them not to engage with trolls, or to back off when
> they're getting too abrasive.  I have received both, and I appreciate
> that people have taken the effort to give me a nudge.
> 
> R's,
> John