[TriLUG] trolling. Was: e2fsck under cron gets retcode=8 operational error

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:50:39 -0400, Jack Hill said:
> On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:10:47 -0400
> Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> 
> > I like long threads when they're informative, but from my viewpoint
> > this thread is a troll. A very courteous troll, but a troll just the
> > same.
> 
> I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between a troll and a
> flame, 

I see a flame as just nasty-talk: "YOU'RE AN IGNORANT DAM FOOL WHO
CAN'T PROGRAM YOUR WAY OUT OF A PAPER BAG." That's a flame.

I see a troll as an invitation to step up the emotional level. A post
the poster does with a gleam in his eye, knowing he's making mischief:
"I think it's pretty clear that Vim is better than Emacs". That's a
troll. Or even more to the point, stating on a Linux list that "This
goes for much of Linux. The output of many unix tools is not machine
readable. You should design the output of tools as if they're always
going to be read by a machine.". The poster is just inviting someone to
get in his face and start a conflagration.

There was absolutely no flamage in this thread. Everyone was civil. The
harshest words were stated by me (after holding back for a good, long
time; 20 posts or more). But the second the original poster started
dissing core utilities, that was a troll.

> but I read this “Group as User: Flaming and the Design of
> Social Software” [0] recently. Your post reminded me of it and I
> thought that the group might find it interesting. (I am not proposing
> the TriLUG change it’s discussion fora; I just found that piece
> interesting. 
> 
> Jack
> 
> [0] http://shirky.com/writings/group_user.html

I saw little in this particular web page that could have given this
thread a timely death. I already stated why just procmailing the guy to
/dev/null wouldn't work. The "get a room" option sounds wonderful in a
flame war between two people, but that's nothing like what was
happening here. Jailing the most prolific poster would be
counterproductive for two reasons:

1) The most prolific poster might be putting in very good information.
You wouldn't even begin to think of jailing Thomas Dickey on the
ncurses list.

2) In statistics, you need to come up with an upper control limit and a
lower control limit to see whether somebody is truly an outlier, or
just varying with the noise.

One thing that might work is to have ontopic ratings for posters, and a
cultural custom that you don't reply to those highly rated as noise
producers. In which case, of course, this very post would greatly
reduce my rating :-)


> Also, I don’t mind a good flame.)

I didn't either, til I saw a flame war destroy a LUG:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/netiquette.htm

But, as mentioned several times, this thread contained no flames, and
in fact I've never seen a flame problem on TriLUG's list.

Thanks

SteveT

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