Hi Viviane, On 2014-11-22, Viviane Pons <vivianep...@gmail.com> wrote: > Simon mentioned many times that "don't feed the troll" was the right thing > to do. In my opinion, it is not quite enough. Let's say you receive a > personal attack on a thread if you leave it just there, it's not helping > you: > > * the thread was probably started on a real question that you still want to > discuss. You can start another thread but you might be afraid that the > attack just occurs again.
That's a good point. Actually I didn't think about the situation you describe. I implicitly assumed that it is the troll who wants something (e.g., wants attention). It previously did not occur to me that someone might start trolling in answer to a request. But see below. > * you leave a public attack to you unanswered on a public forum, I find it > difficult to do. Isn't that more of a problem for the attacker, and not so much for the person being attacked? After all, hitting the wrong note generally lets people assume that one is wrong and the other is right (at least it's what I taught to my sons). Therefore I provided an English translation, when someone insulted me on sage-devel and on trac in German. And besides, if you always answer a public attack, you could end up taking part in a "who gets the last word in the discussion" game. That's what "feeding the troll" means. You can't win that game. > * if you say nothing to the other person, you might give him/ her the idea > that he/she was right to do so. Tough luck for that person, don't you think? > (And also maybe future readers, speaking of > "giving the good example") Certainly not (see above, I think generally people assume that someone who hits the wrong note is wrong). In any case, when B attacks A as reaction to A's request, I think it is totally alright if A briefly states that s/he prefers to get the request answered, without a lengthy answer to B. Also it is alright if C briefly states that s/he doesn't like B's impertinence, or better that s/he asserts that A's request is totally relevant etc, and after that *brief* statement proceed to simply answer A's request. Or still better: Simply answer A's request without referring to B at all. That'd be "giving a good example"! (And sorry, it strikes me that brief answers aren't exactly my strength ;) Anyway, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to answer to B! It is *A* who has posted a genuine request. So, focus on him/her! > In my opinion, with a > list of recommendations we all agree on, we can just say publicly on the > forum. > > "Please remember recommendations (a) and (b). This is out of line, let's go > back to the original question." You can perfectly do so without referring to recommendations. And after that, focus on the actual requests in the thread. Don't allow the troll to distract you. > Of course, we can already do this somehow. But I feel the recommendation > give us some "objective" points to check. No, social rules are not objective. Best regards, Simon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
