Re: Dealing with trolling
MJR:
I am not taking the "pretending" flame-bait this time. There
is no reason to doubt my sincerity. Argue I'm misguided if
you want, but don't resort to public attacks on me.
I could see some reasons, but I'm happy to skip these and consider that
both of us were misguided since you seem to agree on changing your approach.
Personal messages can be spotted by addressing many statements to
"you" (not as a stand-in for "one"). That often indicates it's
not a list discussion message, but a direct reply to someone,
which would /usually/ be better sent off-list. It's nothing to
do with determining how many people a poster represents.
Thanks for clarifying, but I was discussing this because I thought your
message implied that your first reply was not personal, which you deny
later.
I sent a personal message in public at one point in the thread
because it looked like off-list communication was already
impossible, from reports of Yahoo closing email accounts, and
I didn't want to waste time rewriting it. Maybe I should have,
as the stupid replies on-list have taken more time.
I'm glad that you mention this and realize your approach was not
necessarily appropriate.
Recently, I have learnt of lists which require all messages to be
addressed to the moderator or "Sir," which is a crude attempt to
emulate newspaper letters pages, but it mostly stops people
kicking the man instead of the ball.
I had to Google the meaning of "fooing the man instead of the ball". If
there are still other readers at this point, this seems to mean "to
focus on the person doing something rather than on something". If I got
that right and understand well that you are suggesting to impose a form
for replies on Debian MLs, this is no reason to make this awful thread
longer. If you're serious, please start a new thread.
Best wishes,
Best wishes too
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