On Sunday, 21 August 2016 at 15:05:11 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
On Sunday, 21 August 2016 at 12:51:16 UTC, Lodovico Giaretta
wrote:
Your offensive tone, your attitude to pointing at a single
person as the source of the problems, your improper use of
low-level stereotypes and non-technical pointless
argumentation are definitely out of place.
He's a semi-regular troll. Pops out from under the bridge once
in a while to wave his arms and shout a bit, then goes away if
no one feeds him. Just pretend he doesn't exist.
Yep basically trolls feed of your negative emotions and enjoy
your anger. There's a nice video that explains this:
The Science of Internet Trolls:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zxy_dScjsM
I think the biggest problem is that this forum is anonymous, so a
troll is sure that there are no risk nor consequences of his
behavior. There's an old NY Times article that digs a bit into
this topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30zhuo.html?_r=0
It goes like this:
Content providers, social networking platforms and community
sites must also do their part by rethinking the systems they
have in place for user commentary so as to discourage — or
disallow — anonymity.
...
Some may argue that denying Internet users the ability to post
anonymously is a breach of their privacy and freedom of
expression. But until the age of the Internet, anonymity was a
rare thing. When someone spoke in public, his audience would
naturally be able to see who was talking.
Others point out that there’s no way to truly rid the Internet
of anonymity. After all, names and e-mail addresses can be
faked. And in any case many commenters write things that are
rude or inflammatory under their real names.
But raising barriers to posting bad comments is still a smart
first step. Well-designed commenting systems should also aim to
highlight thoughtful and valuable opinions while letting
trollish ones sink into oblivion.
If you want to dive further into this topic I recommend the
Wikipedia article about trolls which features a nice "Please do
not feed the trolls" sign:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
Last but not least there's a fun video about them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg
(personal advice: imagine a troll to look like the one starred in
this video)
