At 05:06 AM 12/29/2012, Horace Heffner wrote:
On Dec 28, 2012, at 1:55 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
These are positions that require integrity and some level of skill,
but mostly the former.
My two cents worth:
The integrity required is the self control to not respond to trolls.
The positions are that of moderator and owner. Moderators and owners
have different reponsibilities from list members, and one of the
duties of a moderator is to *act* with respect to trolls. For a
moderator to engage a troll in debate is a Bad Idea. Rather, a
moderator will do one of several things: warn the troll, on or
off-list, put the troll on moderation, or ban the troll. If others
complain about an alleged troll, a responsible moderator will accept
or reject the complaints, not just ignore them.
This list apparently has an owner/moderator whe is absent for
extended periods, and who has then, seeing a problem, acted without
warning. I don't think that is best practice, but *it's his list.*
I suggest that the blame for ridiculously long OT troll induced
threads lies not as much with the initiator as with those who respond
to the troll. If there is banning to be done the respondents should
be banned also.
This is a common opinion among kibbitzers. "Just ignore it." I
remember such opinions about spam. "What's the harm, just delete it!"
It's naive. There is harm from trolling. Trolls become expert at
angering and enraging. People who do not care to engage with trolls
may well use killfiles, or just ignore messages. But that does
nothing to stop the trolling, and sometimes a troll will continue
even if nobody responds, and, sooner or later, someone bites. Someone
new thinks there is a real question or issue to be addressed.
The list archive is public and googleable. A user may have no
intention and not care what people on the list think, and may be
playing to Google. Lists *do* lose members because of trolls. Blaming
those who respond is short-sighted.
It really is up to the list moderator, and, supposedly, this is a
moderated list. If responding to a troll is considered the problem,
the moderator can warn. Though it would be a bit weird. "Trollface
can post, but you may not respond."
Think it through, Horace.
Who is the bigger fool, a troll, or someone who argues with the troll?
Neither one is necessarily a fool. Horace, your thinking *sucks.*
Trolls have a purpose (or it wouldn't be "trolling"). If the troll
gets people upset, whether they are upset directly or from others
responding, *that's the purpose.*
[...] Also, I feel compelled to note the content of vortex has gone down
hill since a bunch of fake email names have showed up. This is a
weak shield for a coward to hide behind, but still it encourages
behavior unbecoming a scientific list. There are many services that
will provide reverse lookup information for email addresses, so it is
ultimately an ineffective ruse. Sometimes merely googleing an email
address will yield the identity. For example, google
([email protected]) quickly yields:
http://www.voiceie.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi? ubb=print_topic;f=1;t=000124
http://tinyurl.com/cre6cfd
which may or may not correctly identify Jojo Jaro as Joseph Hao in
Atlanta.
[...]
In any case it seems to me the response to a troll should be to not
respond, the response to frauds the opposite, to expose every flaw,
and warn off victims.
Wait! Is Jojo a troll or a fraud? If he's a troll, you just violated
your own "should." If he's a fraud -- and he does promote fraudulent
memes -- your suggestion does require response.
To bullies the response should be to do what
you want and ignore the bully. The response to truly disruptive and
egregious or unlawful behavior should be to use the tools provided by
ISPs. The response to bad behavior under fake identities is perhaps
to expose the identity - which has worked well here in the past to
eliminate nonsense from a guy from down under if I recall. 8^)
Is it a fake identity?
Jojo responded to this mail.
As for Joseph Hao, he is a good friend. We used to work together
on some free energy projects most notably on some HHO and Veg Oil/
Biodiesel projects and we were co-workers for a while. We went to
graduate school together in San Diego State (MS Computer Science) a
long time ago. This was a common email we used on all our free
energy projects correspondence. He was the one who first subscribed
this account to Vortex-L I have been exclusively using this email
since I left the country. Yes, he is in Atlanta and he is in fact
a CCIE RS and is studying for his CCIE Voice.
The story is not fully consistent with the record. Look at it on the
face: jthao is Joseph Hao, yes. Jthao would be
internet-sophisticated, as would Jojo. So they would share a hotmail
account? Why? Surely they would realize the risks!
Now, given that they are sharing, they are *really good friends*,
Jojo has decided to "tell the truth" about a bunch of vicious
killers, in his mind. Plus, of course, the Illuminati who are vastly
powerful. So he uses his friend's name and hotmail account to do it.
I hope I don't have any "friends" like this, who would hide under my
name to provoke and taunt people believed to be vicious killers.
Has he told his "friend"? Does Joseph Hao even know about this? If he
does, and he consents, *he is reponsible for it.*
There is a lot of information that comes up with the search Horace
suggested. I'd actually done this many months ago, and all that I
could see of relevance is that the Jojo and jthao writings elsewhere
seemed to normally be more high-functioning than what we see here.
But Jojo's writings here also vary in quality. Sometimes his spelling
is atrocious, sometimes accurate.
The jthao account shows up as indicating a residence in the
Phillipines, in some posts. That could be consistent with what Jojo
says, that he "left the country." It could be consistent with the
name. That makes his obsession with American politics all the more
strange, but, in a way, more understandable. It could explain why he
couldn't deal with the issue of what an Executive Order is, and he
might actually think that the American President can just order
everyone around. Non-Americans think that, sometimes. Reading with
*full understanding* might be difficult for him.
Anyone sufficiently libelled by him could file an action in a court
with jurisdiction over Microsoft, and penetrate the veil of secrecy
involved in using a hotmail account. I'm not about to do this,
because I'm already putting more time into this than it's worth.
There are headers with his mail that identify, for Microsoft, the
mail origin, i.e., the actual ISP that he uses to access the
internet. That, through the ISP, if they cooperate (and many will),
identifies the computer he used to access. Unless he uses some very
sophisticated tricks, that will identify where he is (and the tricks
would be visible to someone who knows mail protocols, but they would
further conceal his location). It can become quite a game of cat and
mouse, and it's not worth playing except as a hobby or for those with
serious interests at stake, such as governmental interests with wikileaks.
Jojo says that Joseph Hao subscribed here. That may be true, but the
first post here was vintage Jojo, the style is unmistakeable. Sun, 22
Jan 2012 22:11:08 +0800.
On the other hand, we have a message on this list from Joseph Hao
<[email protected]>. Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2012 00:21:42 +0800. The style
is distinct from Jojo's. Other responses in the same thread purport
to be from Jojo Jaro <[email protected]>, but look to me like the same style.
This does look like a shared account. When Joseph Hao wanted to
pesonally write the list, starting a thread, he changed the user name
to Joseph Hao, and signed his post. Jojo, presumably, changed it
back. The same account was obviously used elsewhere. When Joseph
responded again, he did not change the user name again.
Certainly not good practice, and we can, here, see why. Sometimes
your friends will abuse the connection. If the account were something
like [email protected], it could make sense. But one with
his personal name in it?
Googling "Joseph Hao [email protected]" comes up with a Joseph Hao
with that email address purporting to be located in the Philippines. Undated.
Joseph Hao appears to have lived in Atlanta in 2004, that's the
information Jojo refers to. Without spending much more time, I can't
disentangle this. It would seem to be unlikely, however, that Hao is
still "studying for his CCIE Voice" more than eight years later.
