On Sun, 7 Jun 2009, Mark S Bilk wrote: > I should have stood up for Grok, because his comments (at least the ones > I read) were accurate,
His online behavior attracted complaints. Obviously his politics are not the issue. Perhaps you didn't read enough of his messages? > Bill, please reinstate Grok under the sole condition that he post > non-scientific messages only to the B list. He's still on B, no problem there. Or should that be /B/ ? :) VortexB is the barroom where it's OK to start heated religious arguments, while using insults to pick fights, while jumping up and down in front of authority figures with your pants pulled down. However, politics and religion are extremely unwise for any forum except those created specifically for those topics. It's another unwritten rule of all online communities everywhere. Same as "don't post personal insults," or "don't ignore complaints from neighbors." Many forums ban politics totally. > As to requiring him to reveal his identity, as Harry says, that's unfair > unless it's demanded of everyone. And arbitrary. Don't forget arbitrary. :) When someone misbehaves, AND ignores all the complaints from neighbors, AND the people start calling the police ...for that someone, the old rules no longer apply. This goes for everyone here, but you knew that. > As for apologizing... that's too close to the way the Catholic Church > treated Galileo, demanding that he recant. The church had it exactly right, but only for small churches rather than continent-wide monopolies. "If you want admission back into this small community, you must bow and scrape to the angry members you've offended and display your throat to the Alpha and apologize for the trouble while sincerely promising everyone that you'll avoid causing harm in the future." When normal community members mess up, they admit it, and they usually apologize automatically. It keeps these kinds of problems from growing wildly. Some people don't know how to damp out the growth of community conflict. Or they place zero value on their community membership, prefer to remain invasive outsiders, and they could care less if neighbors turn against them. A definition of "troll" could be: "lacks all those human skills which causes teamwork to spontaneously arise." Or more like: "if he behaved that way in the real offline world, he would have got himself beaten to death years ago." (((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
