On 8/29/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
[...] The fact that anyone would even try to
rationalize and/or
justify saying to another person, "Go away, you trolling fuckwit" is
symptomatic of the cancer that exists in the culture. [...]
This is just SO not
true. Marc, as I believe you've said yourself in the
past, you're not especially experienced with large collaborative online
projects. Trolls and other disrupters will keep poking and poking and
poking and poking and poking and poking and poking until even the most
patient of saints lose their cool - by definition, that is the goal. It
doesn't mean there is a cancer in the project, or that it's doomed, or
whatever, it just means that everybody has a breaking point. Of the
various online projects I've worked in the past 25 years, WP is by far
the most tolerant of troublemakers; on serious projects like GNU or
Linux, people won't even talk to you until you've proven yourself useful
somehow, and if you even slightly irritate one of the project owners,
you might as well as give up and move on to something else.
Absolutely. I think many of us are approaching this situation from different
angles, with different points of reference. Please bear in mind that this is
a mailing list, not a wiki, and that our standards here are different
because of this.
Also, folks, please try to reread the conversation that took place prior to
David's comment. I would not have reacted the way David did, but what he did
was hardly unjustified, and I think, not inappropriate.
Johnleemk