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. [...]
on 8/28/07 2:09 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
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.
Stan,
No matter what the medium, how large or how small the group, any interpersonal communication requires a degree of self-control. Know your vulnerable spots. If someone is pushing them, and you don't like what it is doing to you - move on. You have that choice (unless you're a prisoner somewhere). But know, if you push back, you have now escalated, and become part of, the problem.
A great part of the cancer I refer to is the attitude of some persons in the Community who not only condone, but actually encourage, the type of personal attack statements that began this conversation. And, the practice of some of calling names and labeling people they disagree with, rather than either engaging them in the subject or moving on.
Both of the above behaviors are ones we are supposed to have left behind on the playground.
The Project may be very large, but it is also very young. And its ultimate survival is going to depend on the ability of its people to communicate with one another effectively.
Also, the double standard that has come to light as a result of this incident is a subject for a whole other thread.
Marc