From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2010-04-11T06:25:24+09:00
Subject: [PLEA] Regarding trolls, spammers, noise-makers, and such

A plea:

First, one person's troll/spammer/idiot is another's savant, but mostly 
people have a similar appreciation for when someone is just being a dick.

Second, efforts to flat-out ban or block people from ruby-talk/Ruby 
Forum/comp.lang.ruby, whatever, are either non-existent or sufficiently 
unreliable.

So, please, when you realize that someone is spamming or trolling or 
whatever negative thing, do this: Nothing.


* Do not argue
* Do not condemn
* Do not reply

It only makes things worse.

Instead, let such threads die as fast as possible.

If you still feel compelled to do something, start a new thread with an 
interesting and valuable topic to up the signal[0].


Thanks,


James Britt

[0] I'm unsure whether this post is self-consistent or not.  I'll leave 
that to the ghost of Bertrand Russell.