Re^2: Blocking users

[Old_Gray_Bear]

First off -- Thank You!!!!

Every group needs a 'Coventry' to send the bad-actors to, so they can act up all they want and not annoy the Adults. It is good to have this tool available.

Secondly, I am of mixed emotions about blocking Logicus/Simon completely. I understand the reasoning that made you create this tool, but.

The three days ago, for the first time in my years in the monastery, I /ignore'd someone in the CB. After a reading couple of Logicus's early nodes and responses to the comments, I put Him on the mental "skip this twit" list and haven't bothered reading anything else He authored. I skip Him in the responses as well, unless reading a non-Logicus comment make me go 'What DID he say?!'

If We just 'Ignore the Troll Under the Blanket', Logicus will either get bored and take his marbles and go elsewhere; or he may grow out of this phase and become a productive member of Our Community.

And, if we totally suppress Him, we expose ourselves to a potentially very bad problem.

The Old Timers will (most of them, anyway) will have invoked Coventry against Logicus; thus the New Comers, not knowing about Coventry, will get the full 'benefit' of Logicus -- with out any counter balancing commentary from the likes of Corion or MidLifeXis and others.

If the first thing an Initiate sees is Logicus' drivel unanswered by a reasonable voice, we will lose the Good Ones and re-enforce bad behavior on the Ones who stay. We can't afford to let His drivel go unanswered. We only get once chance to make a good first impression.

We are something not unlike a debating society here, asking questions and challenging answers, to reach the Truth (version 6.1, release on Whitsunday, up coming). For this to work, we do have to put up with the occasional Fool; they eventually figure things out. (I do wish WasserKratz were still around. though. I'd pay good money to watch the two of them mix it up....)

Complete masking Logicus is so tempting, but also something that I'd have to think long and hard about. People like that will feel 'marginalized' or 'discriminated against' and the drop of a semi-colon. People like that get noisy in public. People like that go 'postal'. (Although, from personal experience, working in a mail center is a lot less mind-numbing boring than working on an industrial assembly line.)

Right now, we know what he is saying and writing about the Monastery, about Perl, about the World in General. If we completely Coventry him, we won't know what He said until way after the damage is done. I think we want our Problem Children to be publicly visible so we can correct any impression that "the Perl Monks Monastery is composed of Whack-Jobs like that Logicus bloke."

Invisible people are dangerous people.