I believe that is the original version of the other reply from chromatic in that thread. I was very careful to not mention it (like I didn't mention any of the many other bad examples in that thread). Plenty of bad ideas in evidence over there. But thanks for spreading some small part of it around so we can experience the badness all over again.
I only picked out one example so I could show how even the best of that thread was not really that helpful (from what I could tell) and came so close to being unhelpful.
There were only two replies that struck me as fairly positive in what I scanned of that thread (which was probably most of it). I didn't remember the author of the other one and didn't feel like mucking through it again searching. When I saw that even chromatic had decided that his other reply was too ugly to stand, I double checked that I had been very specific about just the one reply.
But, yeah, even the authors who managed to post something somewhat reasonable mostly also ended up stooping rather low as well. More evidence that piling on to respond to insults just doesn't work out very well in practice in this medium / environment.
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My point is that they lead with it, they goes to -11 at first sign of disagreement, first mention of their unreasonableness
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What does chromatic deserve again?
I posted it on purpose and I deleted it on purpose and I stand by both of those purposes.
Unlike almost everything from Anonymonk, it's tied to my professional identity. Reasonable people will interpret it as something intended as satire and unreasonable people—well, there's no reasoning with them, by definition. If I'd thought for one moment that Ratazong would have taken it as a personal attack, I wouldn't have posted it.
Reasonable people may very well disagree whether it made its point well or at all, but that's a debate that bores me. I care a lot more about the silly false equivalences in that thread and this one, or about the idea that "don't feed the trolls" is a stronger guiding principle than "all that is required for incivility to stand is for civil people to say nothing".
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"all that is required for incivility to stand is for civil people to say nothing"
And yet...
If I'd thought for one moment that Ratazong would have taken it as a personal attack, I wouldn't have posted it.
Civil people saying something can be regrettably uncivil, it seems.
I am not advocating that uncivil behavior be completely ignored and not dealt with. "Speaking up" (in a text-only public forum) isn't a particularly successful strategy, even for you, even based on your own assessment. But it certainly can make one feel better about having "tried to help".
I think it quite useful to evaluate guiding principles based on whether or not they actually yield benefits and how much harm they cause. Though that might not be particularly satisfying from a philosophical or moral judgement perspective. Some might even find it "boring" to consider such things.
I guess it depends on whether one cares more about actually making things better or about stroking one's moral self image.
I haven't been talking (here, now) about the things that I think one can do to help that I find more likely to be successful. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
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I think it quite useful to evaluate guiding principles based on whether or not they actually yield benefits and how much harm they cause. Though that might not be particularly satisfying from a philosophical or moral judgement perspective.
"Help" or "harm" are difficult to measure, especially in a public community like this which allows anonymous posting as well as anonymous reading (and anonymous search indexing).
What's the right balance between not feeding the trolls—especially the very subtle ones—and challenging behaviors which one perceives to continue to drive good people away from the community?
On my own sites, I quite happily delete personal attacks and unredeemable rudeness. Here, that's not an option.
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