Re: Distro Poll, what do you use?

Dan C <youmustbejoking@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think you are confusing *stupidity* with *ignorance*. Not knowing what
they're talking about is much different than being stupid. Ignorance is
corrected by a good teacher, but stupidity cannot usually be fixed.

I see what you're saying here, and I know what you mean. The point I
was getting at along these lines is that until you really get to know
someone, it's very difficult to tell the difference between ignorance
and stupidity.

Maybe someone writes:

Hey this isn't working:

$ if [true]; then echo hey; fi
bash: [true]: command not found

Ignorant or stupid? Maybe this could be cleared up quickly (ignorant),
or maybe they've already been told 79 times and just always forget (in
which case I reluctantly would admit... well, you can be the direct
one.)

Everyone catches on at a different pace, too. For instance, I have a
math minor because my degree practically required it. But I've always
been poor at math. It was a constant struggle to get Bs and Cs in those
classes because I was always one or two semesters behind in my
understanding of the subject matter. Stupid? I hate to think I could
get a math minor and still be stupid. (But I took so much Calculus!)

Or was it because I was lazy with math because I didn't like it as much
as my major (nearly all As)?

Laziness is a tricky one because if you have someone who is lazy or
doesn't care about the subject matter, they sometimes look ignorant, and
sometimes look stupid, when in fact they're just not interested enough
to learn anything.

I think there are a fair number of lazy people that post questions to
Usenet with the mistaken idea that it's the fastest way to get answers.
I like to think they can be corrected with a pointer to faster ways.

Maybe for people like that, giving them a search URL is too much; they
might react better to simply being told what to search for and where.

I don't know--I'm making this up as I go along. But I have spent well
over a decade trying to help beginners understand intimidating subject
matter, so I have a bit of experience.

serious trolls are not put off, either, but maybe some are, and that is a
good thing.

I would agree that driven-off trolls are a good thing.

The rest of this post is pure speculation.

My gut feeling here is that they a) love the catch and b) don't give a
*** about anyone else. People say that responding at all to trolls
gives them power, but I'm not convinced. I think responses that either
laugh at the troll or insult him are mostly ignored. They're like zero
loss/zero gain. It's the people who take the bait that give him power.

If a troll posted and everyone responded but just said, "get lost" and
"ha ha whatever", I would guess he wouldn't get much out of it and
probably wouldn't bother many more times.

So I don't think there's much real harm in insulting a troll; just be
really sure he really is a troll.

I'm willing to consider that I'm simply naive in my troll identification
skills, but from what I've seen, they come in two main categories:
"windows is better" and "linux is too hard".

I have a guess that one way to pull power away from a troll is to
attempt to engage them in serious dialog about their "complaint". They
don't really have a point, and if you try to engage their enthusiasm
about how Windows is better and what Linux could do to improve, they
will hopefully tire quickly. And if they weren't a troll after all,
then you'll get serious and useful discussion.

(There was a recent thing in the paper about how some bank employees
would approach suspicious characters who showed up on the premises and
shake hands with them and be extra polite to them. Robbery rates
dropped drastically. There's something there that ties in to the trolls
thing, I think, but I'm not quite sure what. I need more sleep.)


In any case, I'm glad we have found some common ground.

Cheers,
-Beej

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