[fpc-other] I thought it was going to get better, but no

[Steve Litt]

Nikolay Nikolov via fpc-other said on Sat, 29 Apr 2023 09:40:03 +0300

>On 4/29/23 09:02, Steve Litt via fpc-other wrote:

>1.5) In 2020, Freenode's #fpc channel was being ruined by a troll, who 
>was flooding the channel with crap, offtopic links and misinformation 
>about Pascal and would hijack and steer every real Pascal discussion
>to absurd topics, like, for example, whether the moon landings were
>faked. It's not like offtopic discussion was banned, but he was
>disrupting any regular and meaningful talk. It was horrible, I have
>described it several times as a burning trash can. The FPC moderators
>at the time didn't do anything, even though Joanna complained on the
>forums:

It's true. There are people who deliberately sow discord. They ruin
formerly good communication venues, and they should be immediately
kicked out of the venue. I once saw a flame war tear apart a wonderful
Linux group: It was horrible.

You have my word that on #fpc-alt and ##fpc-alt, I'll remove anyone who
is just trying to start trouble for trouble's sake. I didn't put that in
the topic yet, but when it becomes necessary, I will, and I'll also
give the troublemaker a warning before banning him or her if the
deliberate troublemaking continues.

I've done this before, on a mailing list I controlled. It's amazing how
few people you have to ban to have a civilized and productive venue. I
banned three people, two of whom never knew they were banned. In the 19
year history of the GoLUG (Greater Orlando Linux User Group) I probably
had to issue about 10 warnings, and once I put every single person
under moderation to stop a rapidly developing flame war. It never
happened again.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm