The following is my opinion only, this is not an official FAQ.
. COLA is unmoderated, therefore it is not possible to censor it
Claims of censorship in an unmoderated group are just puerile and
blatantly false. There's only three situations where a poster may
be censured (although not necessarily censored):
1. Those who post in violation of their USENET / Internet Service
Provider's AUP or the COLA charter, may be subsequently LARTed
by anyone who takes offence. LARTs may, or may not result in a
successful remedy.
2. Those who break the law (e.g. by stalking, threats, revealing
others' personal information) may face criminal prosecution.
3. Some spam may be subject to CANCEL messages sent automatically
or manually by USENET administrators. Ordinary users typically
do not have the facility to cancel /others'/ messages, beyond
making an appeal to such administrators.
With the exception of the above, no one in COLA has the power to
censor another's messages. The best anyone can do to avoid seeing
anything they find offensive, is to filter messages /they/ read.
This does not affect /others'/ ability to read messages.
. The Trolls' sabotage of COLA is like spam and should be ignored
I personally advocate ignoring the Trolls. However, this is only
my opinion. Nobody in COLA, or anywhere else, is forced to follow
my recommendations.
The Trolls' posts are not advocacy ... of Linux or anything else.
They are designed to sabotage this group, for reasons that may or
may not be connected with Microsoft's official propaganda against
anything that threatens their monopoly. I suspect it is.
Therefore any unqualified attack on Linux is very likely a Troll,
and as such should be ignored. This includes personal attacks by
Trolls on Linux advocates.
. Moderation may be censorship, but merely ignoring Trolls is not
If I ignore someone's unqualified rant or ad hominem attack, that
does not magically revoke their ability to speak, and be heard by
/others/, who may (perhaps ill-advisedly) choose to listen. Those
with a reputation for such posts are rightly denounced as Trolls,
and should be ignored.
. Advocating ignoring the Trolls is not censorship, it's prudence
Equally, by advising others to ignore Trolls I am not encouraging
censorship. The Trolls may still speak, but few may listen. That
is an individual choice and an individual right. No one should be
forced to listen to others' propaganda, especially when it may be
officially sponsored, to serve the purposes of one of the world's
most reprehensible companies. I consider it my moral duty to give
such advice, in the /hope/ that others may heed it.
. By ignoring the Trolls it defeats their agenda and they give up
This is only true if the Trolls are universally ignored. If there
is even /one/ advocate imprudent enough to continue feeding these
attackers then the attacks will continue. I advocate ignoring the
Trolls in the /hope/ that it will eventually drive the Trolls out
of COLA. At the very least it will subdue their attacks, and make
COLA a more pleasant experience for everyone. Certainly it'll be
a more pleasant experience for those who killfile the Trolls, and
subsequently also for those who no longer have to see the replies
made to those Trolls by other advocates.
. By including Troll activity in metrics it justifies their cause
It would be entirely inconsistent for me to advocate ignoring the
Trolls on the one hand, but subsequently include the metrics from
their attacks, in the COLA stats, on the other. Additionally, it
would be self-defeating, since the lies and propaganda that I and
others endeavour to ignore, would be repeated by me in the stats,
essentially turning them into a Microsoft "evangelism" machine.
In this unmoderated group, anyone is free to post; read or ignore
any message they like, including a stats message, if that is what
they want to do. As much as I'm sure there are those who want the
stats to be littered with Microsoft propaganda, equally there are
many who do /not/, myself included. For as long as there are such
people, I will continue providing stats that reflect their needs.
. Merely having an alternate viewpoint, does not make one a Troll
To be clear, I do not regard posters to be Trolls based purely on
their alternative views. If that were true then I'd probably have
to declare every poster in COLA to be a Troll. For example, Peter
Köhlmann and I have radically different views on GPLv3, but that
doesn't make him a Troll. Equally, Jim Richardson has a radically
opposing stance to my own, on social issues and the environment,
but I do not regard him as a Troll either. Spike and Chrisv seem
to intensely dislike my lack of pragmatism, and I'm frustrated by
their lack of idealism, but that doesn't exactly make them Trolls
either. I even recall a heated discussion between myself and Mark
Kent (with whom I generally agree most of the time) regarding the
corruption of the BBC, back when Microsoft's corrupting influence
on the Beeb was still relatively unknown. Clearly, just having an
alternative view does not make one a Troll.
Being a Windows user is not sufficient to warrant denouncement as
a Troll either. There are at /least/ three posters in COLA (Matt,
jim@home and Tom Shelton) who are primarily Windows users but are
not Trolls IMHO, since they exhibit very few of the usual traits.
Their arguments are usually well balanced and they rarely descend
into personal attacks. They may still have some reasons to favour
Microsoft software, but it seems doubtful that they're shills, or
have any kind of ulterior motives.
This is in total contrast to certain other posters such as Lopez;
Hadron; DFS; or the frenetic nymshifters flatty and Scott (Nudds)
Douglas, whose typical "argument" is unqualified mud-slinging and
personal insults. These people are unquestionably Trolls, and are
amongst the most vile individuals I have ever had the displeasure
of encountering. Not only should they be ignored, but they should
be /institutionalised/ IMO.
Then there are Trolls like Erik and his protégé Smith, who may at
first glance may seem reasonable posters, but it rapidly becomes
clear they are highly manipulative and deceitful. The only reason
I tolerated reading their posts, was because they usually refrain
from indulging in baseless arguments and personal attacks, but it
is obvious they have an anti-Linux agenda and their arguments are
Straw Men at best, and blatantly false at worst. They are not the
archetypal mud-slingers that most Trolls are, and obviously don't
suffer from the intellectual handicap endemic amongst most of our
Trolls, but they are nonetheless malevolent individuals who would
best be ignored.
. COLA is supposed to harbour Trolls to keep other groups "clean"
That is neither part of the charter, nor my expectation. It seems
to have /become/ the de facto situation however, although if that
is true then it doesn't seem to be working, since at least one NG
that I'm aware of (Ubuntu) has become the victim of Troll attacks
from Hadron (and possibly others). Then of course there are Troll
attacks on social networking sites and Blogs, many perpetrated by
exactly the same Trolls who attack COLA. Obviously COLA's role as
a zoo for Microsoft's collection of dangerous animals is failing,
if indeed that was ever supposed to be one of its purposes.
The fact is that these Trolls do not belong in COLA. In fact they
don't belong /anywhere/ other than a mental asylum or prison. And
if you think that's an extremist opinion, then consider the legal
ramifications of a Microsoft employee being exposed as a shill.
These Trolls should not be tolerated - any more than the criminal
organisation that (probably) employs them. Both Microsoft and its
army of shills should be shut down. Permanently.
Call that censorship? I call it justice.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
22:23:09 up 58 days, 19:59, 5 users, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.00
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