This is an unusual case. If we still had downvote activated, the early argumentative comments by Flinter would have been banished to oblivion, and this would essentially have been a non-event.
After reading this comment I decided to take a break from interacting with Flinter, and then resumed communicating with them with a firm resolution in mind to treat them in good faith even if I harbored doubts. I suppose I view it as a kind of challenge, like a Rubik’s cube, to try to crack through to actually communicate with such a person. I still think there’s about a 33% chance that I was right in my original assessment, that they’re just here for the lulz. I never liked the downvote, in fact I was vocal about wanting to get rid of it, but I do wish there was some mechanism for constraining the impact someone like this can have on the forum.
Do we have the same definition of a troll? Just wondering because the term seems to have drifted and I wonder where I stand. One sided flaming is what I would call it, because the person is hostile and insulting, resulting from emotional discussion. IMO Trolling requires the deliberate intent to provoke, as if that was his whole reason to post here. It’s more likely that this person is dead serious, but socially inept (too strong?)
This person has written volumes of stuff in various places for years, seems unlikely that he’s just messing with people for amusement. More likely that he is a true believer, just really bad at communication. I’d say Lumifer is lightly trolling (somewhat acceptably) because he is egging this person on, knowing full well that this person will make a spectacle of themselves.
I would have just gone with the term “crackpot” which I think has sufficiently clear meaning and points to exactly the right thing. They don’t seem to be at all interested in actually convincing or communicating; they were much more interesting in establishing how persecuted they were.
Now Flinter has deleted a large number of posts, but if he hadn’t, you would be able to see that they gleefully continued all discussions that were combative but stopped responding on discussion threads where his points were being directly and dispassionately challenged. I see that as evidence that they were some flavor of ne’er-do-well, if not a typical “for the lulz” troll.
Oh, not a vanilla troll, this was a prophet, bringing glorious and eternal truth to the unwashed masses. As befits a true prophet, he was laughed at and cast out by hoi polloi. Surely this proves the great significance of his message.
This person is new, I know we deal with troll behaviour a bit around here, and I’d prefer if you were more delicate with throwing out such opinions.
This is an unusual case. If we still had downvote activated, the early argumentative comments by Flinter would have been banished to oblivion, and this would essentially have been a non-event.
After reading this comment I decided to take a break from interacting with Flinter, and then resumed communicating with them with a firm resolution in mind to treat them in good faith even if I harbored doubts. I suppose I view it as a kind of challenge, like a Rubik’s cube, to try to crack through to actually communicate with such a person. I still think there’s about a 33% chance that I was right in my original assessment, that they’re just here for the lulz. I never liked the downvote, in fact I was vocal about wanting to get rid of it, but I do wish there was some mechanism for constraining the impact someone like this can have on the forum.
Do we have the same definition of a troll? Just wondering because the term seems to have drifted and I wonder where I stand. One sided flaming is what I would call it, because the person is hostile and insulting, resulting from emotional discussion. IMO Trolling requires the deliberate intent to provoke, as if that was his whole reason to post here. It’s more likely that this person is dead serious, but socially inept (too strong?)
This person has written volumes of stuff in various places for years, seems unlikely that he’s just messing with people for amusement. More likely that he is a true believer, just really bad at communication. I’d say Lumifer is lightly trolling (somewhat acceptably) because he is egging this person on, knowing full well that this person will make a spectacle of themselves.
I would have just gone with the term “crackpot” which I think has sufficiently clear meaning and points to exactly the right thing. They don’t seem to be at all interested in actually convincing or communicating; they were much more interesting in establishing how persecuted they were.
Now Flinter has deleted a large number of posts, but if he hadn’t, you would be able to see that they gleefully continued all discussions that were combative but stopped responding on discussion threads where his points were being directly and dispassionately challenged. I see that as evidence that they were some flavor of ne’er-do-well, if not a typical “for the lulz” troll.
Oh, not a vanilla troll, this was a prophet, bringing glorious and eternal truth to the unwashed masses. As befits a true prophet, he was laughed at and cast out by hoi polloi. Surely this proves the great significance of his message.