Re: Question on killing and resurrecting co-aligned unicorns

Philipp Lucas wrote:
> Doug Freyburger wrote:
>
> > Posting a plonk does have some use. It is possible that
> > someone doesn't know they are breaking the rules and
> > that the only form of enforcement available on UseNet
> > is social pressure. An ignorant person could be a
> > troll by accident, learn what plonk means, come to an
> > understanding of what their own actions were that
> > triggered it, and decide to reform. I've seen that
> > happen, too.
>
> An ignorant person who reads and understands the reactions of other
> posters will change his behaviour or leave the group.

Ignorance is lack of knowledge and it is curable by
absorbing knowledge. Both changing behavior and
leaving the group count as absorbing knowledge in
my book. My clueless newbie days are old enough they
have not survived into the Google archives but I did
have them on UseNet. I've also written off at least
one forum as having been taken over by trolls and
left (mailing list rather than newsgroup).

> If repeated advice
> does not change his attitude, chances are that he is not actually
> interested in communication, and plonking, public or not, will not change
> this.

Stupidity is refusal to absorb knowledge. Some
newbies discover that there are rules and are so
pissed off they leave rather than learn them. Some
are trolls with no interest in the rules. As more
and more folks plonk trolls they stop drawing responses,
lose interest and leave. There's even the occasional
obsessive who keeps coming back year after year after
year and a fair number of newsgroups have gone
moderated because of a single obsessive.

> Your experience seems to be an exception.

I've seen clueless newbies learn, including myself.
That's common as very many current regulars passed
through such a phase.

I've seen web forums put temporary bans on a poster,
have the poster come back, go through a couple of
cycles, and have the poster reform and end up a
valued contributor. This may not be common but even
one such example over the years is enough.

> Also, publically ploking someone just because one disagrees with an
> opinion, is not only lame, but also leads to tiring discussions.

I'm not clear on why chuck was plonked. I have not
killfiled chuck so I didn't look closely into the
way. Different folks have different tolerances and
mine is so high that I moved to google groups which
does not even have killfiles.

chuck,

Reloading your OS should not change your account. It
looks like you forgot to write down the details of it.
Next reload, write down the exact spelling.

.

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