27th
Trolls Are People Too - Just Try Not To Feed Them
Today I woke up to be greeted by an email from Rob
K.. He had come across a blog post that was - mildly put -
critical of the Eclipse Communication Framework, a project I have been
involved with ever since the summer of 2006.
Since there is nothing wrong with criticism per se, pretty much to the
contrary, especially if it turns out to be of the constructive kind, I
dared to have a closer look.
My inspection revealed that the author had fiddled around with an
outdated ECF installation and - lo and behold - was criticizing the
current release.
As if that would not have been enough, the post seemed to be a
retaliation to a reply I gave to a similarly unhappy comment of a
buddy of his on my
real/serious blog from the
day before.
I thought about either deleting the
comments on my blog or - for a split second - flame back. But, as
we have all been taught by our communal grandfathers on those cozy
evenings around the campfire, flaming back just fuels the Greater
Internet Dickwad Theory, and none of us want that now, do we?
So I decided to offer
some general help, not without pointing out the comment author’s
wrongdoing though.
And now guess what happened, it turns out that what initially
represented itself as your run of the mill internet troll, is in fact
a
decent individual after all.
What does this teach us now?
Well, don’t go
Bush on anyone if there is still the slightest chance for
diplomacy ;)
