Troll Poll

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 4:55:43 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 08 Jan 2020 17:16:07 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com
wrote:

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 10:15:54 -0600, amdx <nojunk@knology.net> wrote:

Cursitor is the lunch lady.

I just got somehow drawn into it. Normally Bill is in my KF and only
makes rare appearances from time to time when his filter expires, but
recently I switched to a different newsreader and it took me a while
longer to find the relevant settings. Looking back on our exchanges I
can see now what I didn't see at the time and how it must have looked.
So I guess I should apologize for polluting the waters here. Sorry
all!

The most effective way to deal with him is to ignore him.

It's not the most effective way - that would be to post correct and intelligible information. Of course that is not an option open to John Larkin.

Phil Hobbs can manage it, amongst quite a few others, but they don't seem to need to post as often as John Larkin finds necessary.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:06:21 AM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

Yes!


No, in the traditional usenet meaning.

He often makes knowledgeable and perceptive posts.

It also appears his text editor has certain comments
encoded as easily invoked keystrokes that are then
macro expanded.

That's not a feature of the text editor I use, but the brain driving it.

> That detracts from his helpful posts.

Turning the other cheek is a good tactic, but you shouldn't do it all the time.

Alternatively, if he is a troll, then so are /many/
other posters on this forum.

Obviously true.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 9:16:31 AM UTC+11, Clifford Heath wrote:

On 9/1/20 4:55 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 08 Jan 2020 17:16:07 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com
wrote:

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 10:15:54 -0600, amdx <nojunk@knology.net> wrote:

Cursitor is the lunch lady.

I just got somehow drawn into it. Normally Bill is in my KF and only
makes rare appearances from time to time when his filter expires, but
recently I switched to a different newsreader and it took me a while
longer to find the relevant settings. Looking back on our exchanges I
can see now what I didn't see at the time and how it must have looked.
So I guess I should apologize for polluting the waters here. Sorry
all!

The most effective way to deal with him is to ignore him.

Instead of a kill-file, I set certain authors as "assume already read".
That way I get to see their posts only when someone responds. If it's a
bicker-thread, I can kill-subthread and not lose the main thread. I find
this works very well.

Bill does several things that make his posts especially unpleasant:

* He responds to an individual in the third person, as if they are
unworthy of his time (yet he is profligate in wasting everyone's time
with such posts, thereby demeaning by implication every reader here),

Mostly when I know that they have kill-filed me, or won't read my response (as with John Larkin).

* He frequently mentions the demerits of other individuals not yet
involved in the current thread, thereby expanding the field of battle,

Very few. They are well known horrible examples.

* He details surmised personal characteristics or background which are
entirely irrelevant to the topic or on which he has no definite
information, as if he is some kind of all-seeing oracle.

I've been posting here for twenty years, and I do have good memory. I do - in fact - have definite information, even if you haven't been able to work out where I got it.

I can handle criticism, and I can handle seeing him criticise others -
but only where it is clearly correct and relevant to the topic.

Your capacity to judge correctness and relevance to the topic might not be quite as good as you think,

> Sadly that is very rarely the case.

As far as you know.

Bill, if you're reading this, do a little review of your posting history
and exercise a little self-reflection before replying. Apply some of
your much-vaunted psycho-analysis to your own posts, and I think you'll
see I have been kind, fair and accurate. I certainly tried to.

I'm happy to believe that you are sincere. I'm also aware that you do go into for quite a bit of self-deception, and I've given you a hard time about it in the past.

If your general knowledge was up to much you'd know that psycho-analysis isn't a useful approach to psychological problems - Popper wrote it off as non-falsifiable decades ago. Approaches like cognitive therapy work better.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 4:44:31 AM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:

On Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 12:11:10 PM UTC-5, bule...@columbus.rr.com wrote:
What does it matter if he is a troll. This group has far more interesting content than any moderated forum. I ignore him 90 percent of the time but why would i want anyone here to leave? I mean you really cannot foul up the joint and the trolls here are often on topic so why even the discussion on trolls. Go find a very boring moderated forum

People don't like Bill because he is a troll.

A troll posts stuff to make people unhappy. I post stuff that makes people unhappy, but I don't do it to make them unhappy, but rather to make it clear that what they have posted is misleading

But that doesn't mean he's not right. He often has good insight and knowledge. But people don't like when he is right and they bicker with him making them even more unhappy.

The real irony is that nearly everyone who argues with him is also trolling.

Probably not true either. They mostly want to be seen as being right, and throw in rude, unkind and inaccurate arguments to make their points with all the force they can muster (negligible though it may be).

> At the top of that is JL of course along with Mr. Mike "I know what I like an YOU ain't it" Terrell. God, I guess the guy has a crappy life at this point, but really? You have to be that pissed off and sour? I know when I was gimping around I didn't take it out on people. But he does seem to have it a lot worse and has little prospect of it ever improving.

I can't say that my life currently feels all that crappy, but I'm merely living it, as opposed to posting ill-informed opinions about it based on occasional lines of text).

> Whatever. This group is what it is. Most of the crankies here are getting old. In another 5 or 10 years they will all be dead or won't be able to type anymore.

My current expectation of life as a male Australian is ten years and four months.

If you figure in features like having a university education and not smoking it's more like fifteen years. Dementia could set in before that (though I'm not in any high risk group).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-01-08 21:48, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 4:34:41 AM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-08 12:11, bulegoge@columbus.rr.com wrote:
What does it matter if he is a troll. This group has far more interesting content than any moderated forum. I ignore him 90 percent of the time but why would i want anyone here to leave? I mean you really cannot foul up the joint and the trolls here are often on topic so why even the discussion on trolls. Go find a very boring moderated forum


I for one don't want Bill to leave, I just want the Bill of 20 years ago
back again. A few years ago I had a try at persuasion, but it didn't help.

The Bill of twenty years ago took John Larkin more seriously, Tony Williams and I had one of our private e-mail conversations about him, and gave him the benefit of the doubt at the time. Twenty years have managed to erase most of that doubt (and Tony Williams too, which is sad).

Oh well, back to the KF. A pity.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

 

>Oh well, back to the KF. A pity.

Oh come on. Encourage him to go fight the brush fires. He talks like he can.. Or to prove his point about AGW which is pretty much moot he could start a few brush fires. They will let him out of jail alive if he can make the case he was trying to save the planet. Their courts are that fucked up down there, and no guns.

The no guns is the only thing keeping some people alive.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 3:02:32 PM UTC+11, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:

Oh well, back to the KF. A pity.

Oh come on. Encourage him to go fight the brush fires. He talks like he can.

I stopped playing field hockey eight years ago, when I turned 69. I don't think that any fire fighting team would want me (and I live quite a long way from any place that is actually fighting fires at the moment).

> Or to prove his point about AGW which is pretty much moot he could start a few brush fires.

There's nothing moot about the existence of anthropogenic global warming, and the relationship between the current drought in Australia and the current climate change is clear - if not particularly direct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_Dipole

There's no need to start any new bushfires. There are 130 already burning in NSW at the moment, and some of the have been burning since November. Most of them are fairly quiet right now, and "contained" but the next burst of hot and windy weather will get at least some of them moving.

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/major-fire-updates

>They will let him out of jail alive if he can make the case he was trying to save the planet. Their courts are that fucked up down there, and no guns..

The courts couldn't care less about motivation.

> The no guns is the only thing keeping some people alive.

Australia has plenty of guns, but you do have to apply for gun license to get one. It seems to be enough to minimise that number that get into the hands of the kind of nutter that might use them to shoot people - the Australian who shot fifty people in a mosque in New Zealand recently moved there because their rules were less strict and he could get his hands on the kind of gun he wanted.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Michael Terrell <terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote in
news:0b620f7c-3d2a-4fad-a062-bae52f9276e7@googlegroups.com:

I try to ignore him, but to see six or more posts in a row in his
name takes a lot of scrolling.

Oh. man! The carpal tunnel psychosomatic pussy boy!

Any lazy fuck troll post in a storm, eh.

 

"dcaster@krl.org" <dcaster@krl.org> wrote in news:f6c322df-af0e-4d81-
b2b0-70e5b26ccd79@googlegroups.com:

On Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 3:06:21 PM UTC-5, Tom Gardner
wrote:
On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

Yes!


No, in the traditional usenet meaning.

He often makes knowledgeable and perceptive posts.

It also appears his text editor has certain comments
encoded as easily invoked keystrokes that are then
macro expanded. That detracts from his helpful posts.

Alternatively, if he is a troll, then so are /many/
other posters on this forum.

+1 or maybe +2

Dan
Awesome response.

 

Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> wrote in
news:_wsRF.5724$Mj1.3149@fx39.iad:

On 9/1/20 4:55 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 08 Jan 2020 17:16:07 +0000, Cursitor Doom
cd@notformail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 10:15:54 -0600, amdx <nojunk@knology.net
wrote:

Cursitor is the lunch lady.

I just got somehow drawn into it. Normally Bill is in my KF and
only makes rare appearances from time to time when his filter
expires, but recently I switched to a different newsreader and
it took me a while longer to find the relevant settings. Looking
back on our exchanges I can see now what I didn't see at the
time and how it must have looked. So I guess I should apologize
for polluting the waters here. Sorry all!

The most effective way to deal with him is to ignore him.

Instead of a kill-file, I set certain authors as "assume already
read". That way I get to see their posts only when someone
responds. If it's a bicker-thread, I can kill-subthread and not
lose the main thread. I find this works very well.

Bill does several things that make his posts especially
unpleasant:

* He responds to an individual in the third person, as if they are
unworthy of his time (yet he is profligate in wasting everyone's
time with such posts, thereby demeaning by implication every
reader here),

* He frequently mentions the demerits of other individuals not yet
involved in the current thread, thereby expanding the field of
battle,

* He details surmised personal characteristics or background which
are entirely irrelevant to the topic or on which he has no
definite information, as if he is some kind of all-seeing oracle.

I can handle criticism, and I can handle seeing him criticise
others - but only where it is clearly correct and relevant to the
topic.

Sadly that is very rarely the case.

Bill, if you're reading this, do a little review of your posting
history and exercise a little self-reflection before replying.
Apply some of your much-vaunted psycho-analysis to your own posts,
and I think you'll see I have been kind, fair and accurate. I
certainly tried to.

Clifford Heath.

I wish I was able to put forth analyses like this. The things
rattle around in my head, but I do not possess the composure to be
nice to such persons. Perhaps a little self reflection is in order
for all of us.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/01/20 03:12, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:06:21 AM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

Yes!


No, in the traditional usenet meaning.

He often makes knowledgeable and perceptive posts.

It also appears his text editor has certain comments
encoded as easily invoked keystrokes that are then
macro expanded.

That's not a feature of the text editor I use, but the brain driving it.

"appears"

When making 2001:ASO, Arthur C Clarke quipped he thought
Hollywood publicity departments had a key on their
typewriter that printed "never before in the history of
motion pictures"

That detracts from his helpful posts.

Turning the other cheek is a good tactic, but you shouldn't do it all the time.

True, but there is a balance - particularly when a
cheek hasn't been struck in the previous post.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:47:06 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 09/01/20 03:12, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:06:21 AM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

<snip>

True, but there is a balance - particularly when a
cheek hasn't been struck in the previous post.

You do have to own the cheek to have a reliable idea of whether it has been struck, and how.

Some people are persistently irritating, but I don't keep a list of past offenses. I do have a good memory, and call recall them when prompted, though I'd much prefer not to be prompted.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 9:55:43 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> The most effective way to deal with him is to ignore him.

Turning a blind eye is, by definition, ineffective.
It might be most satisfying, or most expeditious, or most amenable to your sleep requirements,
but it's not most effective.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/01/20 09:35, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:47:06 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 09/01/20 03:12, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:06:21 AM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

snip

True, but there is a balance - particularly when a cheek hasn't been struck
in the previous post.

You do have to own the cheek to have a reliable idea of whether it has been
struck, and how.

Some people are persistently irritating, but I don't keep a list of past
offenses. I do have a good memory, and call recall them when prompted, though
I'd much prefer not to be prompted.

Fair comments, but sometimes the immune system can
develop a hair trigger. In such cases immuno-suppressants
can improve the quality of life.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 9:37:10 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 09/01/20 09:35, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:47:06 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 09/01/20 03:12, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:06:21 AM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

snip

True, but there is a balance - particularly when a cheek hasn't been struck
in the previous post.

You do have to own the cheek to have a reliable idea of whether it has been
struck, and how.

Some people are persistently irritating, but I don't keep a list of past
offenses. I do have a good memory, and call recall them when prompted, though
I'd much prefer not to be prompted.


Fair comments, but sometimes the immune system can
develop a hair trigger. In such cases immuno-suppressants
can improve the quality of life.

But they do render you more vulnerable to infections.

John Larkin ignores comments he doesn't like. Quite a few of them deal with his susceptibility to climate change denial propaganda.

He still seems to believe that climate change isn't happening and that it would not be a problem if it were happening.

He can be seen as having made himself susceptible to an evil meme ...

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in news:1903a2ad-91bd-4f07-
a2bc-d5bec44d3b64@googlegroups.com:

But they do render you more vulnerable to infections.

Too late. The thing you ARE infected with CONTINUES to linger and
AFFECT you and others. You just cannot stop!

You are so goddamned lazy that you have ignore folks telling you
about how stupid it is to access via goggle as well, yet you keep
posting strings hundreds of characters in length, because you are too
stupid to care why or understand the forum in which you are at that
point, decidedly an interloper.

The most fucked up thing about you is that you simply do not care
about the forum you are in, much less those in it with you.

 

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 02:11:05 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 9:55:43 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

The most effective way to deal with him is to ignore him.

Turning a blind eye is, by definition, ineffective.

By definition?

It might be most satisfying, or most expeditious, or most amenable to your sleep requirements,
but it's not most effective.

Of course it's effective. 95% of Sloman's posts are droning insults
and pointless extended flame wars. If everyone ignores him, he'll have
no reason to post. He might even have to buy an oscilloscope and post
something on-topic.

Sleep requirements? If they had an Olympic Award for sleeping, I'd get
the Gold. I do sometimes take a short break around 3AM to have ideas,
as other people apparently do, but that's fine too.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.

"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 20:06:16 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

Yes!


No, in the traditional usenet meaning.

He often makes knowledgeable and perceptive posts.

It also appears his text editor has certain comments
encoded as easily invoked keystrokes that are then
macro expanded. That detracts from his helpful posts.

Alternatively, if he is a troll, then so are /many/
other posters on this forum.

Posting on-topic is not trolling. And even a lamish post often
diverges in interesting directions.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.

"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 10:37:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/01/20 09:35, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:47:06 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 09/01/20 03:12, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 7:06:21 AM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

snip

True, but there is a balance - particularly when a cheek hasn't been struck
in the previous post.

You do have to own the cheek to have a reliable idea of whether it has been
struck, and how.

Some people are persistently irritating, but I don't keep a list of past
offenses. I do have a good memory, and call recall them when prompted, though
I'd much prefer not to be prompted.


Fair comments, but sometimes the immune system can
develop a hair trigger. In such cases immuno-suppressants
can improve the quality of life.

This is an electronics discussion group, not Facebook or Twitter.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.

"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/01/20 15:50, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 20:06:16 +0000, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk
wrote:

On 08/01/20 15:34, Michael Terrell wrote:
Is Bill Sloman a troll? Answer Yes or No.

Yes!


No, in the traditional usenet meaning.

He often makes knowledgeable and perceptive posts.

It also appears his text editor has certain comments encoded as easily
invoked keystrokes that are then macro expanded. That detracts from his
helpful posts.

Alternatively, if he is a troll, then so are /many/ other posters on this
forum.

Posting on-topic is not trolling.

It can be, according to the normal usenet concept
of trolling:

"Trolling – (verb), as it relates to internet, is
the deliberate act of making random unsolicited and/or
controversial comments on various internet forums with
the intent to provoke an emotional knee jerk reaction
from unsuspecting readers to engage in a fight or argument"
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trolling

That happens a *lot* here


> And even a lamish post often diverges in interesting directions.

Indeed.

Hence comments like this:
"This is an electronics discussion group, not Facebook or Twitter."
could be regarded as low-grade trolling, and traditionally
elicit pithy responses including words like "internet police".