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Let’s Chat About: Civility

Or lack thereof

I find myself reacting more to those who are less then pleasant when they leave their feedback.

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19 comments on “Let’s Chat About: Civility”

  1. Don’t feed the trolls!

    There are some sick twisted people, or adolescents that have a lot of time on their hands and feed off of reactions. Even one of my (mostly) respected friends is a known troll who has boasted that he loves getting a reaction.

    Safest bet IMO is to ignore the trolls. – I love the MLK quote: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” — Martin Luther King

    Keep up the good work.

    Reply
    • Ignoring trolls is often the better thing.
      In the case of trolls on a public forum, when we answer a troll’s comment, we are not answering the troll, we are pointing out the troll’s ignorance to others reading the article.

      To paraphrase King Solomon,
      “Answer not a troll according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a troll according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

      Reply
  2. I appreciate your viewpoint and your absolute right to respond to hostile responses from sociopathic individuals. Hang in there!

    Reply
  3. I stumbled across your blog sometime in 2005 – and I’ve been a devoted follower ever since. I don’t always agree with what you say, and you sometimes tend to repeat yourself (“SAVE YOUR WORK ! !”), but I always find your work interesting and worthwhile to read. Keep up your good work, Leo. We need more people like you out there promoting progress and positivity.

    Reply
  4. Hi Leo, I love your articles and I must admit I occasionally ‘borrow ‘ a subject for my computer classes for the technologically challenged. I find myself equally short of patience with people that think they have to leave their mark on everything they see, click the reply button – and then think: they’re not worth my time and move on. One of the reasons why I have abandoned FB and other social media sites, I rather go to specific sites (like yours). Thanks for your work and don’t let the b******rds get you down!

    Reply
  5. I very much appreciate all your insight in the tech field. I am not a techie and find it very useful. The people that appreciate you far out number the trolls. This I know for sure

    Reply
  6. I would like to civilly point out an error in the article that even my spellcheck didn’t catch.

    “I’ve heard it said that it takes something like 12 positive comments to outweigh the phycological impact of 1 negative comment.”

    Unless negative comments impact algae, I believe it was a typo.
    Phycological – adjective – Of or pertaining to the scientific study of algae. Windows Key

    I normally don’t usually tell Leo when I fix a typo, but this one was too good to pass up.

    Reply
    • I’m a writer and editor, so I get this, it’s almost a certainty… just above it you missed ‘to things to ask of you’! 🙂

      But what I really wanted to say is that I agree with the whole article, thank you for expressing the frustration so many of us share with you, and ‘hear hear’ for the last sentence!

      Reply
    • I’m a writer and editor, so I get this, it’s almost a certainty… just above it you missed ‘to things to ask of you’! 🙂

      But what I really wanted to say is that I agree with the whole article, thank you for expressing the frustration so many of us share with you, and ‘hear hear’ for that last sentence!

      Reply
  7. When I worked in retail, I heard similar: If a customer has a good experience, they’ll tell someone. If a customer has a bad experience, they tell 12 people. Negative comments go further faster than positive comments.

    Reply
  8. Leo, I agree about the lack of civility. I’m sorry you have to deal with those low lifes. But I know I speak for many when I say that I really appreciate your work and I have learned a lot from you over the 10+ years I have been a subscriber. You absolutely have the right to speak up and call out the jerks. Keep up the good work. Many of us really appreciate it.

    Reply
  9. Leo,

    I agree with you. You do have the right, and possibly an obligation to respond to the trolls that post on your site. I tend to use the term “Miscreant” to describe individuals of objectionable character. Among those who fit into that description are writers/distributors of malware, distributors of spam, and of course trolls. When it comes to this later group (trolls) the more abusive they become, the more polite/patient I get. For the most part, these ‘people’ do what they do to make themselves feel more powerful/bigger. It seems that they haven’t yet learned that if they put as much effort into raising up the people around them as they currently do to degrade them, they would find that the raising up of others raises them up too, ultimately making them bigger than they ever realized was possible in a far more permanent manner.

    In reality, I’ve come to feel sorry for those pitiable miscreants. After all, how miserable must it be to have to carry around all that hatred all the time. What a heavy burden it must be. But, then again, I suppose you get what you give, be it for the good, or for the ill …

    Ernie

    Reply
  10. Aw gee, Leo! I’m sorry. You provide a very valuable service to me and I am sure to many others. Too bad you have to endure these as***les. I have saved a lot of your advice for if/when I encounter a problem. And I have followed a lot of your advice. And I have looked on your site for more advice when needed. Don’t let them get to you! I don’t know how many years I have been following/reading/subscribing to you, but many. I am old now, and started my first professional programming job in 1975. When I retired in 2012 I worried because my job (JPL) had 24/7 helpdesk and I was going to be without it. But you have helped fill that gap, so thanks, thanks, and more thanks. The jerk commenters are probably jealous of your knowledge and capabilities. But most of us are grateful.

    Reply
  11. Howdy,
    Regarding Trolls. I think one of the biggest obstacles around them is that many(I dare say most) of them don’t understand that they are trolls. I have been interested in psychology most of my life and have come to understand a few things about humans. Beware of people (like me possibly?) who think they know better because they think and say they are smart. Often a good description of a troll. There is an understanding out there that the smarter you really are, the less you know you know. and the smarter you/think and say you are, the less you know what you don’t know. And there is little(no) telling those people that they don’t know because they truly believe they do know.
    I hope you can make sense of the above.
    This understanding supports the idea of just ignoring trolls as they don’t understand and there is no making (most of) them understand.

    There is my two cents and I hope you get a pennies worth out of it.

    Reply

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