On Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:26:15 +0100, <lukasz@langa.pl> wrote:
What can we do? Apart from the obligatory joke of nudging him gently towards Ruby, I think calling his behavior out is a good idea. Cory Doctorow also thinks that "many trolls are perfectly nice in real life -- sometimes, just calling them on the phone and confronting them with the human being at the other end of their attacks is enough to sober them up" [3]. If that fails, banning him would show that we care about the quality of communication and technical prowess is no excuse for abusive behavior.
As Brett pointed out, calling him on his behavior seems to meet with pretty much zero success as far as modifying his future behavior goes. The problem with banning him in general is that that has its own consequences (and as Brett pointed out, how exactly do we do that?). Banning him for specific actions (such as editing the Guidelines) seems sensible. We basically booted him off the infrastructure mailing list (I don't remember if it was a formal ban or not) when he was being off-topic and annoying there.
All in all, is anyone of the opinion that losing him as a community member is worse than keeping him around?
If losing him was the only consequence this would be pretty much a no-brainer. However, it is likely the consequences of a general ban would be more widespread than that (negative publicity, etc).
--David