Bruso:

nornen:

Bruso:

Bemused:Someone goes to a site about fishing and asks questions or engages in discussion, they will be welcomed as a person with an interest in fishing.

Not if they repeatedly insist that lobbing fragmentation grenades into a trout stream is a legitimate form of fishing. Or that fish include persons kayaking in the stream and are thus a legitimate catch.

Is throwing frag grenades at kayaking people really comparable to introducing a new morpheme?

I used the word "or", not "and".

And, yes, it was a deliberately extreme example. My point was that a newbie who wanted to rewrite the formal or informal rules of fishing would not get a welcome reception. Maybe a real fisherman can come up with some more realistic examples of what that might constitute.

I am not a fisherman, but I go fishing on weekends, and I am also active in a fishing forum. Fishing with explosives isn't actually far fetched (the frag grenades part was).

Back to topic: Even in the case that someone advocates explosive fishing with frag grenades or to declare kayaking people as fish, the reaction shouldn't be actually flaming or bashing the new user. Or telling him to leave the forum.

One could point out to him the dangers (and for that sake the security procedures) of fishing with explosives, and which explosives are generally used (well, no frag grenades) and why and how.
If he is stubborn, most likely he will simply be ignored in the future.
If he starts trolling, hopefully people won't feed him.

On the other hand, if the community starts flaming and bashing a new user (even a stubborn one), the community proved their lack of maturity.
If the community starts flaming and bashing a troll, well, then they are just feeding the troll and the troll won, because the others took his bait (hook, line and sinker).

I think that this thread and the thread which started it, are simply the result of lack of courtesy and mutual respect, stubbornness on both sides and people who have rented the truth. We have now in the original thread a nice collection of fallacies. We started to insult one another. We proved Godwin's Law to be true. We made fools of ourselves.

A possible way to avoid this might be to (a) think first, type later, and (b) if you are about to say something insulting of lacking respect, don't say it. Think it, and don't let yourself get baited and drawn down to a level where you actually don't want to be.

Quidquid agis prudenter agas et respice finem.
Whatever you do, do it wisely and look at the end (result, consequences).

How exactly does one go about getting the readers of a forum to stop replying to a troll?

It's like trying to stop a "reply all" situation in the office. Simply asking people to stop replying all to the reply all doesn't work, and asking people to stop responding to a troll also doesn't work.

erinja:How exactly does one go about getting the readers of a forum to stop replying to a troll?

Maybe some sort of FAQ explaining the official lernu response to reformers (especially newbie reformers)? When such proposals are made, just reply linking to the FAQ and leave it at that.

I participate in a forum that discusses Irish Traditional Music(ITM) and that has worked well with posters not yet aware that "Celtic Music" isn't the same as ITM.

erinja:[...] I think Esperanto forums are even nicer to some of these pro-reform beginners, than such a beginner could realistically expect if they showed up in a Microsoft forum and started asking for Microsoft to be more like Apple.

About the computer science part:

I am quite an active user on stackoverflow both on the Q&A site as in chat (python). All programming languages are constructed, new ones are derived from existing ones, and there always zillions of reform proposals for existing languages. So I think this part is the most comparable to lernu.

Often new users just post their homework assignment and "Gimme the code KBYETHX". The general reaction is either "Welcome to stackoverflow. This is not a site for requesting programming work free of charge. Please try to solve it yourself, and once you find a specific item on which you are stuck, come back and post this specific question.". The harshest comments one will find are "We are not your homework service." or "Read a tutorial." (normally linking the tutorial). Most of these question aren't answered.

There are also common proposals (even stubborn ones) for reforms. Just replace "-iĉ-", "-at-/-it-" and "root classes" with "GIL", "TSO" and "strong typing". Now on SO python chat (and chat rooms are more prone to flaming as forums are, due to the short response times), users inquiring about these things, are generally shown a link to some site explaining why a certain aspect is the way it is. Or they are told "go ahead, implement it". Or (mostly when they are considered stubborn) are silently ignored.

In some two years of being on SO, I have never seen a new user being bashed or flamed. Maybe I was just lucky. I have never experienced that members of the python chat, insulted one another or told one another to leave. (I have seen that after an annoying user had left, the rest started to talk about how annoying he was).

So, what happened here isn't something that must inevitably happen in internet communities. Other communities (larger by several powers of ten, and hence with more stubborn users) show a more mature behaviour and are not as easily dragged down to the "you are a troll - you are a moron" level.

I am an occasional visitor and still very much a beginner but even I can see the depressing frequency of reform proposals on the English forum.

Reform proposals should be kept to the Esperanto forums, perhaps with a sticky on the forum, that way anyone who ventures an opinion will at least have learned some of the language first. This should not be a problem if it is enforced in a kindly and diplomatic manner.

1Guy1:I am an occasional visitor and still very much a beginner but even I can see the depressing frequency of reform proposals on the English forum.

Reform proposals should be kept to the Esperanto forums, perhaps with a sticky on the forum, that way anyone who ventures an opinion will at least have learned some of the language first. This should not be a problem if it is enforced in a kindly and diplomatic manner.

+1

i like your passion op. maybe we could insert the unchangeable character of the fundamento in the faq section and make it more visible. when i started to learn the language i too thought "we could change this, we cuold change that", so i'm 100% culprit of it. if the new learners are into esperanto enough they'll probably come to the conclusion that the language is already done.

I have had / been involved with / experience regarding numerous constructed international auxiliary languages (conIALs) over many years. Yes, there were times long ago when I held to the "Big Three" objections to Esperanto, but that was before I had more familiarity with the language. I now realize that those "Big Three" objections are actually relatively trivial and are not enough to be seriously considered.

My observation has been that many newcomers have some vague familiarity with this or that conIAL, but they have never really mastered any of them. Without any real world experience, they think that they know better, even better than the genuine users who have actual real experience, whether with Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido, or whatever it may be. I say fie!!! on those people. Learn and use a language in the real world. Then maybe I will pay attention to your criticisms. If you are not willing to do that, you are not worth our attention.

Beginners wanting to change Esperanto is something that has been around since the very beginning. I've seen texts from ... 1908, if I remember the date, making reference to this.

I experimented with "na" and "far" as a beginner. I thought "the language evolves, so there's no problem with using these new forms, it's just the language evolving"

I stopped using those words then I was fluent enough to realize that these innovations aren't really necessary, that almost no fluent speaker uses them, because a proper name with no accusative is still understood due to word order, and that "de" works fine for giving the author of a work.

1Guy1:I am an occasional visitor and still very much a beginner but even I can see the depressing frequency of reform proposals on the English forum.

Reform proposals should be kept to the Esperanto forums, perhaps with a sticky on the forum, that way anyone who ventures an opinion will at least have learned some of the language first. This should not be a problem if it is enforced in a kindly and diplomatic manner.

I like this idea.