Suggestion: link to be added to the rules

[Troy Martin]

A whole essay on identifying and eliminating trolls. Quite nifty! It's mostly Wikipedia-related, but it applies to forums and newsgroups as well.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_is_a_troll%3F

[stephenj]

The problem is that a lot of the worst offenders lack the capacity to identify themselves as trolls. They identify people saying negative things (regardless of truth), as trolls. Then, because they feel slighted, decide to "punish the trolls" by reducing the forum's signal to noise ratio.

If anything, I think the required reading should be amended to state that forum members tend to be honest, and that such honesty is not always pleasant. The best programmers I know tend to be toughest when evaluating their own work. This is what pushes them to improve as programmers.

As I've said before, I have yet to figure out how to state such things to beginning programmers.

[Troy Martin]

No offense to Combuster, but he's proof that honesty can't always be nice and kind.

[stephenj]

Honesty isn't intrinsically nice or kind.

I once tutored a friend for a CS course. And I was a terrible tutor, because I was too nice. I helped them far more than I should have, and they came to depend on me. And we were both fooled into thinking progress was being made, when it really wasn't.

If I could do it all over again, I'd make sure they took their medicine, no matter how distasteful it was.

[Combuster]

No offense to Combuster, but he's proof that honesty can't always be nice and kind.

No offence taken. I can't possibly be kind to everybody - I don't have the time for that. And I bet on it that neither can anybody else here.
The rules also have something to say on that:

Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give offense. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.

And while I could add a link about trolling to the rules, it has no effect since trolls are by definition not interested in following them.

[Troy Martin]

Ah, but this link could help established members defeat trolls! We just need some trollbait... I have a few (read: ten or twenty) pounds of ground beef and burgers in my freezer, will that help?