No, it's "never reason with idiots". Trolling them is fine, and improves your karma. Need a karma boost? Find an idiot to troll. Instant up-mods. I've been stuck at Excellent for years:-)
Of course, I may be trolling you, and you might end up in karma hell. There are two ways to find out...
Rule 1 - "hide your identity". . Really? Did you see Ben Bernanke hide HIS identity? Or George W. Bush? Or Dick Cheney? The most successful trolls hide in plain sight.
Rule 2 - "go to one of the more popular portals like AOL"... AOL?!?
Rule 3 - "Contribute nothing of value to the discussion forum. As a good troll, your goal is to abuse the members psychologically and provoke negative reactions out of them". That is so last century. A really good troll cites evidence, backs up their arguments to the hilt with facts, facts, and more facts, etc. And the motivations can be very varied - including sometimes the hope that the lightbulb will finally go on for the other side...
Rule 4 - "Make personal attacks repeatedly toward those who support the ethos of the group. Get as nasty as you want, after all, it's the internet--who's going to find you?" - Really unsophisticated. Better to wait until they've demonstrated that they're idiots, THEN point it out with the evidence they provide.
Rule 5 - "Argue repeatedly, using irrelevant facts, so that you disrupt the flow of the thread." Wrong. Argue repeatedly, using RELEVANT facts. For example, when Florian Mueller attempts to lie, point out the facts about his anti-F/LOSS, pro-patent stance. Over and over. A good troll can smell the blood in the water.
Rule 6 - "Expose the stupidity of new, unsuspecting members by trying to engage them in an argument when it is very well-known that you yourself do not believe your position." That's again just more amateur hour. Much better to go after the wannabe trolls.
Rule 7 - "Plague that newsgroup for years." Usenet is dead, gramps. The ONLY time to go to most of usenet is to troll.
I'm sorry, but that list was, if anything, worse than the article. We have a few wanna-be trolls here that use several of those tactics. It's kind of like someone bringing a couple of coolers to a kegger. They really don't know how to get into the spirit of things:-)
Genuine trolls, OTOH, have disruption as their goal, and they will choose both their wording and the position they express to that end, rather than any desire for a sincere conversation
That's a rather over-broad assumption. You might decide, for example, that the most effective way to demolish the other side's argument, and cut through all the misleading crap they're spouting, is to troll them.
Attempting to reason with idiots on their level never works - they just drag you down to their level, then beat you with their greater experience at being stupid.
Besides, sometimes we NEED disruption, to help shake us out of our complacency, or re-examine our underlying assumptions.
I get them banned from forums then get their ISP to terminate their account. I'm not here to make an adult out of them. In fact they serve a useful purpose in getting government control of the internet.
First, contrary to TFA, this has zero to do with cognitive behavioral therapy.
Second, it won't work with an experienced troll. Either don't feed them, or feed them a brick to the face. But if they're that experienced, both approaches will fail.
Third, recognize that there are "white hat" and "black hat" trolls.
Fourth, one person's troll or flamebait is another person's insightful.
Fifth, take it for what it is - whether it's the use of rhetoric as a debating artifice, a way to expose stupid arguments for what they are (because it's easier to troll an idiot than it is to educate them), or just another form of entertainment.
Sixth, people who go nuts over YHBT YFI HAND are the real trollbait.
You're absolutely right to say that the teacher shouldn't be lumped in with the "everyone failed" crowd. I also don't believe the school principal failed. The parents of the kids, on the other hand...
And you're ignoring the last part - But conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason--whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior -- materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech - which is much more unrestricted. There is specifically NO restriction on the place.
Student goes out to the mall, pulls a Columbine, they have every right to bar him while he's awaiting trial despite the fact that he was not on school grounds, because the place the behavior occurred is, by law, irrelevant.
Replace Facebook with washroom stall and think about what you just said. Do you really take what you read on the washroom stall as the truth? If the kids had went to the police or filed some kind of official statement that was false, then their expulsion would be understandable.
Did they write it in a washroom stall? No.
Stop trying to minimize what they did. Expelling the three of them would have been the minimum I would expect.
The courts have already decided that facebook posts - even deleted ones - aren't private. If you don't want it public, don't post it on a social network. ESPECIALLY don't post it on facebook.
[W]e cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site.
Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, videos, Marketplace listings or other items , this information may become publicly available.
But who says the Supreme Court is always right, how can you presume their word is never changed? That ruling is 42 years old, back before the internet, computing, existed as we know it today, before the issue was revisited in a more relevant scope.
Until someone brings it up again before the Supremes, it is the *ahem* supreme law of the land.
Additionally, the "internet" doesn't have anything to do with it - it would have been the same if they had posted it on handbills and pasted them around town.
No, the Supreme Court backs up schools taking action independent of any police activity.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), when the Supreme Court decided that "conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason - whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior - materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech."
This is with respect to the schools right and duty to act in loco parentis - in the place of the parents. What they did certainly invaded the rights of the teacher, etc. It also threatened to turn the school environment toxic for all the students.
So, when you write:
If I were the parent of any of these children, I'd *already* be lining up a lawyer to sink his talons into every vermin involved... the teachers, the principal, their various supervisors, the school district as a whole... everyone. They all need to be brought down over this.
... you're totally, TOTALLY, in the wrong. And you'd deserve to have to waste money on a lawyer to explain to you that you're acting like a jerk. These kids should all have been expelled, and the parents given a restraining order keeping them from coming within 1,000 feet of the school, or any public comment.
Reread what the Supreme Court had to say - ALL student conduct, whether in class or out of it, falls under the schools' is unprotected under those circumstances.
What did you expect them to say - "No, we won't - we'll cede that market to our competitors, because our customers prefer products with crappy battery life"?
So please post your real name, address, and other contact info, along with a way to verify that it is really you, so we can put your theory to the test.
How does the school district even have jurisdiction in this case?
Was the offending facebook post made from a school computer? During school hours?
It might be libel, but unless the school actually has jurisdiction this suspension and expulsion is a load of crap.
They have jurisdiction because the Supreme Court says they do:
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), when the Supreme Court decided that "conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason - whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior - materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech."
The case in question was whether the school could ban the wearing of armbands demanding the end of the Vietnam war. The Supremes held that the armbands were not disruptive, and a legitimate form of expressing an opinion. Posting lies about someone being a pedophile and rapist would meet the standards of material dirruption and invasion of the rights of others. So the schools definitely are acting within the legal framework.
The parents need to go back in time and learn effective birth control so we don't get yet another generation of the clueless.
the children deserve consequences and you are right that their allegations were quite dangerous. Unless the postings happened at school (and even that issue is questionable) the principal had no authority to make the student open her facebook page in front of him. Best case, this should have been a legal issue between the children and teacher in the form of a lawsuit.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), when the Supreme Court decided that "conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason - whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior - materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech."
There's no "freedom of speech" issue, and no "right to privacy" in such a case.
you're right but I'm not sure this is the right way to deal with it.
Imagine: you're a 12 year old asshole with parents that don't properly care for you and you're presented with the following choice
A) Admit your accusations were lies and everyone is pissed off at you and your parents punish you and you get expelled.
B) keep lying your lie and you get sympathy, "free" days off school, everyone makes a big deal of you, you get 15 minutes of fame, and your hated teacher goes away.
Green plays a 28-year old slacker/cartoonist named Gordon "Gord" Brody, who is pursuing his ambition to obtain a contract for a TV show. After being told that his ideas are stupid and make no sense, he decides to move back home and rethink his future. When Gord's father (Rip Torn) questions Gord's life goals, Gord has his father arrested on falsified charges of sexual molestation, destroying his parents' relationship and his family's reputation in the process.
State constitutions cannot remove rights granted to individuals by the US constitution. We have Supreme Court rulings on this matter going back 100 years.
Then maybe you should read the Supreme Court ruling (1968)
The Court held that in order for school officials to justify censoring speech, they "must be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint," allowing schools to forbid conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.
Wearing an armband calling for the end of the Vietnam war was held to be legitimate free speech - falsely calling someone a pedophile and a rapist isn't, and the Supremes have already ruled that the school has the right to act.
The school had the responsibility to check. Or are you going to say that if the school is aware of a kid being, say, beaten at home, they should just turn a blind eye, because the beatings didn't happen in school?
The school serves in loco parentis, and as such, has more responsibilities, and also more ability to act, than uninvolved bystanders.
Slashdot Mirror
Never argue with idiots
No, it's "never reason with idiots". Trolling them is fine, and improves your karma. Need a karma boost? Find an idiot to troll. Instant up-mods. I've been stuck at Excellent for years :-)
Of course, I may be trolling you, and you might end up in karma hell. There are two ways to find out ...
Rule 1 - "hide your identity". . Really? Did you see Ben Bernanke hide HIS identity? Or George W. Bush? Or Dick Cheney? The most successful trolls hide in plain sight.
Rule 2 - "go to one of the more popular portals like AOL" ... AOL?!?
Rule 3 - "Contribute nothing of value to the discussion forum. As a good troll, your goal is to abuse the members psychologically and provoke negative reactions out of them". That is so last century. A really good troll cites evidence, backs up their arguments to the hilt with facts, facts, and more facts, etc. And the motivations can be very varied - including sometimes the hope that the lightbulb will finally go on for the other side ...
Rule 4 - "Make personal attacks repeatedly toward those who support the ethos of the group. Get as nasty as you want, after all, it's the internet--who's going to find you?" - Really unsophisticated. Better to wait until they've demonstrated that they're idiots, THEN point it out with the evidence they provide.
Rule 5 - "Argue repeatedly, using irrelevant facts, so that you disrupt the flow of the thread." Wrong. Argue repeatedly, using RELEVANT facts. For example, when Florian Mueller attempts to lie, point out the facts about his anti-F/LOSS, pro-patent stance. Over and over. A good troll can smell the blood in the water.
Rule 6 - "Expose the stupidity of new, unsuspecting members by trying to engage them in an argument when it is very well-known that you yourself do not believe your position." That's again just more amateur hour. Much better to go after the wannabe trolls.
Rule 7 - "Plague that newsgroup for years." Usenet is dead, gramps. The ONLY time to go to most of usenet is to troll.
I'm sorry, but that list was, if anything, worse than the article. We have a few wanna-be trolls here that use several of those tactics. It's kind of like someone bringing a couple of coolers to a kegger. They really don't know how to get into the spirit of things :-)
Genuine trolls, OTOH, have disruption as their goal, and they will choose both their wording and the position they express to that end, rather than any desire for a sincere conversation
That's a rather over-broad assumption. You might decide, for example, that the most effective way to demolish the other side's argument, and cut through all the misleading crap they're spouting, is to troll them.
Attempting to reason with idiots on their level never works - they just drag you down to their level, then beat you with their greater experience at being stupid.
Besides, sometimes we NEED disruption, to help shake us out of our complacency, or re-examine our underlying assumptions.
Why do you say that we should not respond and just add them to our ignore list?
(Nice try ... but here's a better response ...)
Because they're living in the past .... What is this ignore list you speak of? Isn't usenet dead?
Sounds like the pentagon - always preparing to fight the next war with the previous wars tactics.
Come to think of it, time to update that to include the "War on Drugs", the "War on Poverty" and the "War on the Middle Class".
I get them banned from forums then get their ISP to terminate their account. I'm not here to make an adult out of them. In fact they serve a useful purpose in getting government control of the internet.
Yeah, riiiiiight.
Tell us another one.
ISPs don't terminate accounts for trolling. Cyberstalking, yes ... trolling, absolutely not.
Besides, you'll never convince a fanboi, whether it's Windows, Apple, Ubuntu, or Neocon, so why not have some fun with them?
No, it would be because Volkswagen was originally founded in 1937 by the Nazi trade union, the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront).
First, contrary to TFA, this has zero to do with cognitive behavioral therapy.
Second, it won't work with an experienced troll. Either don't feed them, or feed them a brick to the face. But if they're that experienced, both approaches will fail.
Third, recognize that there are "white hat" and "black hat" trolls.
Fourth, one person's troll or flamebait is another person's insightful.
Fifth, take it for what it is - whether it's the use of rhetoric as a debating artifice, a way to expose stupid arguments for what they are (because it's easier to troll an idiot than it is to educate them), or just another form of entertainment.
Sixth, people who go nuts over YHBT YFI HAND are the real trollbait.
You're absolutely right to say that the teacher shouldn't be lumped in with the "everyone failed" crowd. I also don't believe the school principal failed. The parents of the kids, on the other hand ...
The next time Microsoft releases a patch for a security vulnerability I would like to see this sentiment repeated.
Okay, next patch Tuesday, someone please make Haven happy and post a "Good job again google. That's why you're on top." post.
Student goes out to the mall, pulls a Columbine, they have every right to bar him while he's awaiting trial despite the fact that he was not on school grounds, because the place the behavior occurred is, by law, irrelevant.
Replace Facebook with washroom stall and think about what you just said. Do you really take what you read on the washroom stall as the truth? If the kids had went to the police or filed some kind of official statement that was false, then their expulsion would be understandable.
Did they write it in a washroom stall? No.
Stop trying to minimize what they did. Expelling the three of them would have been the minimum I would expect.
Even back in 2007. ( Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know ) this was understood from the facebook TOS
[W]e cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site.
Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, videos, Marketplace listings or other items , this information may become publicly available.
And yes, the guy who wrote that is a lawyer.
But who says the Supreme Court is always right, how can you presume their word is never changed? That ruling is 42 years old, back before the internet, computing, existed as we know it today, before the issue was revisited in a more relevant scope.
Until someone brings it up again before the Supremes, it is the *ahem* supreme law of the land.
Additionally, the "internet" doesn't have anything to do with it - it would have been the same if they had posted it on handbills and pasted them around town.
He was running an illegal online pharmacy.
The writer of the article had previously gotten a judgment against the guy for spamming.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), when the Supreme Court decided that "conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason - whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior - materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech."
This is with respect to the schools right and duty to act in loco parentis - in the place of the parents. What they did certainly invaded the rights of the teacher, etc. It also threatened to turn the school environment toxic for all the students.
So, when you write:
If I were the parent of any of these children, I'd *already* be lining up a lawyer to sink his talons into every vermin involved... the teachers, the principal, their various supervisors, the school district as a whole... everyone. They all need to be brought down over this.
... you're totally, TOTALLY, in the wrong. And you'd deserve to have to waste money on a lawyer to explain to you that you're acting like a jerk. These kids should all have been expelled, and the parents given a restraining order keeping them from coming within 1,000 feet of the school, or any public comment.
Reread what the Supreme Court had to say - ALL student conduct, whether in class or out of it, falls under the schools' is unprotected under those circumstances.
What did you expect them to say - "No, we won't - we'll cede that market to our competitors, because our customers prefer products with crappy battery life"?
So please post your real name, address, and other contact info, along with a way to verify that it is really you, so we can put your theory to the test.
How does the school district even have jurisdiction in this case?
Was the offending facebook post made from a school computer? During school hours?
It might be libel, but unless the school actually has jurisdiction this suspension and expulsion is a load of crap.
They have jurisdiction because the Supreme Court says they do:
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), when the Supreme Court decided that "conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason - whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior - materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech."
The case in question was whether the school could ban the wearing of armbands demanding the end of the Vietnam war. The Supremes held that the armbands were not disruptive, and a legitimate form of expressing an opinion. Posting lies about someone being a pedophile and rapist would meet the standards of material dirruption and invasion of the rights of others. So the schools definitely are acting within the legal framework.
The parents need to go back in time and learn effective birth control so we don't get yet another generation of the clueless.
the children deserve consequences and you are right that their allegations were quite dangerous. Unless the postings happened at school (and even that issue is questionable) the principal had no authority to make the student open her facebook page in front of him. Best case, this should have been a legal issue between the children and teacher in the form of a lawsuit.
Wrong.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), when the Supreme Court decided that "conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason - whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior - materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech."
There's no "freedom of speech" issue, and no "right to privacy" in such a case.
you're right but I'm not sure this is the right way to deal with it.
Imagine: you're a 12 year old asshole with parents that don't properly care for you and you're presented with the following choice
A) Admit your accusations were lies and everyone is pissed off at you and your parents punish you and you get expelled.
B) keep lying your lie and you get sympathy, "free" days off school, everyone makes a big deal of you, you get 15 minutes of fame, and your hated teacher goes away.
Which would you do?
Freddy Got Fingered
Green plays a 28-year old slacker/cartoonist named Gordon "Gord" Brody, who is pursuing his ambition to obtain a contract for a TV show. After being told that his ideas are stupid and make no sense, he decides to move back home and rethink his future. When Gord's father (Rip Torn) questions Gord's life goals, Gord has his father arrested on falsified charges of sexual molestation, destroying his parents' relationship and his family's reputation in the process.
State constitutions cannot remove rights granted to individuals by the US constitution. We have Supreme Court rulings on this matter going back 100 years.
Then maybe you should read the Supreme Court ruling (1968)
Wearing an armband calling for the end of the Vietnam war was held to be legitimate free speech - falsely calling someone a pedophile and a rapist isn't, and the Supremes have already ruled that the school has the right to act.
The school serves in loco parentis, and as such, has more responsibilities, and also more ability to act, than uninvolved bystanders.
There is nothing different than a group of kids in the park bitching about their teacher.
It's VERY different. Facebook postings aren't available just to the people standing there at the time.