Responding Post by Post to be polite
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@xrobau said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
@scottalanmiller Dude, dumping a huge amount of stuff in 15 different posts is TOTALLY UNCOOL and is really unfriendly.
Actually it is for you to make it easier to read, and easier to respond, and to allow you to respond without needing to read a wall of text and get lost. On an internet for it is in VERY polite. A wall of text that can't be easily responded to is totally uncool.
I took the time to document why I do this years ago because people didn't understand that it allowed people to not be blasted with all kinds of information all at once. I would only wall of text you to "attack" you in an attempt to overwhelm you and shut down the conversation. I post thought by thought, in discrete topics, to allow for a back and forth discussion for the exact fact that I'm here to help people learn, to have open debate - not to attack, overwhelm and "win". It's not about winning, it's about helping people learn, grow, discover.
https://mangolassi.it/topic/15133/forum-posting-etiquette
Example: You get to now read this and formulate a response to this thing, which is not related to anything else we are talking about, while I'm reading your wall of text and figure out why so many unrelated thoughts are lumped together.
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@scottalanmiller said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
Actually it is for you to make it easier to read, and easier to respond,
It does the exact opposite.
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@xrobau said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
@scottalanmiller said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
Actually it is for you to make it easier to read, and easier to respond,
It does the exact opposite.
Didn't you just prove that it did by being able to respond, on one topic, while I'm still not even done reading your wall of text on something else?
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@scottalanmiller No, because now you've just forked the conversation.
And look, you'll respond to this one, and then 15 things later you'll realise you never responded to the first thing.
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@xrobau said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
@scottalanmiller No, because now you've just forked the conversation.
And look, you'll respond to this one, and then 15 things later you'll realise you never responded to the first thing.
Exactly, so PLEASE don't use a wall of text, it causes thoughts to be lost because it's disconnected stuff all thrown into one place. It's a "forum attack" technique used to make it nearly impossible for someone to respond. You can see it causing problems right now. It's used to respond to one person and give them so many things to address that they effectively can't get back to you.
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@xrobau said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
@scottalanmiller No, because now you've just forked the conversation.
It was already forked by putting disconnected stuff into the post. That it is a cleaner fork is thanks to me responding politely.
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@xrobau said in Responding Post by Post to be polite:
And look, you'll respond to this one, and then 15 things later you'll realise you never responded to the first thing.
Just because I respond to you bringing up new things as it happens doesn't mean I didn't realize that my write up of the first thing wasn't complete yet.
It's a standard thing to use topics like this one to attempt to derail a discussion when someone doesn't like where it is going, as is writing a wall of text. Which is why I've taken the time to 1) never post in that way as walls of texts are inappropriate in an honest back and forth - it's the written equivalent of yelling in someone's face instead of talking 2) write up basic explanations so that people know that this has been thought through, discussed, and published ahead of time so it would never be logical or excusable to throw it into the middle of another discussion in an attempt to change the subject or misdirect readers.
We even have names for these two things. Wall of Text attacks, and Derailment Attacks.
The first is when you post lots of separate thoughts into one to make it difficult to track the point, difficult for anyone to follow what you are talking about, and blocks everyone else from being able to effectively respond. It's used traditional in an attempt to shut down a person when you expect that they have good information and will be able to respond quickly as a way to try to stall them while you blast with stored up "yelling". It's used not only to silence someone else who is in a conversation, but also to attempt to discourage others from joining and participating because it increases the barrier to response. It's basically a challenge - trying to force someone to answer every possible point at once in the hopes that they will respond to none. It's super well known and isn't going to fly in any professional community.
A derailment attack is a misdirection that people do when they want to change the subject and to try to throw blame on the other party. So in the middle of a conversation they will throw in a non-sequitur of suddenly discussing something totally irrelevant that is generally about how to post or what is a derailment (derailment-ception) which is obviously unrelated to the subject at hand and should be a totally different thread, so that people are forced to defend the topic generally causing the whole thing to derail and lose coherency. Thankfully we've been doing this a long time and know this tactics and are familiar with how they are used when someone is trying to brute force shut someone down. The
community rewards these through mods that can't follow the conversation (both tactics confuse mods as well, so in a community with irregular moderation they can be pretty effective.)So as you can see, we are aware of what was being attempted, and are not so easily confused as forums you are used to.
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@scottalanmiller Just to be clear though in the
now the can fork posts for this same reason. (Although semi-unrelated in a way to this topic). -
@xrobau said in Responding Post by Post to be polite:
@scottalanmiller said in Revisiting ZFS and FreeNAS in 2019:
Actually it is for you to make it easier to read, and easier to respond,
It does the exact opposite.
This is an obvious lie. Walls of text are used to block topic forking so that you can force derailments into a conversation. We were only able to fork here because I didn't fall for your ploy. Otherwise, you can forcibly create an inability to fork conversations topically. Which you can't actually claim to not know about.
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@scottalanmiller said in Responding Post by Post to be polite:
A derailment attack
Kinda like the Dems are doing in Washington these days
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jees @scottalanmiller can you please just start posting giant fucking walls of text so I can ignore everything you have to say.
Thanks much,
sarcastically
Dustin
