Old News in new shoes

Old Berty is always fond of a quote or two. Mind you Berty was fond of quite a lot of things and not all of them good for public newspapers. without further ado here is a big fat one.

Quote obviously.

Why do so many online communities tolerate trolls, sick psychopaths, and toxic personalities? "Oh noes!" you wail, "We cannot be exclusionary, because that is Wrong!" Baloney. Quit being a wuss and exclude the destructive buttheads. Create and enforce some community standards, because tolerating poisonous people is the same as taking a big hot steaming dump on the cool sane people you want to have around. I cannot fathom the spineless mentality that would rather suck up to psychopaths than stand up for friends.

"Oh noes!" you wail some more, "What about Free Speech?" Hey, what about enforcing standards and creating an atmosphere that permit actual useful conversation, instead of allowing vandals to run the show? I doubt that human rights will be set back very much by squashing dialogue like "I wont to ram util u cry." I had the pleasure of receiving this communication recently. Lucky me, torn between outrage at the message, and dismay over the terrible spelling
and grammar.

This sort of junk is not trivial or something to endure as the price of participating in online communities. It's violence, it's an attack, and I despise the people who make excuses for it.

Carla Schroder, from http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/03/open_season_on_women.html