On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 10:02:35 UTC, Claude wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I also think forum moderation is too relaxed (though I wouldn't have said that 6 years ago).
>
> [...]


The forum must be moderated. It is affecting D in a negative way. The leadership must take a drastic step to do it.

A thread must stay focus on a matter.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 09:41:58AM -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 10/21/19 5:45 PM, welkam wrote:
> > On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> > > Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.
> > 
> > And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.
> 
> Nice simile. I agree there's plenty of evidence ever since the Internet has been invented that just giving people advice to not feed the trolls doesn't work.

Yes, they need to start using D instead of C. :-D  I.e., they need to use a framework where by default "buffer overflows" don't happen.


T

-- 
Those who don't understand D are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Daniel N

On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:
> On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.
> 
> And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.

Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. The analogy isn't apt.

Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by experience.

On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:
>> On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.
>> 
>> And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.
>
> Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. The analogy isn't apt.
>
> Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by experience.

I'll repeat that ignoring trolls doesn't solve the problem. If someone says in 40 different threads that they don't use D because of the D1/D2 split, and nobody responds to say "that's BS" then thousands of people that don't know D will come across those posts, assume it's true, and move on to a different language. Or worse, they'll see one troll talking about D's compiler bugs and another troll talking about D being a dead language and another troll talking about something else. Nuke those posts and the problem is solved.

On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:44:22 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:
>>> On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.
>>> 
>>> And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.
>>
>> Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. The analogy isn't apt.
>>
>> Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by experience.
>
> I'll repeat that ignoring trolls doesn't solve the problem. If someone says in 40 different threads that they don't use D because of the D1/D2 split, and nobody responds to say "that's BS" then thousands of people that don't know D will come across those posts, assume it's true, and move on to a different language. Or worse, they'll see one troll talking about D's compiler bugs and another troll talking about D being a dead language and another troll talking about something else. Nuke those posts and the problem is solved.

How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is making valid criticism?  Some people could consider your last post as trolling as you're criticizing how D decides to moderate its forums.

People should be free to express and discuss their criticism.  I think the only time moderators should step in is if the discussion devolves into harrasment or something inappropriate.  It's still not easy to define what that is, but the point is that deciding to silence or remove people's discussion is a big deal, it should be a last resort.

You do bring up a good point that alot of posts/discussion don't add anything and can leave a negative impression.  However, rather than removing posts of this nature, I would employ a rating/ranking system like reddit that moves that stuff to the bottom of the thread or minimizes its presence in some way. This way the community can decide what they find interesting rather than forcing the moderators to take a much more dramatic action.

On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:
> How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is making valid criticism?
Great question.

Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, it has that effect. For example:

 Trolling: D is no good.

 Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have a workaround?

On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>> How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is making valid criticism?
> Great question.
>
> Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, it has that effect. For example:
>
>  Trolling: D is no good.
>
>  Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have a workaround?

Providing actionable feedback is certainly better, but do you think moderators should remove non-actionable criticism?  If I just said, "I don't like dub", should that be removed?

It also sounds hard to say whether or not something is "actionable".  Technically, saying "D is no good" is actionable.  Making D "better" could be a reaction, though it's very vague.  So to me it sounds like your saying, vague and general criticism should be removed?

On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:
>> On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.
>> 
>> And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.
>
> Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. The analogy isn't apt.

You miss the point : In both cases the advice is more "self control", which only gets you so far.


> Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by experience.

When the only people left in this newsgroup are old graybeards then the trolls will probably be fighting over thin pickings.

On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>> How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is making valid criticism?
> Great question.
>
> Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, it has that effect. For example:
>
>  Trolling: D is no good.

That's only trolling if the person saying it is doing so specifically to wind people up. Otherwise it's just regular complaining.

Trolling is literally defined by the intent. You cant say the intent is irrelevant, it's the whole point of trolling.

On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:25:31 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
> On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>>> How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is making valid criticism?
>> Great question.
>>
>> Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, it has that effect. For example:
>>
>>  Trolling: D is no good.
>>
>>  Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have a workaround?
>
> Providing actionable feedback is certainly better, but do you think moderators should remove non-actionable criticism?  If I just said, "I don't like dub", should that be removed?
>
> It also sounds hard to say whether or not something is "actionable".  Technically, saying "D is no good" is actionable.  Making D "better" could be a reaction, though it's very vague.  So to me it sounds like your saying, vague and general criticism should be removed?



I have read on this forum many times why D has fail and will never succeed.Such posts is unacceptable at least on the D forum. You an do that outside this forum but on this forum is completely unacceptable to me.


stack overflow has a voting system. We can add a voting system that can help the people in charge of the forum to take decisions.

(1)We can force people to select options when reply to post-such as relevant,on topic, out of topic

(2) we can allow people reading the post to also vote by just clicking a button.

We need some level of moderation on the forum