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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

Then always err on the side of good faith. If you think something's blatantly a troll, ignore it. If you're not sure, engage politely. It should become clear pretty quickly if you're being trolled or not. There's no reason to start off being a dick, and people will respect you more for it.

I have a ton of respect for Linus Torvalds' technical abilities, and for his way of succinctly and clearly explaining what can often be difficult concepts. However, his off-the-bat lack of civility -- hell, active hostility -- disgusts me sometimes. I'm sure he doesn't care, though: as he said, he's managed to accomplish his goals on the internet just fine how he is. So that's fine, I suppose. I just find it disappointing.

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Then always err on the side of good faith.

There's also another attribute of the smartest people I know: they tend to interpret other's responses given the most intelligent interpretation possible.

In the case of some, though, complete neutrality is the best one can do.

that's what he did. he engaged politely, until someone said something stupid. he only debated technical points until then. the guy who posted the stupid comment was just that, stupid, not a troll, so he went on a tangent to put that person in place. he was totally civil to whoever was civil, if you are taking what he said to other person as not being civil to everyone else, who need to re-evaluate your sensibilities.

Can you delete messages in threads on github? I see one in there where Torvalds addresses someone named Joseph, though I don't see a message farther up in that thread with that name, in which he says "You're a moron." At the very least, all the posts above that one are pretty civil and normal, nothing to incite that kind of response.

At any rate, there are plenty of examples (no links offhand, but I imagine they're fairly easily googlable if you're curious) of lkmk exchanges where Torvalds is flat out rude to people who are clearly wrong, but, from what I can tell, at least behaving civilly up to the point Torvalds blasts them.

Regardless, though, I still would argue that even in the face of an idiot slinging insults for no reason, "you're an idiot" is a waste of energy and not particularly respect-worthy. Don't feed the trolls.

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