The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 22:10 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566)
In reply to: The 4.20 kernel has been released by rsidd
Parent article: The 4.20 kernel has been released

I think it's enough to keep doing what we have been doing; to collectively ostracise these trolls and leave a permanent record that we find their “philosophy” odious and their ideas trite.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 27, 2018 21:17 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (4 responses)

FWIW I've dramatically scaled back how much attention I give to LWN (and dropped my subscription) because of how unpleasant it is to wade through these kinds of comments looking for the valuable bits. (And this is a comparatively tame one; in the past we've had outright slurs and hate-speech left to stand.)

If you want to leave sewage on your living room floor to prove some kind of point, then that's your right. You can do that. But it's not very welcoming to guests.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 29, 2018 5:25 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (2 responses)

That's a shame, but understandable. I've seen some of those less tame posts. I'm not sure what solution would make legitimate users happier while avoiding burning out the staff here - they're in limited supply already.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 29, 2018 10:44 UTC (Sat) by thumperward (guest, #34368) [Link] (1 responses)

Dropping comments entirely was the correct response to this when it was originally suggested. I find it sad that I'm willing to let my subscription lapse when next it's up for the primary reason that I don't want to be seen to be supporting the sort of thing that appears under almost every popular article on here. And guest / new accounts only make up a minority of it.*

* I'm led to believe that upgrading my subscription would also allow me to hide these comments. This exacerbates the problem IMO, as it makes these people into revenue generators.

Dropping comments

Posted Dec 29, 2018 15:13 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Are you suggesting that we turn off the comment feature completely? That seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I'll point out that there is a preference you can set to simply turn off comments if you don't want to see them at all.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 29, 2018 11:40 UTC (Sat) by rleigh (guest, #14622) [Link]

You're not the only one; I also left for those reasons. I look in now and again, but rarely feed the need to participate. This wasn't solely due to trolling and abuse, it was also due to the partisan nature of comments from people involved in competing commercial interests like RedHat/Fedora vs. Canonical, or competing desktop environments, or whatever. Such comments get tiresome, add little when repeated in every related thread, and aren't going to convince other readers either way. I feel all of these detract from informed discussion, and it descends into sniping along tribal lines, rather than productive technical discussion that can inform and drive change.