the chilling effect of vigilateism is far worse than spam or trolls. ...
I could not agree more. By condoning such measures people are damaging the
diversity they are supposedly trying to support.
I could not disagree more. The spam and trolling create an unpleasant
environment that drives people away. Anyone who's run mailing lists
for a while has seen this pattern over and over, in which a tiny group
(sometimes just one) of obnoxious subscribers ruins a list and most of
the useful members leave. The ones who remain are thick skinned or
socially oblivious, and are disproportionately middle aged North
American white guys who acted like this when they were undergrads. We
are all big boys and girls here. It should be entirely within our
abilities to be reasonably polite and relevant in our correspondence.
In this particular case, the execution was clumsy, but the action was
entirely appropriate. We saw messages that were utterly irrelevant,
from an address that had never sent anything else, in a style that
strongly suggested it was a sock for a chronic troublemaker. Why
should we put up with that kind of nonsense?
I also have to laugh at "vigilanteism." There is no government
process that vigilantes are circumventing; the sergeant at arms
kicking people off the list IS the process.
A useful kind of vigilanteism is private messages to people
encouraging them not to engage with trolls, or to back off when
they're getting too abrasive. I have received both, and I appreciate
that people have taken the effort to give me a nudge.
R's,
John