We have a single regular user in the Slackware forum who is much like a broken clock. He will incessantly rant about pet subjects in any and all threads that are even loosely related despite that 99% of the information is off-topic garbage that serves to only mislead the uninformed, annoy or even drive away the informed and derail any useful conversation. This is a problem so much so that this individual is only right by rare chance, just like a broken clock is right two times a day.

Asking this user to stop does not work, explaining to him why the behavior is toxic and how its not appreciated does not work, reporting the posts apparently results in no action taken or feedback given and as others have shown flaming him just results in a ban for the wrong person. This is even a problem off-site where this user harasses respected members of the community.

My understanding this forum is a technical one with the goal of providing helpful discussion that can educate and help users, but this helps no one and causes a significant stain on the quality of the forum and reduces the usefulness of threads it contains.

Anyone that has spent any time in the Slackware forum should know who I mean immediately. Can something please be done about this?

Put him on "ignore" and move on.

2 members found this post helpful.

1. I have already done this a while ago, I can still trivially see and reply to his posts however...
2. This does nothing about the real issue, that informed and helpful people have become less frequent and maybe even left over this.

I've been here a long time and I have no idea to whom you refer and I have no one on an ignore list. Granted, I do not read every thread, let along every post, but still . . . .

I second cwizardone's suggestion. Let it go.

2 members found this post helpful.

If you feel there is an issue, please report each post and we'll evaluate. Do remember that the bar is "this post is breaking an LQ rule" and not "I don't like this member". We'll take a look and evaluate from there.

--jeremy

2 members found this post helpful.

I'm not sure you understand, the problem is not any single one post, but the general disruptive pattern of many posts. If you look at only a single tree you will miss the forest. Also this is certainly not about me liking someone or not.

Edit: For the record I am not specifically asking for a ban, rather I would like to see less threads pointlessly and disruptively derailed into the following all because one person can't stop being troll bait.

https://www.xkcd.com/386/

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5876635 seems to indicate otherwise. That said, if you think there is a pattern that is not well scoped by a Report, feel free to put together a more comprehensive set of examples with explanation and I'll certainly take a look.

--jeremy

With all due honesty my time and energy to devote on this is extremely limited, I spent some time looking at recent conversations and its not clear where to start exactly and my interest on dwelling on this further is near zero. Its like the straw that broke the camels back, each individual straw is easy to ignore, but overtime the there is a certain toll taken and the amount of noise drowns out the useful information. Eventually its just easier to find a greener pasture...

I think its easier to understand after having spent time using and understanding Slackware in addition to reading numerous conversations and derailed threads. I also imagine you have quite the list of reports from disgruntled users, generally nice and helpful people who have been warned or even banned for flaming and numerous scattered posts from people correcting or criticizing related posts.

Thanks again for the feedback. I'll take a closer look and proceed from there.

--jeremy

Part of the problem is that folks come to LQ from other forums that seem to allow almost anything. Another part may be they don't have the skills needed to communicate effectively. It may be that they live in an area where rough ways of speaking are common. It may be that they work in a verbally toxic workplace.

As a mod I can say that it takes under 10 minutes in real time for a thread to come unglued. It may start with a small issue then others toss gas on it. The thread will live on till jeremy stops paying the bills.

Just try to hang in there and report what offends you. At some point all members may need to have a bit of patience with the world. Some folks just can't help the way they are.