Nelson, David writes: > I think that this is not so hard to distinguish as you suggest. Then it should be straightforward to automate it in the form of a robot that emotionlessly evaluates each post. > There are two general cases: (a) overly insistent and (b) overly > personal. How much is "overly"? > The overly insistent poster will almost always attempt to have the last > word in any thread, repeats positions frequently on the premise that if > you say something often enough it become true, and inserts "pet peeve" > issues into otherwise unrelated threads. How often is "almost always"? How much is "frequently"? How much is "often enough"? > The overly personal poster makes comments about other posters, for > example making assertions about their lack of clear thinking, their > failure to understand the issue, their unspoken motivations, their > stubbornness, and so forth. If everyone who did this were eliminated from a list, there might only be three or four people left afterwards. Most people will resort to personal attacks very rapidly and readily once someone else disagrees with them. > While there are no standards, I think that case (a) can be usually be > recognized by sheer volume of postings and case (b) is easily detected > because the subject of argument ceases to be about the technical details > of the protocol, and becomes about the other correspondents. Does that count for long discussions of formal actions the only purpose of which is to exclude someone from the list--discussions that make no mention of any technical details of any protocol at all? _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf