Jon Freeman: This thread isn't all about you.

For those of you who haven't followed this controversy from its beginning:

It began with a posting like the one above allegedly from "GUEST,Paul Knox." Now, Paul Knox (as I have recently learned) is a real person, and a professional journalist, and now that I know that, I am convinced that the person who posted this message is NOT Paul Knox. I also found that several articles cribbed from various (mainly British) journalists' columns in various publications have been posted to various other threads in the same manner, probably by the same GUEST.

One of these articles fooled me for a time. In the belief that "Paul Knox" might continue the discussion, I took the trouble to write a careful reply to "Paul's" message. I would not have wasted my time had I realized that the GUEST who posted Paul Knox's article was probably unable, and certainly unwilling, to carry on the discussion in a respectful, intelligent way.

I alerted Joe Offer. My PM to him was titled, "A new kind of troll?" My intention was only to alert other people to the existence of this type of troll, so that they won't be fooled by it, as I was. I still feel that the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them, and they will eventually get bored and go away.

But the discussion wandered into the question of whether we should try to use software controls to keep trolls out, and then to Mudcat security in general, during which some (allegedly) damaging information was disclosed, resulting in the thread being deleted.

I am willing to suspend judgment on whether the information was in fact damaging, but the point is, Joe apparently thought it was, and I absolutely support his right to make judgments of that type. In fact, I am very grateful that he is willing to do so, and to take all the heat that inevitably results.

If I had had my way, the original thread would have died before the discussion took that turn. Then "censorship" would have been unnecessary.