( miscellaneous zone

( be courteous and polite

Some messages are very annoying and offensive. Keep a cool head. Remember that their tactic is to turn a civilized and well informed debate –they would lose– by a succession of insults. Readers lose interest by threads full of insults and nasty content and do not usually navigate between the nasty messages to find good posters full of useful information. If you want the useful information to be read, just maintain to a minimum the noise.

Re-read what was written to make sure you understand the author's intention. It is quite possible there is more than one way to interpret the writing. Sometimes an apparent insult is actually a poorly expressed thought by someone not familiar with the language [1]. You may be sure when the author continues her/his manner after being advised what she/he said could be misinterpreted.

Read your reply at least twice before submitting it. A good rule of thumb is also to read the guidelines at least once a month to reset you from possible deviations on use.

Above recommendations do not mean you would remain quiet to any abuse:

• If abuse has happened in a moderated newsgroup then call the attention of moderators by pointing to the message, the author, and the offensive and/or unfair content. Moderators are the first ones interested in polite and on-topic discussions, because that is their responsibility.
• Sometimes some moderator may be promoting the nasty poster against you. This means that your ideas are been perceived as dangerous enough by that moderator; it also means that she/he lacks better arguments against you. Both are a good notice, are not? The bad notice may be that is its her/his sandbox and she/he sets the rules. You may abandon the newsgroup, complaint about the board of moderators, or just ignoring that moderator.
• If abuse has happened in a non-moderated newsgroup then you still can notice the offensive and/or unfair content. You can also cite the record of abuses from that nasty poster. This may help to unexperienced readers to recognize genuine posters from nasty Internet fauna.
• For completely nasty content I usually notice the abuse by changing the subject title –e.g. Re: new lie by X–, deleting the whole content, and redirecting the message to any inexistent newsgroup –I set alt.crackpot in the FollowupTo header–. This assists readers to differentiate your good postings in the whole thread. Newsgroup readers can automatically filter messages by subject title. For messages with nasty content but still containing good points and useful information, then I substitute the nasty content with an annotation –e.g. (sniped new lie by X)– when replying the good content by the poster.

( be honest about weaknesses and your own limitations

Any scientific theory or model has its weak points. Science is about modeling nature such as we better observe and measure it. Science is not about how we want nature to be. Nature does not care how beautiful you believe that your favorite theory is.

You may be a recognized expert on some specific topic but you continue to be a human. The chance for mistake may be small but is not zero. It may be remarked that experts on some old paradigm are the first ones to be wrong during a scientific revolution. For instance, do not forget Einstein difficulties during the quantum mechanics revolution. Maintain in mind this important principle of work [2]: it is best to admit one's mistakes as soon as they are noticed.

Some people has a tendency to reply any message from any poster. This people knows 'everything' about 'everything', or they think so at least. As a general rule of thumb I take their replies, on fields I do not know, with suspicion.

( do not argue against a straw man

Be aware that some people will argue indefinitely over a moot point. One of their favorite tactics is to overemphasize a minor point while totally ignoring a major issue. Avoid this trap! It fills the network with useless noise and waste time.

As in above recommendations I usually notice the abuse by either changing the subject title –e.g. Re: new straw man by X–, deleting the whole nasty content, and redirecting the message or substituting the straw man content with an inline annotation –e.g. (sniped new straw man by X)– when replying the good content by the poster.

( do not argue against proud non-specialists

Some people strongly argue over a topic they did not even took the time to study, and some few of them even are proud of that lack of study! Some of this people rejects to read the references you are providing to support your point because they already assume may be wrong. Others proudly claim expertise on some specific topic and next argue using arguments and formulae implying a complete ignorance of the topic.

For instance, in one occasion I was discussing the advantages of two non-geometrical theories of gravity –DPI and FTG– over General Relativity (GR). Next I quote what a proud relativist said me the day 30 Jun 2008 about the non-geometrical approaches:

BUT I AM NOT DISCUSSING THOSE THEORIES! I never have, and probably never will (no time to research them).

But next day (01 Jul 2008) he commented on those theories in next terms:

Certainly in weak-field tests like this, non-geometrical theories can describe the measurements as well as GR can. Indeed, one can use the linearized approximation to GR, in which background Minkowski coordinates are used, and the curvature of the manifold is APPROXIMATED by fields on a flat manifold.

The true test comes when your non-geometrical theory confronts and describes strong-field phenomena as well as GR does. I mean such measurements as the binary pulsars and the observations of black holes at the center of galaxies.

However, those strong-field tests have already been performed and it seems that non-geometrical theories can explain better the data than General Relativity: e.g. explaining both the presence of innate magnetic fields at the center of galaxies and about 1% excess on binary pulsar radiation in terms of a novel spin-0 mechanism.

Another recent case was that of one self-proclaimed expertise on relativity who tried to convince us that a post, containing the right Hamiltonian for special relativity, was wrong. He wrote the next nonsense (09 Jul 2008):

No. The special relativistic Hamiltonian is H = L = -mc^2 * [1 - v^2/ c^2 ].

And tried to justify their above nonsense through dozens of postings during three days, claiming all kind of expertise on the topic, smartness Yea but I'm smarter than both of you. By such a wide margin it boggles the mind, and arguing that he could provide us lot of references showing why he was right!

Forget that nasty people. When you correct some of their mistakes, they often reply by making more mistakes, which you also feel obligated to correct. Avoid this trap also! It fills the network with useless noise in some exponential way as has been proven recently. For instance, when the square root was noticed and it was said that Hamiltonians are a function of momentum p, instead velocity v, the nasty poster introduced more nonsense, e.g. the day 11 Jul he claimed next:

But since you are pitching a shitfit over it, here: v = p/m --> H = - mc^2 [1 - p^2 / (mc)^2 ]^1/2

Does that substitution of the bleedingly obvious make you feel better? Its' still the same quantity - just in a different set of generalized coordinates.

Apart from the obvious mistake about the expression for the momenta in special relativity, that poster proposed another Hamiltonian –still negative and wrong– but now taking imaginary values for fast enough particles! Of course, he continued to claim all kind of expertise Did you fail every classical mechanics course you ever took? and continued attacking any people who was noticing his obvious nonsenses That's because the both of you are as smart as bricks, and just as stubborn.

Again, this does not mean you may remain quiet to any abuse. Novices and non-expertises may acknowledge your assistance to split the good from the nasty content. The recommendation is similar than in former cases, except than I often am using Re: new nonsense by X or (sniped new nonsense by X) respectively.

( do not respond to obvious flame bait and red-herring arguments

It is a pointless waste of time, energy, bandwidth, and disk space to respond to these. Flames and red-herring are intended to confuse the reader or divert attention away from the subject.

Some people are professional liars. A common technique is their fake accusation in public you may be unable to recognize errors. They often use this lie to confound readers about the possibility you were actually wrong and unable to recognize it. That may be not true, therefore, it is better you compile evidence against the lie, for instance, citing messages from you recognizing a mistake.

Some other people are masters of changing the subject. Flames often are attempts to hide the poster's ignorance on some topic by inciting a series of angry responses. Otherwise the flames indicate some personal animadversion against one specific person, group, or community.

A recently documented case is that of a poster who was loosing an argument about potential energies and decided to invent the existence of a hundred of different people to falsify a public rating of the person was wining the argument. The falsification was detected by administrators, the nasty poster publicly warned about his nasty behavior, and the fake ratings deleted.

You would not contribute to that nonsense but I do not recommend to remain quiet, not at least for cases of abuse like falsification of ratings, usurpation of personality, attempts to falsify online archives, cases when messages are attributed to other persons, etc.

I usually notice the abuse in the same way that noticed above but now with some Re: new straw man by X–, and (sniped new straw man by X) for the respective cases.

( give credit and acknowledge people who assisted you

Be careful when quoting others' messages. Acknowledgments would include people who tried to help you even if they were of no real help.

( acknowledgments

1 I thanks Murray Arnow by this useful suggestion.

2 This was brilliantly pointed by Peter M. Brown, who I express my gratitude.