I believe this adage originated in the USENET era: Don’t feed the trolls.

Ignore them and they will go away. The nice thing about USENET newsreaders was the killfile. Put a troll in your killfile and you never saw them directly again.

I’d much prefer to evaluate arguments on their merits. But I do take offense at people trying to characterize me as something I am not in an effort to argue by smear and avoid discussing the merits of particular issues. Thanks!

It’s almost like the natural world reveals its secrets in a non-partisan manner. Who would have thought?

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Ch03.pdf

My criticism of the Nature thread is the failure to point the readers to the original information — where it can be considered in context. (It may show up Wednesday when someone there reads her email, I got an Out of Office bounce to a comment.)

Please — don’t post only links to copies of images —- copies can’t be considered in context or even checked for misstatement.

And posting copies adds Google Page Rank tallies to the copier’s page instead of to the true source, which is venal.

Post the pointer to the original image source; if the original is truly not linkable, or is a downloadable PDF or DOC file or the like, provide a citation to the original along with your copy.

Give real sources for people to look at themselves.

As to the “little at stake” line, it’s misattributed.

My excerpt below is from the longer excerpt posted with the book link here, which I commend to your attention:

http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Verifier-Said-What-Where/dp/product-description/0312340044

“ACADEMIC politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” … attributed to former Harvard professor Henry Kissinger. Well before Kissinger …
… Harvard political scientist Richard Neustadt …
… [1973] political scientist Wallace Sayre …
… 1979 … Laurence Peter …
… C. P. Snow …
…Daniel Patrick Moynihan …
… Jesse Unruh (among others)….
…. Woodrow Wilson … observed often that the intensity of academic squabbles he witnessed while president of Princeton University was a function of the “triviality” of the issues being considered.

“Verdict: An old academic saw that may have originated with Woodrow Wilson but was put in modern play by Wallace Sayre.”

Unfortunately this site has become a magnet for extremes. Typically, any thread on the current UK government ends up with diatribes on Iraq, accusations of zionist conspiracies and all round lunacy. I’d say that this site exemplifies the potential of the ‘net, but the myriad of problems associated with it.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html

It seems to me that now everyone has a medium for their views, they are encouraged to believe that their opinions have merit, no matter how insane. If you think debate on science blogs is bad (even those that concern religion vs science), the political realm is far worse IMO. If we ever have to discuss climate science in connection with the Israeli state, then the proverbial will really hit the fan!

You also keep up the good work, and don’t get too exercised about online harrassment
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/nature_climate_blog_off_to_roc.php

Just remember [Laurence] Peter’s Theory of Entrepreneurial Aggressiveness in Higher Education: “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.”