A little catalogue of horrors

[hazel]

I found this post on the Ubuntu site and I must say it shocked me. We are all used to the idea of the Linux community as a nice friendly place where people genuinely want to help you but it seems there are people out there whose idea of fun is to trick some poor newbie into hosing his system. Perhaps one of the mods ought to post a sticky link to this warning in the newbie forum here.

[techieMoe]

Has this sort of thing become an issue in our forum? I've seen dangerous commands posted in the past, but they were generally surrounded by bold warnings and many other people piping in saying NOT to execute them.

If it becomes a problem, we could link to this. As it is, I do not see this happening on our forum yet, and I hope it never will. If anyone has any specific examples of this happening on LinuxForums, please inform a Moderator immediately and we'll take care of it.

[daark.child]

Unfortunately in any community you will always have misfits and trouble causers. Racism, malicious activity towards others and plain nastiness, I've seen it all. Why people would urge others to run commands that would break their systems is beyond me. It just makes people very suspicious of the community as a whole.

[minthaka]

I hope Linuxforums shall remain what it is: no trolls, no unfriendliness...

[arderydd]

gee, i really didn't expect this sort of thing to go on. Especially on any linux forums (the people on most of these forums seem so level headed and nice). It's a little shaking really.

[Freston]

It's a kind of vandalism that people do because they can remain anonymous on the Internet. Childish behavior. You wouldn't expect it in a Linux community... but then, any community that grows large enough gets members that behave irresponsible towards fellow members.

I guess the Linux community isn't a small village anymore, it's growing into a big city.

[techieMoe]

It's a kind of vandalism that people do because they can remain anonymous on the Internet. Childish behavior.

I believe I remember a theory about that....oh yes. Here it is. (Warning: language.)

[Freston]

See? It's scientific! No dear mother can help it...

[cousinlucky]

I'm glad that you posted this Hazel as I've yet to learn to use my computer's terminal.

[Jonathan183]

I guess the message we should take from this is don't just blindly type the command because someone posted it on a forum.

I must confess I usually try to man or google commands before I try them out ... this has been so I understand what I am doing ... but it also protects against nasty posters!

I think the warning is worth a sticky ... its happened at other forums ... these things have a habit of spreading