5.19. Ciro Santilli’s reply policy (三西猴的回答政策)
People get kind of passionate sometimes about politics. And some of them might also be just malicious wumaos, although it is generally not possible to distinguish between them.
If you are not a wumao, consider this:
-
Ciro Santilli is one, and antagonists are millions. It is therefore not possible to reply to all antagonists.
-
Ciro has in the past tried to be nice to stupid people, and they gave nasty replies
-
all discussion is useless, only the keyword attack has any chance of having any effect, and even that is slim
In order to not waste too much time on those, Ciro Santilli uses the following strategy.
If the original thread post is not very interesting, try to parse it quickly and reply once, always linking to the FAQ, and then unfollow the thread. This shows that you’re still alive, and takes little effort.
Always quote reply, and always write down the ID of the OP on your reply, because discussions like this lead to a large number of comment and account deletions, which could make your reply not make much sense without the context.
After the link addressing anything that they might have said, add three randomly selected images from this repository to it. This is fundamental because the average Little pink (小粉紅, 小紅粉, 兔友) does not speak English. Therefore writing is pointless.
Meme images, however, cross the language barrier beautifully. It is even better if they have Chinese captions.
For websites that don’t accept image on comments, we just have to revert to random-links to start with.
Another way to see it is that we are creating a harder to censor Instagram channel.
You can think of them metaphorically as throwing hand grenades over the Great Firewall (GFW, 防火长城). Ciro strives to add the following elements in the image itself where applicable:
-
English explanation
-
Chinese explanation
-
date
-
location
Because the CCP censors politics, and the West does not, we can never "lose" a shitargument. Even if the Wumao (五毛) supports his country in a thread, just being in the same thread as the censored material could already be problematic for the wumao, as it is proof that they’ve seen something they should not have seen.
Therefore the only option for them is to run away.
Finally, also try to extract the email of the user from one of their repositories. When successful, Ciro takes a Wayback Machine (web.archive.org, 网站时光机) snapshot of the repository as proof of SHA, and then forks it to https://github.com/wumaoland to possibly keep their email safe in case of account deletion. You never know when this information might be useful.
Then, after replying, do your best never to read the inevitable reply again, and above all, never ever reply. An interesting reply never follows from a non-interesting original post. It is hard at first, but you will eventually get the hang of it.
If the user keeps generating notifications, block them as per CONTRIBUTING.md, replying to a single person multiple times is useless.
Never block users for an initial shitposts, just reply with a stupid joke instead. This approach creates more uncertainty and makes you look cooler. It also allows you to identify who the enemy is. Only block if the user is generating multiple notifications.
If a shitpost is made on most other social media except GitHub issues in this repository, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, immediately block the user on that website if you have the permission to do that, with a canned reply:
Hi <idiot’s name>, I don’t reply to China issues here, please open an issue at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues instead, cheers.
Note however that this is not possible on idiotic websites like Quora where such comments may be deleted, possibly automatically, who the fuck knows, e.g. as done at: https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-I-walked-around-Beijing-with-a-t-shirt-that-said-freedom-of-speech-is-pretty-great/answer/Ciro-Santilli/comment/143227962 In that case just link to sections of the FAQ, or mute people, or maybe just block all comments on the post to not waste time with new useless notifications.
This is because it is not worth answering anywhere else where the information will be scattered and impossible to find later on, and especially on websites that are already blocked in China. Shitposts on Stack Overflow and other non-blocked websites are encouraged however, as they further help to get the website blocked in China.
For outbursts of activity from Chinese websites, usually programming (v2ex, hacpai, pincong), only post the following canned answer and nothing else, because cowards/people who don’t know English from the website might delete your posts, so you shouldn’t waste time there with that shit:
大家你好
在我的GitHub中国FAQ repository我已经回答了好几个关于我常见的问题。
你们要是在那儿找不到一个回答，请在那个repository开一个issue，我马上就回答。
我不要再在这个网页评论。
Finally, don’t forget the golden rule from Proverbs 26:4:
Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are.
which is now usually seen in the form of unclear attribution:
Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Where basically idiot == someone who creates posts that obviously aren’t teaching you any new useful thing, or that not praising you :-)
Alternatively, there is also the Chinese chengyu version:
对牛弹琴
which means:
Playing the qin to a cow.
which means to talk to someone who does not have intellectual conditions of understanding what you are trying to say, bibliography:
More wumao focused strategies at: How to deal with wumaos (如何应对五毛).
https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/733 by https://github.com/newcih is an interesting issue. OP has managed to close and change the issue title despite being blocked. Is he raising support tickets? Or can blocked people do that now? E.g. note towards https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/733#event-5930333327 how cirosantilli managed to reopen twice without any visible closes in the middle. They also have a Twitter BTW: https://twitter.com/newcih2020/status/1520405835679109120
Figure 77. XKCD 386 "Duty Calls" and the famous "Someone is wrong on the Internet" quote. It is a waste of time to be like that. Source.
People get kind of passionate sometimes about politics. And some of them might also be just malicious wumaos, although it is generally not possible to distinguish between them.
If you are not a wumao, consider this:
-
Ciro Santilli is one, and antagonists are millions. It is therefore not possible to reply to all antagonists.
-
Ciro has in the past tried to be nice to stupid people, and they gave nasty replies
-
all discussion is useless, only the keyword attack has any chance of having any effect, and even that is slim
In order to not waste too much time on those, Ciro Santilli uses the following strategy.
If the original thread post is not very interesting, try to parse it quickly and reply once, always linking to the FAQ, and then unfollow the thread. This shows that you’re still alive, and takes little effort.
Always quote reply, and always write down the ID of the OP on your reply, because discussions like this lead to a large number of comment and account deletions, which could make your reply not make much sense without the context.
After the link addressing anything that they might have said, add three randomly selected images from this repository to it. This is fundamental because the average Little pink (小粉紅, 小紅粉, 兔友) does not speak English. Therefore writing is pointless.
Meme images, however, cross the language barrier beautifully. It is even better if they have Chinese captions.
For websites that don’t accept image on comments, we just have to revert to random-links to start with.
Another way to see it is that we are creating a harder to censor Instagram channel.
You can think of them metaphorically as throwing hand grenades over the Great Firewall (GFW, 防火长城). Ciro strives to add the following elements in the image itself where applicable:
-
English explanation
-
Chinese explanation
-
date
-
location
Because the CCP censors politics, and the West does not, we can never "lose" a shitargument. Even if the Wumao (五毛) supports his country in a thread, just being in the same thread as the censored material could already be problematic for the wumao, as it is proof that they’ve seen something they should not have seen.
Therefore the only option for them is to run away.
Finally, also try to extract the email of the user from one of their repositories. When successful, Ciro takes a Wayback Machine (web.archive.org, 网站时光机) snapshot of the repository as proof of SHA, and then forks it to https://github.com/wumaoland to possibly keep their email safe in case of account deletion. You never know when this information might be useful.
Then, after replying, do your best never to read the inevitable reply again, and above all, never ever reply. An interesting reply never follows from a non-interesting original post. It is hard at first, but you will eventually get the hang of it.
If the user keeps generating notifications, block them as per CONTRIBUTING.md, replying to a single person multiple times is useless.
Never block users for an initial shitposts, just reply with a stupid joke instead. This approach creates more uncertainty and makes you look cooler. It also allows you to identify who the enemy is. Only block if the user is generating multiple notifications.
If a shitpost is made on most other social media except GitHub issues in this repository, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, immediately block the user on that website if you have the permission to do that, with a canned reply:
Hi <idiot’s name>, I don’t reply to China issues here, please open an issue at: https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues instead, cheers.
Note however that this is not possible on idiotic websites like Quora where such comments may be deleted, possibly automatically, who the fuck knows, e.g. as done at: https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-I-walked-around-Beijing-with-a-t-shirt-that-said-freedom-of-speech-is-pretty-great/answer/Ciro-Santilli/comment/143227962 In that case just link to sections of the FAQ, or mute people, or maybe just block all comments on the post to not waste time with new useless notifications.
This is because it is not worth answering anywhere else where the information will be scattered and impossible to find later on, and especially on websites that are already blocked in China. Shitposts on Stack Overflow and other non-blocked websites are encouraged however, as they further help to get the website blocked in China.
For outbursts of activity from Chinese websites, usually programming (v2ex, hacpai, pincong), only post the following canned answer and nothing else, because cowards/people who don’t know English from the website might delete your posts, so you shouldn’t waste time there with that shit:
大家你好
在我的GitHub中国FAQ repository我已经回答了好几个关于我常见的问题。
你们要是在那儿找不到一个回答，请在那个repository开一个issue，我马上就回答。
我不要再在这个网页评论。
Finally, don’t forget the golden rule from Proverbs 26:4:
Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are.
which is now usually seen in the form of unclear attribution:
Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Where basically idiot == someone who creates posts that obviously aren’t teaching you any new useful thing, or that not praising you :-)
Alternatively, there is also the Chinese chengyu version:
对牛弹琴
which means:
Playing the qin to a cow.
which means to talk to someone who does not have intellectual conditions of understanding what you are trying to say, bibliography:
More wumao focused strategies at: How to deal with wumaos (如何应对五毛).
https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/733 by https://github.com/newcih is an interesting issue. OP has managed to close and change the issue title despite being blocked. Is he raising support tickets? Or can blocked people do that now? E.g. note towards https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/733#event-5930333327 how cirosantilli managed to reopen twice without any visible closes in the middle. They also have a Twitter BTW: https://twitter.com/newcih2020/status/1520405835679109120
