The problem with "communities" that mainly exist online is that they are not really communities at all, instead they are people scattered across different websites with only the loosest of connections and absolutely no barrier to entry whatsoever and there is no way with which people can be expelled. Therefor it becomes easy for any online community to attract many people who are more interested in the drama and tribalism that surrounds the community than the goals of the community itself,. Posting "systemd sucks" (or more personal things) is much lower effort than actually building an alternative to systemd.
There is nothing hard about kicking repeat offenders from an "official" mailing list/subreddit/IRC channel for breaking community guidelines. You just need to set up clear rules, explain them if needed, and expel people too thick to follow the rules, and have enough moderators. Trolls may still complain on other forums, but it will make the place much more liveable for people actually interested in exchanging and contributing.
In the article he talks about people posting stuff about him to other websites, namely youtube , 4chan (or at least in 4chan "style") and petition websites.
Fair point. You can't really police the Internet. I had more in mind some ridiculous overreactions that have happened in the past in various forums. But you will always have the cowardly, usually anonymous abusers.
