I will make this brief since this type of post is not really appropriate for
such a list as this:
My previous statement indicating that The Cunctator had more bias than the
boiled down stuff the 24 is spewing out was a mischaracterization on my part
based upon numerous posts and material left by Larry Sanger. Larry may have
had very good reasons to characterize The Cunctator this way in the past, but
a random sampling of The Cunctator's current edits does not indicate that
Larry's views are currently valid.
Please do not disregard the rest of the original email in question though. I
apologize to the list and to The Cunctator for my lack of tact in this
regard.
Yours,
-- maveric149
Here's a good place to start to read some really fascinating stuff about
trolls and how they operate:
http://www.google.com/search?q=trolls+and+trolling
Frankly, it has been years since I read such stuff.
For me, the obvious question is: why *wouldn't* trolls, in the strict or
looser senses, attack Wikipedia? And it seems to me the answer is equally
obvious: there's no reason they wouldn't, and they already have.
Larry
Hmmm...just adding my voice to the growing chorus - the site sure has crawled to a near halt lately. I spent 4 mins opening a moderate sized page over a cable link last night (0300, 12 Apr, Server Time) - although the Search was normal speed, go figure.
Manning
I'm just now visiting the recent archive of Wikipedia-L:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001879.html
I guess I'll resubscribe at least temporarily in case there are replies to
the following... :-)
I'd like to add my $0.02 on a number of issues that have been raised.
This is important, I think, because we've got to pull together against
elements who are, to put it nicely, wasting our time. To pull together,
though, we've got to get very clear on what "trolls" are or might be, and
develop a robust, *well-thought-out*, *reasonable* idea of what to do when
the trolls attack. (As they will continue to do as long as Wikipedia is
open for business.) Each of us has to come to his or her own conclusions
on the issue; but the greater degree of consensus we can achieve (*for*
neutrality and productivity and *against* bias and kookiness), the more
effective we will be in showing trolls the door. (Without, ideally,
actually kicking them out the door.)
First, I really don't like the idea of putting Meta-Wikipedia comments on
the Recent Changes page. That was the whole point of having the
Meta-Wikipedia, if you'll remember: meta-discussion (partly in the form of
trolling by certain members of the project, along with responses to them),
had become such a serious problem, eating up the resources of the project,
that we wanted to move the wrangling away from the article production.
Please, let's keep it that way.
For historical perspective, see:
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Moving+commentary+out+of+Wikiped…
Next--I think Manning's post, "Some 24 comments and the cabal," was a
bullseye that said a bunch of stuff that sorely needed to be said:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001807.html
To reiterate in my own words: our resident trolls, bless their twisted
hearts, have harped over and over again about issues of the politics of
Wikipedia, either stating or not-so-subtlely implying that some element of
the leadership of the community is pulling the wool over the eyes of the
community, that someone is usurping power. As Manning says, the main
authority behind the project rests with the community itself, and
particularly with the people who accept the basic defining features of the
community. Insinuations that a cabal, other than a "cabal" in this sense,
is taking control and foisting its views on the rest of us are only so
much guff, very possibly motivated by a dislike for the neutrality policy,
or so it seems to me.
I agree that "troll" is sometimes falsely used to mean little more
specific than "annoying person," which is way too broad. Originally (or
so the etymology and received wisdom has it), I think the term referred to
people who were *merely* trying to get a rise out of newbies, with no
deeper agenda than that. There are relatively few trolls in that sense,
and it's entirely plausible that The Cunctator, 24, and Michael Irwin
aren't trolls in *that* sense.
But I think there *is* a broader and much more useful sense of the term,
that is very often used by perfectly net-savvy people--at least as often
as the original use, and probably more often. This is how "troll" is used
in this page (#1 result for the "Internet troll" Google search):
http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm
According to this broader sense, trolls *thrive on being the center and
focus of controversy*. It is, seemingly, what they live for, at least
when it comes to Internet forums. Perhaps most importantly, **they do not
respond to reasonable criticism** in the way that most ordinary
intelligent people do; they treat dialectic as *merely* a game. They
don't seem to realize or care that they are speaking to *people* with all
that that entails.
Reasonable discussants are willing to stop and acknowledge that others can
and do have different points of view. Trolls, in this slightly broader
sense, almost always take personal offense that other people disagree with
them, so that when others express their disagreement, the trolls lash out
in hostile, abusive, and often strangely cryptic ways (as if they were
mainly speaking to themselves).
Most reasonable people go out of their way not to give offense to others
(except, perhaps, when it's warranted); trolls go out of their way to
think up clever ways to give offense to people who never did them any
harm.
Reasonable people (indeed, this might a basic criterion of being a
reasonable person) recognize and accept that, in a community, there must
be general standards of protocol, and they make a point of discovering
what those standards are and respecting them. If they criticize basic,
well-accepted community standards, they realize that they are taking what
might be received as a sort of extreme action, and they will word their
criticisms with appropriate delicacy and diplomacy. Trolls, by contrast
(and here again I'm speaking in the slightly broader sense), seem to take
*delight* in not only flouting basic standards of protocol, but
criticizing them openly and rudely as well. Any old hand on Usenet or
mailing lists knows this all too well. When called to task by a moderator
or administrator, the troll often will attack the moderator or
administrator, complain that his feelings are being hurt, and object that
his freedom of speech has been infringed. No reasonable person would
behave this way; he would instead stop and ask himself, "What have I done
wrong?" or instead say, "Oh, I see; these people aren't playing by the
rules I want to play by. I'll find a different group of people to play
with."
I can't really put it any better than what the above-referenced URL has:
"Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism (constructive or otherwise).
You cannot negotiate with them; you cannot cause them to feel shame or
compassion; you cannot reason with them. They cannot be made to feel
remorse. For some reason, trolls do not feel they are bound by the rules
of courtesy or social responsibility."
Now, there's a problem in *defining* "troll," even in this broad sense,
for the wiki context. Trolling up till now has been the abuse of Internet
*discussion*. But Wikipedia isn't a discussion; it's a content-creation
project. Of course, part of the trolling we've seen has been on talk page
discussions, but another large part of it (depending on the troll) has
been in article posting, viz., posting biased and kooky stuff in open
defiance of policy. I think this is a perfectly acceptable, robust
application of the concept to a new sort of context, though.
There's also a special problem in *dealing* with trolls on Wikipedia (or
any wiki): whereas on an ordinary discussion forum, one can simply
killfile the miscreant, on Wikipedia, we can't. Remember, we're actually
*doing something*. We're building a resource. The troll's disruptions
(in the form of totally and consciously biased, kooky, and otherwise
worthless repeated postings) can't be "killfiled." Somebody has to go
around after the troll and actually clean up. If nobody does, the biased,
kooky, worthless dross stays put; if it accumulates, Wikipedia's quality
and reputation is under some amount of threat (depending on how prolific
the troll is).
Given this, it might perhaps be better to apply the word "vandal" to
someone who posts really worthless stuff on Wikipedia. But I would
distinguish vandals from trolls as follows.
Vandals are interested in getting mere infantile jollies in seeing people
temporarily shocked by usually toilet humor.
Trolls actually want to build (hostile) relationships with people in order
to abuse them more satisfyingly. For more on the relationship between
trolling and abuse, the following is thought-provoking:
http://www.firelily.com/support/depression/trolls.html
I don't know how accurate the psychologizing is, but it's interesting
nonetheless.
So, as you can see, I do think that trolls exist on Wikipedia, and we
would do well to acknowledge this fact and respond appropriately.
Larry
I'm just now visiting the recent archive of Wikipedia-L:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001879.html
I'd like to add my $0.02 on a number of issues that have been raised.
This is important, I think, because we've got to pull together against
elements who are, to put it nicely, wasting our time. To pull together,
though, we've got to get very clear on what "trolls" are or might be, and
develop a robust, *well-thought-out*, *reasonable* idea of what to do when
the trolls attack. (As they will continue to do as long as Wikipedia is
open for business.) Each of us has to come to his or her own conclusions
on the issue; but the greater degree of consensus we can achieve (*for*
neutrality and productivity and *against* bias and kookiness), the more
effective we will be in showing trolls the door. (Without, ideally,
actually kicking them out the door.)
First, I really don't like the idea of putting Meta-Wikipedia comments on
the Recent Changes page. That was the whole point of having the
Meta-Wikipedia, if you'll remember: meta-discussion (partly in the form of
trolling by certain members of the project, along with responses to them),
had become such a serious problem, eating up the resources of the project,
that we wanted to move the wrangling away from the article production.
Please, let's keep it that way.
For historical perspective, see:
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Moving+commentary+out+of+Wikiped…
Next--I think Manning's post, "Some 24 comments and the cabal," was a
bullseye that said a bunch of stuff that sorely needed to be said:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-April/001807.html
To reiterate in my own words: our resident trolls, bless their twisted
hearts, have harped over and over again about issues of the politics of
Wikipedia, either stating or not-so-subtlely implying that some element of
the leadership of the community is pulling the wool over the eyes of the
community, that someone is usurping power. As Manning says, the main
authority behind the project rests with the community itself, and
particularly with the people who accept the basic defining features of the
community. Insinuations that a cabal, other than a "cabal" in this sense,
is taking control and foisting its views on the rest of us are only so
much guff, very possibly motivated by a dislike for the neutrality policy,
or so it seems to me.
I agree that "troll" is sometimes falsely used to mean little more
specific than "annoying person," which is way too broad. Originally (or
so the etymology and received wisdom has it), I think the term referred to
people who were *merely* trying to get a rise out of newbies, with no
deeper agenda than that. There are relatively few trolls in that sense,
and it's entirely plausible that The Cunctator, 24, and Michael Irwin
aren't trolls in *that* sense.
But I think there *is* a broader and much more useful sense of the term,
that is very often used by perfectly net-savvy people--at least as often
as the original use, and probably more often. This is how "troll" is used
in this page (#1 result for the "Internet troll" Google search):
http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm
According to this broader sense, trolls *thrive on being the center and
focus of controversy*. It is, seemingly, what they live for, at least
when it comes to Internet forums. Perhaps most importantly, **they do not
respond to reasonable criticism** in the way that most ordinary
intelligent people do; they treat dialectic as *merely* a game. They
don't seem to realize or care that they are speaking to *people* with all
that that entails.
Reasonable discussants are willing to stop and acknowledge that others can
and do have different points of view. Trolls, in this slightly broader
sense, almost always take personal offense that other people disagree with
them, so that when others express their disagreement, the trolls lash out
in hostile, abusive, and often strangely cryptic ways (as if they were
mainly speaking to themselves).
Most reasonable people go out of their way not to give offense to others
(except, perhaps, when it's warranted); trolls go out of their way to
think up clever ways to give offense to people who never did them any
harm.
Reasonable people (indeed, this might a basic criterion of being a
reasonable person) recognize and accept that, in a community, there must
be general standards of protocol, and they make a point of discovering
what those standards are and respecting them. If they criticize basic,
well-accepted community standards, they realize that they are taking what
might be received as a sort of extreme action, and they will word their
criticisms with appropriate delicacy and diplomacy. Trolls, by contrast
(and here again I'm speaking in the slightly broader sense), seem to take
*delight* in not only flouting basic standards of protocol, but
criticizing them openly and rudely as well. Any old hand on Usenet or
mailing lists knows this all too well. When called to task by a moderator
or administrator, the troll often will attack the moderator or
administrator, complain that his feelings are being hurt, and object that
his freedom of speech has been infringed. No reasonable person would
behave this way; he would instead stop and ask himself, "What have I done
wrong?" or instead say, "Oh, I see; these people aren't playing by the
rules I want to play by. I'll find a different group of people to play
with."
I can't really put it any better than what the above-referenced URL has:
"Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism (constructive or otherwise).
You cannot negotiate with them; you cannot cause them to feel shame or
compassion; you cannot reason with them. They cannot be made to feel
remorse. For some reason, trolls do not feel they are bound by the rules
of courtesy or social responsibility."
Now, there's a problem in *defining* "troll," even in this broad sense,
for the wiki context. Trolling up till now has been the abuse of Internet
*discussion*. But Wikipedia isn't a discussion; it's a content-creation
project. Of course, part of the trolling we've seen has been on talk page
discussions, but another large part of it (depending on the troll) has
been in article posting, viz., posting biased and kooky stuff in open
defiance of policy. I think this is a perfectly acceptable, robust
application of the concept to a new sort of context, though.
There's also a special problem in *dealing* with trolls on Wikipedia (or
any wiki): whereas on an ordinary discussion forum, one can simply
killfile the miscreant, on Wikipedia, we can't. Remember, we're actually
*doing something*. We're building a resource. The troll's disruptions
(in the form of totally and consciously biased, kooky, and otherwise
worthless repeated postings) can't be "killfiled." Somebody has to go
around after the troll and actually clean up. If nobody does, the biased,
kooky, worthless dross stays put; if it accumulates, Wikipedia's quality
and reputation is under some amount of threat (depending on how prolific
the troll is).
Given this, it might perhaps be better to apply the word "vandal" to
someone who posts really worthless stuff on Wikipedia. But I would
distinguish vandals from trolls as follows.
Vandals are interested in getting mere infantile jollies in seeing people
temporarily shocked by usually toilet humor.
Trolls actually want to build (hostile) relationships with people in order
to abuse them more satisfyingly. For more on the relationship between
trolling and abuse, the following is thought-provoking:
http://www.firelily.com/support/depression/trolls.html
I don't know how accurate the psychologizing is, but it's interesting
nonetheless.
So, as you can see, I do think that trolls exist on Wikipedia, and we
would do well to acknowledge this fact and respond appropriately.
Larry
Hi all --
Just thought I'd point out that 24 has at least made it to "rules to
consider" , read through, and signed (either for or against. A couple
of the 'against' don't give me warm fuzzies, but at least he/she is
expanding his/her horizons a bit.
On the subject of possums (or, as we call them in my family for reasons
unknown, possels), I think that the article already exists under Opossum
;-)
And is the site really slow lately?? It seems to take forever for pages
to load, and I'm not getting that at other sites....
Have a good day, all!
Jules
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
Dear Wikipedians!
Today I read an article in a mailinglist which lead me to a
slashdot discussion about a project called "World Wide Lexicon". There
seem to be some wrong expectations about it so I mailed the author of
WWL to ask him and to point him to Wikipedia. I think it's a very
interresting project, but you can take a look at it yourself:
the project:
www.worldwidelexicon.org
the /. discussion:
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/05/1911255.shtml?tid=95
the answers to my emails:
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Brian McConnell <brianmsf(a)yahoo.com>
An: Kurt Jansson <kurt(a)jansson.de>
Gesendet: Sonntag, 7. April 2002 19:55
Betreff: RE: Why "Lexicon"?
Kurt,
Thank you for your email.
I called it the worldwide lexicon because the system can be used to
retrieve
definitions for words as well as translations. For example, if you are
doing
a monolingual search, you can submit several different types of queries
to a
WWL server, including:
- syn : returns synonymous words and phrases
- ant : returns antonymous words and phrases
- def : returns verbose description for a word or phrase
- pcat : returns parent categories that the word, phrase or resource
locator
belongs to
- ccat : returns child categories that are associated with the entry
- vis : returns words that represent visually similar objects
I like Wikipedia, and would like to talk to someone about joining it to
the
WWL system. I think it could be very useful in processing monolingual
queries. All they will need to do is write a PHP script that recognizes
several SOAP simple methods.
I would also like to talk to the wikipedia software developer about the
possibility of modifying the system to be used as a translation
dictionary.
I don't like to reinvent the wheel, and it seems that the system they
have
built can be modified to host a user supported database of language pair
translations.
The benefit of joining Wikipedia is the system will appear as a data
source
along with other web dictionaries, lexicons and semantic network
servers.
The most useful feature of our system is that it will enable client
applications, a browser plug in for example, to locate WWL data sources
on
the fly, and then submit standardized queries to them. Thus, one fairly
simple piece of code can talk to lots of dictionaries throughout the web
(you might use it one day to lookup translations for words in a Spanish
document, and another to look for verbose definitions for words in your
home
language).
The main goal of WWL is to create a GNUtella like system for locating
and
communicating with dictionary and semantic network servers on the web
(there
are many). The problem today is that each system has its own proprietary
front end, so all of this information is fragmented. By creating a
simple
protocol for locating and talking to systems, it is possible to create
what
appears to be a single worldwide dictionary/semantic network that can be
accessed with a few lines of code.
Thanks for writing. Best regards,
Brian Mcconnell
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Brian McConnell <brianmsf(a)yahoo.com>
An: Kurt Jansson <kurt(a)jansson.de>
Gesendet: Sonntag, 7. April 2002 23:53
Betreff: RE: Why "Lexicon"?
Kurt,
Thanks for the quick reply.
Another point... WWL does not do full text translation. It is designed
to
assist word and phrase translation, as well as monolingual dictionary or
encyclopedia searches. As you know, translating full text without human
intervention is a very difficult problem. While I could see translation
systems using WWL to query dictionaries (to expand the scope of their
vocabularies), the WWL specification does not say anything about full
text
translation.
Our primary goal is to create a distributed dictionary/encyclopedia
protocol
that is very easy to implement in client and server software, and that
does
not require dictionary servers to make changes to their systems besides
writing a few scripts to generate SOAP responses instead of HTML. WWL's
purpose is to make it easy to automatically locate and communicate with
WWL-aware dictionary and semantic net servers. I like to describe this
as
GNUtella for dictionaries.
You are welcome to forward this my email to the wikipedia list or
developers. As I mentioned, I think you could do some interesting things
by
making your systems accessible via the WWL SOAP interface.
Thanks again for your email. Best regards.
Brian McConnell
Dear Wikipedians!
There is an article about Wikipedia and Nupedia in the latest issue
of Switzerland largest weekly news magazine (http://www.facts.ch).
It's in german though and not available online...
Anyhow, if you don't have a chance to buy a copy of 'facts' you might
want to have a look at a jpg-image of the 2 page article (300 kByte)
http://www.vt.ilw.agrl.ethz.ch/~hoevekam/tmp/facts.jpg. (I'll ask
the author of the article to provide an online version...)
I think it's a nice article giving a well-balanced introduction to
- mainly - Wikipedia. OK, the picture of Larry with it's title is
kind of out-dated and it wasn't clear to me, that they will include
it, when I 'proof-read' the article. BTW, I am the guy hiding behind
some books on the second picture...
Hope that makes up for some of the trouble with 24 etc...
Bye
Tobias
TOBIAS HOEVEKAMP
mailto:tobias.hoevekamp@ilw.agrl.ethz.ch
http://www.vt.ilw.agrl.ethz.ch/~hoevekam
WORK: ETH Zurich, LFO E21, CH-8092 Zurich, +41 1 632 3304
HOME: Anna Heer-Str. 2, CH-8057 Zurich, +41 1 350 5986
-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP 3.0 at http://email.ethz.ch/horde/imp
Yeah, Jimbo, I guess we need a staff meeting on this one - JHK said she'll bring the donuts.
OK - I'm not a Baha'i and my reasons for my editorial stance are fairly straightforward:
1 - The Orthodox Baha'is are a TINY fringe group (sub-2000 members) of a religion with 6 Million members. Hence any article should give fair balance to that proportionality.
2 - I have maintained since the beginning that the main Baha'i article should contain the principles of the faith (common to all divisions) and any other pages on divisions should focus on the nature and manner of the distinction.
3 - The main Baha'i article IS weak on outlining the principles. Not feeling adequately informed, I approached the newsgroup to summon other "experts" to enhance the main Baha'i article.. If any 'mainstream" Baha'is were then to attempt to eliminate the OB article, the same rules of NPOV would apply and I would defend the OB page.
4 - By "us" I was making the assumption that the majority of the community would support my editorial stance on this - something I'm still fairly confident of. So far this person has had three 'pedians give them the same story (SJK, BV and myself), although none of us have communicated amongst ourselves AFAIK.
Sorry to have you dragged into this, Jimbo. I hope I'm still allowed to come to the company social.
Cheers
Manning
PS - Rabo Karabekian is a character from Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions", I've been using is as a handle on NGs for years.
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] FYI, Baha'i
From: "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion(a)pobox.com>
To: wikipedia-l <wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com>
Date: 10 Apr 2002 15:08:11 -0700
Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
See also duplicate of the complaint post and further discussion,
including Manning's response, on the wiki at:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Talk%3AOrthodox%20Bahai%20Faith
While I do get the general impression that the mainstream Baha'is don't
seem to like the Orthodox Baha'is very much, I've seen no evidence of
misbehavior in the case of the wikipedia articles except on the part of
66.219.221.xxx him/herself, which he/she has yet to explain.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Wednesday 10 April 2002 01:49 am, Jimbo wrote:
> kband(a)www.llamacom.com wrote:
> > Are there other entries? Or is the hooplah mostly about his meta-rants?
>
> I'd like to second the call for lists of entries on the main site that he's
> screwed up. It'd help if we were all "on the same page" in terms of
> knowing what he's doing.
>
> His meta-rants are annoying and strange, but can easily be ignored if
> absolutely necessary.
>
> > I don't see that much evidence that he's trying to violate the mission
> > of Wikipedia, or even subvert it to his own kooky ends. He seems to
> > respect the mission, and thinks that people don't have the right
> > understanding of what NPOV means.
>
> Well, he's so incoherent that it's sort of hard to say...
>
> --Jimbo
Somebody has something at [[wikipedia utilities/Pages needing attention]] --
you can also check out 24's list of contribs which is accessed through
his/her user page at [[user:24.150.61.63]]. I have no idea why the
contributions link works since Ed Poor created the page -- not 24 by a login.
Also, I don't know if the contribs link is accurate or up to date (does this
work for any IP?).
Most of what he/she contributes is discoherent -- although some is actually
mildly interesting after you cut out the fat. I gave up on trying to keep up
with edits to this person's material because there is just so much of it.
Others seem to jump in quite often though -- God bless them.
Much of the most recent stuff really isn't THAT non-NPOV -- although it
takes an entire article of words for this person to say, maybe, a couple of
sentences of information (much of the leftover stuff is even not as non-NPOV
as what Ed Poor or the Cruncrator contributes....). It is a bear to wade
through this stuff. Apparently this person is beginning to understand that
NPOVing his/her stuff at least a little helps prevent a quick REVERT or
removal of text to a talk page. As I stated before, this person doesn't seem
to engage in edit wars -- which I still think is strange (given all the other
things this person has done).
Perhaps the power of the wiki is beggining to take its effect -- we can only
hope. WojPob is right; this issue is taking up WAY too much of our human
resources --- It's still a good idea for Jimbo to proceed with trying to
contact this person and see what he/she is about. And for all of us to keep a
watchful eye to make sure 24 has been tamed a bit. If this person is on a
similiar non-NPOV level as Ed or Crunc I can live with that. (talking about
level of severity, not ideology)
Although, the current lull in 24's submits may just be causing me to
automatically (once again) give this person the benefit of the doubt when
this person really doesn't deserve it. I guess we will see when he/she
starts to massively submit again.
maveric149
