[WikiEN-l] WP:DENY is a steaming pile of crap.

[GDonato]

Flameviper Velifang wrote:
> There. I said it. It's a pretentious, self-important heap.
>    
>   Why? Because it insists on the existence of "trolls". You see, we have [[WP:AGF]], but then we also have Trolling. This, apparently, is where you go on a website and piss off people for the lulz*. Of course, there are trolls on the internet. But this can't be confirmed.
>   
> By definition, someone is a troll when they are annoying you with malicious intent.
>   You can't tell someone's intent when you're across the Internet, so that can basically be assumed. If you like someone, you can say that they were acting in good faith, while if you don't like them, you can take the most innocuous of actions and say that they were doing it in bad faith.
>    
>   Basically, the word "troll" means "person who annoys me". So by definition, it's an extremely subjective label. And when you try to have objective policy based on a subjective definition, you get a shitstorm**. You have people being labelled as "trolls" because they had the misfortune to annoy someone. And worse, they can't prove to anyone that they aren't a troll because of [[WP:DENY]]. This essentially states that if someone yells "TROLL!" then the person in question immediately becomes Satan incarnate, and will never again have a fair chance to do anything on equal footing with anyone else.
>    
>   It's fine to ignore intentionally annoying people who try to get a rise out of you, but when you're on the Internet, it doesn't fucking** work. You can't tell someone's intent, and to try is to fail. IRC is a great example.
>    
[..... continues]

I do seem to remember having a good, sensible conversation with 
Flameviper on IRC once but he was not a model user by any means. There 
was some name-calling and/or incivility as I remember and it took some 
time in order to get the thing on-topic but once we were there, the rest 
of the conversation went well. Unfortunately, but understandably, not 
all people are willing to spend this time when there are people who are 
possibly easier to interact with also needing help. If Flameviper wishes 
to become a more respected user, he should ensure that he is courteous 
and respects others as much as possible.

G Donato