It's a bit of an oversimplification. If I wanted to troll, I'd make a controversial edit. When it was reverted I'd troll on the talk page. Get no bites - make another controversial edit and troll on the talk page again. Get no bites again? Troll quickpolls, village pump, review of admin actions etc, complaining that I was being reverted without discussion.
How do you deal with users like a troll version of me?
Theresa
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Richards [mailto:marich712000@yahoo.com] Sent: 06 May 2004 16:25 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] On trolls, usenet and Wikipedia
Hang on a second, I thought vandals were easy to deal with? Revert, ban if necessary, done. The problem is users who have not vandalised anything, but seek to engage in endlessly convoluted arguments with anyone who will play. Unfortunately, if you play, you have lost already. If the troll vandalises, ban him immediately. If not, don't feed him. Mark
--- Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote:
On Usenet or any of many online forums, trolls can be ignored (not fed) and they mostly disappear. On wikipedia, they escalate their vandalism, learning ever-sneakier ways of damaging articles that people have spend countless hours of their precious time crafting.
Ignoring a troll on wikipedia is the worst thing you could possibly do, since it will bite you in the proverbial bum.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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As it sits now we would deal with the user who reverted you, but entered into no dialogue with you on the talk page. Remember you are just a NEW troll, not an established old timer. As to dealing with well established trolls they have set up a disruptive pattern which if analysed can be demonstrated.
Fred
From: "KNOTT, T" tknott@qcl.org.uk Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 17:01:29 +0100 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] On trolls, usenet and Wikipedia
It's a bit of an oversimplification. If I wanted to troll, I'd make a controversial edit. When it was reverted I'd troll on the talk page. Get no bites - make another controversial edit and troll on the talk page again. Get no bites again? Troll quickpolls, village pump, review of admin actions etc, complaining that I was being reverted without discussion.
How do you deal with users like a troll version of me?
Theresa
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Richards [mailto:marich712000@yahoo.com] Sent: 06 May 2004 16:25 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] On trolls, usenet and Wikipedia
Hang on a second, I thought vandals were easy to deal with? Revert, ban if necessary, done. The problem is users who have not vandalised anything, but seek to engage in endlessly convoluted arguments with anyone who will play. Unfortunately, if you play, you have lost already. If the troll vandalises, ban him immediately. If not, don't feed him. Mark
--- Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote:
On Usenet or any of many online forums, trolls can be ignored (not fed) and they mostly disappear. On wikipedia, they escalate their vandalism, learning ever-sneakier ways of damaging articles that people have spend countless hours of their precious time crafting.
Ignoring a troll on wikipedia is the worst thing you could possibly do, since it will bite you in the proverbial bum.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
How do you deal with users like a troll version of me?
Theresa
Oh dear - and I thought female trolls were in the entwives/hen's teeth class for rarity.
I think wikis make it very easy for attention-seeking vandals/trolls to get attention. After all, vandalise a page, after 30 seconds on RecentChanges it's reverted; you have your attention. And rightly given. An argumentative person on a Talk page really should be given calm, firm attention.
Strip out those categories ... well, but the soft security point is not to argue that this always works, but to point out that it is a good-enough buffer for all but hard cases.
Charles