Hello,
Jimbo has asked who supports Wik. Well, I do, for one. I would like to explain.
As I see it, Wik is not a problem with Wikipedia but, rather, a symptom of a much larger problem. In many ways, JHK, Zoe, Kosebamse, Tannin, and quite a few others were different symptoms of the same problem. That is because the real problem is the proliferation of users, some well-known, and some rather new, who have forgotten the most basic principle of Wikipedia: we are out to build an encyclopedia. Period. We are out to collect and organize the sum of human knowledge and present it in a manageable, readable format that could be of help to anyone. And we invite everyone to participate in this process, because we believe that it will benefit everyone. Yes, it is intellectually titillating, exciting, challenging, and fun. Those are side benefits of the essential value of the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge.
There are, however, people who do not share in our objectives. Because we are an open source (I hope I am using the term correctly), there are people who get their rocks off adding "Danny is a fag" or "Fuck you" into articles, or perhaps erasing texts, and engaging in other kinds of vandalism. They are annoying--sometimes even very annoying--but so are mosquitoes. While I think we need a better infrastructure to deal with these kinds of "users," I also believe that we are pretty effective cleaning up after them.
Then there are other kinds of users: users who come to Wikipedia with strong opinions one some subject or another, who insert these opinions into articles. The fact of the matter is, most of us have strong opinions, but we are more cautious (or perhaps, more sophisticated) when it comes to introducing them to Wikipedia. I have no doubt that these people believe strongly in their opinions, but I think we all agree that this is not the place for them to advocate on their behalf. That is why we have the NPOV policy. For instance, I am convinced that many Wikipedians would like to rewrite the George W. Bush or Bill Clinton (or Thatcher, or Sharon, or Arafat, or Evolution, or Homosexuality or any other contentious topic) articles so that they better reflect their personal politics, but they don't. Some people do, and frankly, they can be a stubborn lot--and I am assuming good faith, nonetheless.
Essentially, it is these users who are behind most of our edit wars. There can be several reasons for this: 1) they do not understand our NPOV policy; 2) they choose to ignore our NPOV policy; 3) they feel like adding their positions makes for more accurate NPOV. Personally, I have issue with the latter position, but this is not the place to discuss that. The problem is, that whatever their reason, this results in virulent edit wars, which tend to disrupt the community.
We are remarkably tolerant of these people--our bylaws were, in many cases, created with the assumption that they can reform--but unfortunately these users do tend to disrupt our community. Many users spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up after them or just getting into polemical arguments on talk pages with them. When it gets particularly heated, some users who sincerely care about the quality of the project leave in disgust (this was the case with JHK, for instance).
Wik is a valuable Wikipedian too. One only need look at his other, extensive, non-controversial edits to see that. The problem is that Wik also represents another option to trolls and vandalism: fighting back. Out of what seems like over-zealous quality control, he reverts them and does not waste his time in what he perceives as futile dialogue. By the way, my personal feeling is that if anyone here thinks that they will convince a biased POV pusher of their position on a talk page, they are severely deluded as to their persuasive skills--in almost all cases, it is simply an exercise in rhetoric.
There is a flaw in Wik's style: his methods tend to provoke rather than get rid of those trolls and vandals (yes, the vandals, too, are drawn to the confrontation). On the other hand, it is one way of dealing with a severe problem of trolling and vandalism that will only grow in intensity if it is not nipped in the bud. Leaving Wikipedia does not help resolve the problem. Banning someone for fighting back does not help resolve the problem either. In both cases, it just leaves the problem to fester, so that we see more and more established and valuable users getting frustrated. I quote Jimbo here:
"I should point out, not in support of Wik, but just by way of comment, that the great irony about Wik is that he's sort of an anti-troll troll. He claims, and I have little reason to doubt his sincerity of belief, that his annoying actions are just proper responses to various troublemakers on the site"
I believe that in the case of Wik, people are pointing the finger at him, rather than seeing what it is he is reverting (and yes, he has come under attack by respected users, which only exacerbates his own feeling of isolation and frustration). He is here to help build an encyclopedia, and as he seems to see it, he is being thwarted.
One last thing. I do not condone the lists of users on Wik's page. In fact, they trouble me. If he is reading this, or if someone can send this to him, I ask him to remove the lists as a gesture of good faith. Then, hopefully, we can all work together to improve the quality and quality control of Wikipedia.
Danny
Folks, This is my first post here, so I'm sorry that it is on such an unfortunate topic, but I wanted to suggest an alternative approach to the users who have been involved with J.R.R. Trollkien and other users with 'troll' in the name. It seems to me that by continuing to ban, block, hold hearings about etc, that we are feeding trollish behavior. The recent banning of one user for 'disruptive edits' or something like that in particular, while I can understand the sentiment, leaves us open to a double standard - I have seen many other users exhibit much more disruptive edits. I would suggest that we stop creating a lot of light and noise about this, and deal with behavior when / if it becomes a problem. Above all, don't needlessly feed the trolls - creating rules like 'no usernames with the word troll in them' seems gaurunteed to spur trolls to find the limit of this eg anagrams, words containing 'troll', synonyms etc - I'm pretty sure the novelty of it would wear off if people ignored them. My two cents. Mark
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover
On Wed, 5 May 2004 17:06:56 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
It seems to me that by continuing to ban, block, hold hearings about etc, that we are feeding trollish behavior.
Is there an alternative besides allowing them to be disruptive at will? Plaster requests for legal action all over the place? We could just revert them all without explanation and open ourselves to more accusations of being a cabal... :)
The recent banning of one user for 'disruptive edits' or something like that in particular, while I can understand the sentiment, leaves us open to a double standard - I have seen many other users exhibit much more disruptive edits.
The failure of other users to be censured, blocked, or have policy applied to them should directly not affect whether these users should be censured or blocked. Just because OJ Simpson got away with something doesn't mean I can use his failure to be imprisioned as a defense in a court of law.
Sure, I appreciate what you're saying - but I'm not talking about the rights and wrongs though, just that not feeding trolls is about the most effective way of reducing their impact that I've seen - this sort of thing looks like more food for trolling. Mark
--- Fennec Foxen fennec@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 5 May 2004 17:06:56 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
It seems to me that by continuing to ban, block,
hold
hearings about etc, that we are feeding trollish behavior.
Is there an alternative besides allowing them to be disruptive at will? Plaster requests for legal action all over the place? We could just revert them all without explanation and open ourselves to more accusations of being a cabal... :)
The recent banning of one user for 'disruptive edits' or something like that in particular, while I can understand the sentiment, leaves us open to a double standard - I have seen
many
other users exhibit much more disruptive edits.
The failure of other users to be censured, blocked, or have policy applied to them should directly not affect whether these users should be censured or blocked. Just because OJ Simpson got away with something doesn't mean I can use his failure to be imprisioned as a defense in a court of law. _______________________________________________ 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
My feeling is that they would not at all enjoy Wikipedia if they did not have "troll" in their user name. A sharp stick in the eye is what they are all about.
Killjoy Fred
From: Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 17:06:56 -0700 (PDT) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls - A novel approach - don't feed them
Folks, This is my first post here, so I'm sorry that it is on such an unfortunate topic, but I wanted to suggest an alternative approach to the users who have been involved with J.R.R. Trollkien and other users with 'troll' in the name. It seems to me that by continuing to ban, block, hold hearings about etc, that we are feeding trollish behavior. The recent banning of one user for 'disruptive edits' or something like that in particular, while I can understand the sentiment, leaves us open to a double standard - I have seen many other users exhibit much more disruptive edits. I would suggest that we stop creating a lot of light and noise about this, and deal with behavior when / if it becomes a problem. Above all, don't needlessly feed the trolls - creating rules like 'no usernames with the word troll in them' seems gaurunteed to spur trolls to find the limit of this eg anagrams, words containing 'troll', synonyms etc - I'm pretty sure the novelty of it would wear off if people ignored them. My two cents. Mark
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
Yes, but it seems that the fun of having the word 'troll' in their username is the fuss it causes. If we just didn't feed that behavior, it wouldn't be fun. I may be wrong, but I think that the proliferation of 'troll' names is a response to people making a fuss about it. Without anyone to feed them, trolls will look elsewhere. Mark
--- Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
My feeling is that they would not at all enjoy Wikipedia if they did not have "troll" in their user name. A sharp stick in the eye is what they are all about.
Killjoy Fred
From: Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia
Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 17:06:56 -0700 (PDT) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls - A novel approach -
don't feed them
Folks, This is my first post here, so I'm sorry that it
is on
such an unfortunate topic, but I wanted to suggest
an
alternative approach to the users who have been involved with J.R.R. Trollkien and other users
with
'troll' in the name. It seems to me that by continuing to ban, block,
hold
hearings about etc, that we are feeding trollish behavior. The recent banning of one user for 'disruptive edits' or something like that in particular, while I can understand the sentiment, leaves us open to a double standard - I have seen
many
other users exhibit much more disruptive edits. I would suggest that we stop creating a lot of
light
and noise about this, and deal with behavior when
/ if
it becomes a problem. Above all, don't needlessly
feed
the trolls - creating rules like 'no usernames
with
the word troll in them' seems gaurunteed to spur trolls to find the limit of this eg anagrams,
words
containing 'troll', synonyms etc - I'm pretty sure
the
novelty of it would wear off if people ignored
them.
My two cents. Mark
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
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover
Mark Richards wrote:
Yes, but it seems that the fun of having the word 'troll' in their username is the fuss it causes. If we just didn't feed that behavior, it wouldn't be fun. I may be wrong, but I think that the proliferation of 'troll' names is a response to people making a fuss about it. Without anyone to feed them, trolls will look elsewhere.
I agree with you. Simply having "troll" as a part of the name doesn't mean anything. What these individuals do "with" their accounts is a lot more significant. Those people who get so worked up over a name need to lighten up a bit.
Ec
"Mark Richards" wrote
I think that the proliferation of 'troll' names is a response to people making a fuss about it. Without anyone to feed them, trolls will look elsewhere.
Don't believe that works for WP. In-your-face usernames cause a deterioration of trust. UseRealNames is best, but not everyone would want this or find it possible. Having to keep one's cool in dealing with a potential dispute with User:Trolls'R'Us is that much harder.
Charles
He is here to help build an encyclopedia, and as he seems to see it, he is
being thwarted.
I would find it easier to believe that Wik and I are on the same side, if I could edit down the bloated [[1920 in Germany]] page without reverts from him and 172, with no use at all of the Talk page. Why defend blah windbag stuff like
''When, therefore, Germans came to survey the course of their history between the first partition of Poland, in 1772, and the Treaty of Versailles, they could not fail to feel singularly dissatisfied with the results which had been achieved. ''
???
Like it says beneath the box, stuff posted to WP is subject to being edited; especially 50K articles full of time-expired prose style.
Charles