"Armed Blowfish" wrote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TROLL This lists six different 'types' of trolling, encouraging people to call people who do those things trolls.
You know, it doesn't do that. It implicitly does the exact opposite, and references [[Wikipedia:Do not insult the vandals]], which explicitly does the opposite.
An interesting one, 'Examples [of trolling] include continual nomination of articles for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion that are obviously encyclopedic'
Erm, many blatantly psychologically damaging articles in violation of BLP may be encyclopaedic. So would those who support this essay consider those who try to get defamatory or otherwise damaging biographies deleted from Wikipaedia trolls?
A biography should be _deleted_ if the subject fails the criteria for inclusion in WP. It should be _radically edited_ if the content fails BLP, or other criteria for content. These are two different things entirely. You seem to be conflating them.
Another one: 'Some trolls are critical of the project, its policies, its users, its administration, or its goals. Often, this criticism comes in the form of accusations of cabals, ilks, or campaigns, that are typically invested in a particular POV, invested in maligning a specific user, and other similar claims.'
So would those who agree with this paragraph consider criticism directed at Wikipaedia as a whole, and not at individual users, to be trolls? I'm sure the more positive critics of Wikipaedia would be offended by that....
As I have said, criticism of actions on WP is OK. Accusations may not be OK, because they move from disagreeing with what is done, to implications that go well beyond mistakes. This need not make someone a 'troll': trolling is a kind of systematic provocation.
Perhaps people need to be reminded that not everything is about either helping an encyclopaedia or hurting it? People are complex and have a wide variety of motivations, many of which you will never guess over the internet unless they tell you.
Clueless newbie edits are regularly labelled as vandalism - which means intentional defacement of Wikipaedia.
The V-word should be used economically. I had a very interesting example, where a net nanny was producing apparent vandal edits for someone. Fortunately I didn't leap to conclusions, there.
It isn't though. Your average Recent Changes patroller, constantly looking to revert damaging edits, may be hasty to call anything that looks bad vandalism. And don't almost all the standard warnings (uw2 and up) encourage this, by including the term vandalism?
Your way of putting it (what is uw2?) makes it clear that you know enough about WP, to know also that the text in templates is editable. Have you tried to get the text changed? This is a sofixit - if there is a problem in your view, there is also a route for debating and dealing with it, namely through the discussion page for any template you think is objectionable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VAND#Types_of_vandalism This has a whole list of circumstances where you are encouraged to assume that someone is trying to deface Wikipaedia!
Well, in fairness, you could also reference the next section at WP:VAND where numerous things, including newbie tests, are described as not vandalism. That page also references the essay [[Wikipedia:Avoid the word "vandal"]]. So I fear you are shifting ground here. Where exactly is the incitement to call someone a vandal?
Enforcement of the conflict of interest policy almost always involves negative speculation on people's motives.
I have repeatedly said that COI is not a reason to abandon AGF. It really isn't. People use it instrumentally, to try to win editing arguments, but they are in the wrong there.
Well, unless they come right out and say they have a conflict of interest, don't you have to go looking for it, i.e. make negative guess about their motives? And we wonder why Wikipaedia admins get stalked... perhaps Wikipaedia itself is setting a terrible example.
We have to deal with COI. Since I have worked on the policy, I have a fairly clear idea of what it consists of. There is nothing at all - nothing - at WP:COI which justifies linking having such a policy with stalking. You demean yourself my making such a connection.
AGF is an interesting one.
'Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it.'
If good faith is defined as an attempt to help the encyclopaedia, is WP:AGF encouraging Wikipaedians to consider motivations which have absolutely nothing to do with Wikipaedia 'bad'? Or is this a Wikipaedia-centric world view? The world is not black and white, and not everything is about hurting Wikipaedia or helping it.
No, that is really a kind of smear on WP. It is a voluntary organization, and anyone can turn up to work on it. The baseline assumption in AGF is that volunteers are there to help, and are not (for example) propagandists or entryists of some sort.
And in big bold letters: 'This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary.'
Erm, when else would the guideline be useful? So if someone does a few bad things, that person is suddenly a horrible horrible person who deserves to be defamed on top of Google? Well, that includes everyone except the children....
Or, you could join the School of Humanism, and accept that the world is not black and white, and people are a mixture of good and bad!
Actually it means all sorts of things you miss. But making a few mistakes under policy is not 'evidence' applicable to revoking the assumption of AGF.
And what is a sockpuppetry investigation but a search for hidden malice? Any time anyone does anything that a significant number of people don't like, that person's motives are guessed in the worse possible light.
A search for abusive sockpuppetry is a search for abuse, plain and simple. I don't accept this.
But there's no such thing as certainty, only varying degrees of uncertainty. IP addresses do not map one-to-one to human beings. NATs (very large NATs in some countries), dynamic IPs (very dynamic in the case of dial-up), shared computers (especially internet cafes), etc. And that's not even getting in to proxies.... Yes, when you do writing analysis, accuracy gets much better, but not 100%. Some people are similar, and it can be very hard to tell the difference between Sybils and collaborators.
I'm aware of all this. This is the meat-and-potatoes of any serious discussion of socks. I've been involved in a few.
So block the people, keep notes available for the people who do the sockpuppetry investigations, but don't label the person as a sockpuppeteer on top of Google, because y'all will get it wrong sometimes.
Well, abusive sockpuppetry on WP is almost always undertaken consciously, knowing it is against site rules. I come down on the sceptical side of these investigations (non-Occamist). I can be wrong too, though.
The majority of user-contributed websites are attack sites, since it is human nature to attack. Off the top of my head, the only one I can think of that isn't is DeviantArt. Yes, people do attack other people on DeviantArt, but they fullfill requests from representatives to take things down, no questions asked.
I have said that "attack site" is a useless classification. It is facile and prejudges just the issues that matter in assessing critical material.
Perhaps, but it appears to be the popular term.
In any case, the websites discussed (WP, WR, ED, WT, WW) all seem to be engaging in one big, huge cross-site flame war.
So, go over to WR under a white flag....
No thanks. While some at WR are just deluded, some are malicious, and some pathological liars.
Most places, however, will merely say no when you ask them to take something down and they don't want to. Wikipaedia and Encyclopaedia Dramatica are significant exceptions to this - they will very often make things worse in response to complaints. What makes Wikipaedia worse than Encyclopaedia Dramatica is its higher Google rankings and self-righteous attitude (those people deserve to be attacked and suffer, for the good of the encyclopaedia!) Encyclopaedia Dramatica, at least, merely has a rather negative sense of humour.
Well, WP is better than ED on just about everything except intention to shock and persecute. Think what you're saying a moment.
<snip>
And who do you think ED learnt from?
<snip>
Look, you obviously have some gripe. But calling down the stalker, the troll, and the other Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse on your opponents can only weaken any case.
Charles
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On 20/09/2007, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
As I have said, criticism of actions on WP is OK. Accusations may not be OK, because they move from disagreeing with what is done, to implications that go well beyond mistakes. This need not make someone a 'troll': trolling is a kind of systematic provocation.
And there's plenty of sensible real-world criticism of Wikipedia, most of it well worth addressing, that doesn't turn into Wikipediareview. Set up a Google Alert for the word "wikipedia" (news and blogs) for a daily sample.
- d.
I wonder if it's just my own twisted perception, but it appears courtesy blankings are on a steep rise. I know this has been discussed at length, and I don't disagree with any particular blanking and I also assume there are more or less valid reasons in each individual case, esp. when it involves the use of Oversight. But I wonder if there is something like agreed-upon prerequisites or standards for a courtesy blanking to occur.
The last CB (not involving oversight) I noticed was of the Jeffrey Gustafson RfAr, on which I recognised nothing out of the ordinary. I don't mind the blanking itself, just wondering by which standards the blanking happened; or whether there are such standards in the first place, written or not.
Adrian
On 20/09/2007, Adrian aldebaer@googlemail.com wrote:
I wonder if it's just my own twisted perception, but it appears courtesy blankings are on a steep rise. I know this has been discussed at length, and I don't disagree with any particular blanking and I also assume there are more or less valid reasons in each individual case, esp. when it involves the use of Oversight. But I wonder if there is something like agreed-upon prerequisites or standards for a courtesy blanking to occur.
The last CB (not involving oversight) I noticed was of the Jeffrey Gustafson RfAr, on which I recognised nothing out of the ordinary. I don't mind the blanking itself, just wondering by which standards the blanking happened; or whether there are such standards in the first place, written or not.
As far as I know, they've always been done on a case by case basis. That works fine when they are quite rare. If they're getting more common, we probably should have at least a guideline.
On 9/20/07, Adrian aldebaer@googlemail.com wrote:
I wonder if it's just my own twisted perception, but it appears courtesy blankings are on a steep rise. I know this has been discussed at length, and I don't disagree with any particular blanking and I also assume there are more or less valid reasons in each individual case, esp. when it involves the use of Oversight. But I wonder if there is something like agreed-upon prerequisites or standards for a courtesy blanking to occur.
The last CB (not involving oversight) I noticed was of the Jeffrey Gustafson RfAr, on which I recognised nothing out of the ordinary. I don't mind the blanking itself, just wondering by which standards the blanking happened; or whether there are such standards in the first place, written or not.
Adrian
Err, they may be on the rise. There's a huge distinction between courtesy blankings, courtesy deletions, courtesy oversights. There is a "courtesy-blanked" template, it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Courtesy_blanking - sensibly it recommends its always substituted, so the "what links here" doesn't reveal all the courtesy blanked pages.
This does lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Courtesy_blanking which already gives some guidelines on courtesy blankings. The policy there says don't do it lightly, but if there's a huge upswing recently, that can be updated.
WilyD
On 20/09/2007, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Armed Blowfish" wrote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TROLL This lists six different 'types' of trolling, encouraging people to call people who do those things trolls.
You know, it doesn't do that. It implicitly does the exact opposite, and references [[Wikipedia:Do not insult the vandals]], which explicitly does the opposite.
It may not explicitly say 'You should call people trolls!' but it does provide material about what trolling supposedly is, which can be cited by those calling people trolls.
As for WP:DNITV, the people who don't follow that are far more visible than the ones who do.
An interesting one, 'Examples [of trolling] include continual nomination of articles for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion that are obviously encyclopedic'
Erm, many blatantly psychologically damaging articles in violation of BLP may be encyclopaedic. So would those who support this essay consider those who try to get defamatory or otherwise damaging biographies deleted from Wikipaedia trolls?
A biography should be _deleted_ if the subject fails the criteria for inclusion in WP. It should be _radically edited_ if the content fails BLP, or other criteria for content. These are two different things entirely. You seem to be conflating them.
And what of the wishes of the subject? And what are the criteria for inclusion outside the main space?
Another one: 'Some trolls are critical of the project, its policies, its users, its administration, or its goals. Often, this criticism comes in the form of accusations of cabals, ilks, or campaigns, that are typically invested in a particular POV, invested in maligning a specific user, and other similar claims.'
So would those who agree with this paragraph consider criticism directed at Wikipaedia as a whole, and not at individual users, to be trolls? I'm sure the more positive critics of Wikipaedia would be offended by that....
As I have said, criticism of actions on WP is OK. Accusations may not be OK, because they move from disagreeing with what is done, to implications that go well beyond mistakes. This need not make someone a 'troll': trolling is a kind of systematic provocation.
Individuals can be hurt more easily than whole organisations. Especially when talking in a forum where many of the people whose actions you are criticising are not able to respond, it may be better to criticise the whole organisation. If the culture of the organisation encouraged the individual's actions anyway, the individual may not be entirely responsible anyway. If someone flays you, do you criticise the whip, the hand, the whipper, or the person who ordered the whipping? Certainly not the whip - it has no control over its actions. Nor the hand, which was simply acting mechanically on the nerve impulses of the brain. The whipper is him or her self merely a hand to whomever ordered it. Sure, he or she could say no, but some one else would step in to take his or her place. The one who ordered it, though, that person is responsible.
[snip]
It isn't though. Your average Recent Changes patroller, constantly looking to revert damaging edits, may be hasty to call anything that looks bad vandalism. And don't almost all the standard warnings (uw2 and up) encourage this, by including the term vandalism?
Your way of putting it (what is uw2?) makes it clear that you know enough about WP, to know also that the text in templates is editable. Have you tried to get the text changed? This is a sofixit - if there is a problem in your view, there is also a route for debating and dealing with it, namely through the discussion page for any template you think is objectionable.
Clicking on 'edit this page' brings up the following in big bold letters:
'Block warning: You can read pages, but your account is blocked from editing and changing them.'
So much for that theory.
This is uw2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Uw-test2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VAND#Types_of_vandalism This has a whole list of circumstances where you are encouraged to assume that someone is trying to deface Wikipaedia!
Well, in fairness, you could also reference the next section at WP:VAND where numerous things, including newbie tests, are described as not vandalism. That page also references the essay [[Wikipedia:Avoid the word "vandal"]]. So I fear you are shifting ground here. Where exactly is the incitement to call someone a vandal?
By saying that certain types of actions are or tend to be the result of a desire to hurt Wikipaedia, it discourages consideration that most people are more complex than that.
Oh look, an entire page dedicated to calling people vandals! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrator_intervention_against_va...
Also see the Administrators' Noticeboards....
Alternatively, the policy could be renamed 'Destructive editing', and discussion of reasons for destructive limited to merely saying their are a wide variety of reason, including the well- meaning, the ill-meaning, and the nothing-to-do-with-Wikipaedia.
Well, unless they come right out and say they have a conflict of interest, don't you have to go looking for it, i.e. make negative guess about their motives? And we wonder why Wikipaedia admins get stalked... perhaps Wikipaedia itself is setting a terrible example.
We have to deal with COI. Since I have worked on the policy, I have a fairly clear idea of what it consists of. There is nothing at all - nothing - at WP:COI which justifies linking having such a policy with stalking. You demean yourself my making such a connection.
1. What policy says and what is done are not the same. 2. There have been complaints by people who feel outed by enforcers of that policy. 3. Someone connected to the outing of a Wikipaedia admin cited the need to prove a conflict of interest as a reason for outing.
Perhaps you should consider other ways of keeping the articles neutral-ish.
AGF is an interesting one.
'Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it.'
If good faith is defined as an attempt to help the encyclopaedia, is WP:AGF encouraging Wikipaedians to consider motivations which have absolutely nothing to do with Wikipaedia 'bad'? Or is this a Wikipaedia-centric world view? The world is not black and white, and not everything is about hurting Wikipaedia or helping it.
No, that is really a kind of smear on WP. It is a voluntary organization, and anyone can turn up to work on it. The baseline assumption in AGF is that volunteers are there to help, and are not (for example) propagandists or entryists of some sort.
Not anyone... for starters, not the Chinese.
'There to help' ... who or what?
Certainly, everyone wants to help someone or something, probably multiple someones or somethings. The questions is not whether, but who or what?
And in big bold letters: 'This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary.'
Erm, when else would the guideline be useful? So if someone does a few bad things, that person is suddenly a horrible horrible person who deserves to be defamed on top of Google? Well, that includes everyone except the children....
Or, you could join the School of Humanism, and accept that the world is not black and white, and people are a mixture of good and bad!
Actually it means all sorts of things you miss. But making a few mistakes under policy is not 'evidence' applicable to revoking the assumption of AGF.
The assumption that you are a human being, a mixture of good and bad, who feels and laughs and cries, is never revoked unless you fail the Turing test.
But there's no such thing as certainty, only varying degrees of uncertainty. IP addresses do not map one-to-one to human beings. NATs (very large NATs in some countries), dynamic IPs (very dynamic in the case of dial-up), shared computers (especially internet cafes), etc. And that's not even getting in to proxies.... Yes, when you do writing analysis, accuracy gets much better, but not 100%. Some people are similar, and it can be very hard to tell the difference between Sybils and collaborators.
I'm aware of all this. This is the meat-and-potatoes of any serious discussion of socks. I've been involved in a few.
Excellent! : )
So block the people, keep notes available for the people who do the sockpuppetry investigations, but don't label the person as a sockpuppeteer on top of Google, because y'all will get it wrong sometimes.
Well, abusive sockpuppetry on WP is almost always undertaken consciously, knowing it is against site rules. I come down on the sceptical side of these investigations (non-Occamist). I can be wrong too, though.
1. It is highly probable that certain people are sockpuppets. 2. The above is only a probability - it could be mistaken. 3. Sockpuppets are apparently dangerous to Wikipaedia. 4. They are also human beings, and not particularly notable ones.
1 and 3 are reasons for banning these people, and keeping notes necessary for future investigations. (The notes can be kept somewhere non-public - most of the people who investigate sockpuppetry are admins anyway.) 2 and 4 are reasons to ban them kindly. Prevent them from editing, but if one of the accounts is a real name, don't spread that around, don't out where the live to the world, don't publish user-space biographies on them saying they are sockpuppets on Google- indexed pages, etc.
Perhaps, but it appears to be the popular term.
In any case, the websites discussed (WP, WR, ED, WT, WW) all seem to be engaging in one big, huge cross-site flame war.
So, go over to WR under a white flag....
No thanks. While some at WR are just deluded, some are malicious, and some pathological liars.
The whole world's deluded. Benevolence and malevolence are sometimes two sides of the same coin. As for lying, show me someone who's never lied and I'll show you a mute... oh wait, there is also non-vocal communication... ah well. In any case, from king and milk snakes to katydids to whales to owl butterflies to hyenas, deception is evolutionarily ingrained into living creatures, something that we do without even thinking about it, deceiving not only others, but also ourselves. (Better understanding of signalling theory could help with your sockpuppetry investigations, by the way.)
1. WR has been known to remove some offending material upon request. 2. WR has removed personal info on me which WP has refused to remove. 3. I am guessing there are things you think they should remove?
They have an email you can send complaints to....