Most people with serious mental disorders are unable to keep it together enough to edit, or are disorganized but harmless. A small group is focused and disruptive. They generally can't work, so have idle time and often an ax to grind (after all, they may actually wear aluminum foil hats to prevent the CIA from reading their thoughts.) Our share of this sort of trouble is consistent with its incidence in society. It is important to be courteous, but to avoid entanglement. A tiny minority is actually dangerous and law enforcement assistance should be sought. You might think about editing anonymously, if this sort of trouble is unacceptable.
Not a psychologist, I just have some experience.
Fred
-----Original Message----- From: Bogdan Giusca [mailto:liste@dapyx.com] Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 02:58 PM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: [WikiEN-l] Psychosis and Wikipedia
I did not edit much Wikipedia lately because of lack of time, but I noticed a worrying trend:
A couple of days ago I got another harassing phone call from an apparently delusional person (complete with threats of lawsuit and vague threats of physical violence) over some older AfD and today, on another AfD I started, someone posted stuff like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%...
Is there any psychologist here which can explain why such people are attracted to wikipedia?
Or perhaps, are there really that many people like that in the general population?
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Fred Bauder wrote:
Most people with serious mental disorders are unable to keep it together enough to edit, or are disorganized but harmless. A small group is focused and disruptive. [...] It is important to be courteous, but to avoid entanglement.
I think this is very important advice, and too rarely followed.
From my layman's perspective, a lot of these difficult kooks only really focus on contention. Not on disagreement or thwarting them as such, but the social signals of contention. Maintaining a friendly and helpful attitude while continuously disengaging can keep you in the 99.9% of the world that they ignore.
William
On May 14, 2007, at 4:57 AM, William Pietri wrote:
I think this is very important advice, and too rarely followed.
From my layman's perspective, a lot of these difficult kooks only really focus on contention. Not on disagreement or thwarting them as such, but the social signals of contention. Maintaining a friendly and helpful attitude while continuously disengaging can keep you in the 99.9% of the world that they ignore.
William
Excellent advise. I thank you for that. I have experience many of these that *enjoy* both the attention and the contention, and feed on it avidly. I wish I can garner the strength and clarity not to get baited...
-- Jossi
On May 14, 2007, at 4:57 AM, William Pietri wrote:
I think this is very important advice, and too rarely followed.
From my layman's perspective, a lot of these difficult kooks only really focus on contention. Not on disagreement or thwarting them as such, but the social signals of contention. Maintaining a friendly and helpful attitude while continuously disengaging can keep you in the 99.9% of the world that they ignore.
William
on 5/14/07 3:45 PM, jf_wikipedia at jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
Excellent advise. I thank you for that. I have experience many of these that *enjoy* both the attention and the contention, and feed on it avidly. I wish I can garner the strength and clarity not to get baited...
Jossi,
Learn your vulnerable spots - we all have them. They are like bruises on the body; when touched > we react. Learn that reaction. When communicating with someone, if you feel that reaction: Stop > Know what it is > Acknowledge it to yourself > Take a breath > and Stay on subject.
People who want to manipulate you, or take you off a subject they don't want to deal with, or consider it a sign of power over you, will push until they find a bruise. A friend and/or someone who truly wants to communicate with you will deliberately try to avoid any spot they think might be a bruise - especially if they have a similar one of their own.
Marc Riddell
On May 14, 2007, at 2:23 PM, Marc Riddell wrote:
Learn your vulnerable spots - we all have them. They are like bruises on the body; when touched > we react. Learn that reaction. When communicating with someone, if you feel that reaction: Stop > Know what it is > Acknowledge it to yourself > Take a breath > and Stay on subject.
People who want to manipulate you, or take you off a subject they don't want to deal with, or consider it a sign of power over you, will push until they find a bruise. A friend and/or someone who truly wants to communicate with you will deliberately try to avoid any spot they think might be a bruise - especially if they have a similar one of their own.
Thank you for sharing that understanding.
-- Jossi
On 5/14/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On May 14, 2007, at 4:57 AM, William Pietri wrote:
I think this is very important advice, and too rarely followed.
From my layman's perspective, a lot of these difficult kooks only really focus on contention. Not on disagreement or thwarting them as such, but the social signals of contention. Maintaining a friendly and helpful attitude while continuously disengaging can keep you in the 99.9% of the world that they ignore.
William
on 5/14/07 3:45 PM, jf_wikipedia at jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
Excellent advise. I thank you for that. I have experience many of these that *enjoy* both the attention and the contention, and feed on it avidly. I wish I can garner the strength and clarity not to get baited...
Jossi,
Learn your vulnerable spots - we all have them. They are like bruises on the body; when touched > we react. Learn that reaction. When communicating with someone, if you feel that reaction: Stop > Know what it is > Acknowledge it to yourself > Take a breath > and Stay on subject.
People who want to manipulate you, or take you off a subject they don't want to deal with, or consider it a sign of power over you, will push until they find a bruise. A friend and/or someone who truly wants to communicate with you will deliberately try to avoid any spot they think might be a bruise - especially if they have a similar one of their own.
Marc Riddell
-- Remember: We teach people how to treat us.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Further all this, an interesting study: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3209
Excess testosterone can cause you to feel happy when people make angry faces at you...
on 5/14/07 3:45 PM, jf_wikipedia at jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
Excellent advise. I thank you for that. I have experience many of these that *enjoy* both the attention and the contention, and feed on it avidly. I wish I can garner the strength and clarity not to get baited...
On 5/14/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Jossi,
Learn your vulnerable spots - we all have them. They are like bruises on the body; when touched > we react. Learn that reaction. When communicating with someone, if you feel that reaction: Stop > Know what it is > Acknowledge it to yourself > Take a breath > and Stay on subject.
People who want to manipulate you, or take you off a subject they don't want to deal with, or consider it a sign of power over you, will push until they find a bruise. A friend and/or someone who truly wants to communicate with you will deliberately try to avoid any spot they think might be a bruise - especially if they have a similar one of their own.
Marc Riddell
-- Remember: We teach people how to treat us.
on 5/16/07 10:31 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Further all this, an interesting study: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3209
Excess testosterone can cause you to feel happy when people make angry faces at you...
AKA: Getting off by pissing people off :-).
Also, the emotional message, "I can affect someone".
Marc
On 17/05/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 5/16/07 10:31 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Further all this, an interesting study: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3209 Excess testosterone can cause you to feel happy when people make angry faces at you...
AKA: Getting off by pissing people off :-). Also, the emotional message, "I can affect someone".
I have of course added this to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/DICK . It also proves that page is at the right title.
- d.
On 5/17/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Excess testosterone can cause you to feel happy when people make angry faces at you...
AKA: Getting off by pissing people off :-).
Also, the emotional message, "I can affect someone".
It's the motivation for certain kinds of trolling, pissing people off just for the sake of pissing them off. The best targets for this are people and groups who have strong beliefs and/or are easily offended.
Traditional examples are Usenet's "Meowers", and "Usenet performance artists". More modern examples are sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica. They have a large collection of other people's goats.
on 5/13/07 8:07 PM, Fred Bauder at fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
Most people with serious mental disorders are unable to keep it together enough to edit, or are disorganized but harmless. A small group is focused and disruptive. They generally can't work, so have idle time and often an ax to grind (after all, they may actually wear aluminum foil hats to prevent the CIA from reading their thoughts.) Our share of this sort of trouble is consistent with its incidence in society. It is important to be courteous, but to avoid entanglement. A tiny minority is actually dangerous and law enforcement assistance should be sought. You might think about editing anonymously, if this sort of trouble is unacceptable.
I just have some experience.
Fred,
Excellent observations and advice. Protect yourself first, don't pour gasoline on an already raging fire - then, when it's safe (if you're still interested), try and figure out what and why.
(BTW, I particularly liked your CIA reference :-)
Marc Riddell