Hello!
The German-language Wikipedia is more and more facing the same problems as the English one. We seldom used to have more than one troll at a time, but times they are changing, and we are a bit concerned about the future. At the moment we have to deal with a very persistent troll and another user who has been banned and keeps coming back. In addition to that we have a few long enduring edit-wars. I think we have to create new policies and develop processes to handle theses problems.
The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban, and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might have already made.
I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!
Kurt
P.S.: Any advice is welcome, but personally I'd be especially interested in the opinion of Cunc and Ray about these issues.
--- Kurt Jansson jansson@gmx.net wrote:
I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!
absolutely unrelated to the subject:
Please, please, native english writers: a lot of people who read these lists are from foreign countries/languages. Keep things simple, and don't use strange words or constructs just to be cute.
Thank you in advance.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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Christopher Mahan wrote:
Please, please, native english writers: a lot of people who read these lists are from foreign countries/languages. Keep things simple, and don't use strange words or constructs just to be cute.
Well, "strange words" are easy to look up in a dictionary, but I do completely agree with you with regard to constructs. However, it is non-trivial for a native speaker to determine what sort of grammar is "simple" and what isn't. A sentence like "Trolls and vandals are something to look out for on Wikipedia" seems pretty simple and standard for English speakers, but is actually quite hard for learners to parse.
Timwi
Timwi wrote: A sentence like "Trolls and vandals are
something to look out for on Wikipedia" seems pretty simple and standard for English speakers, but is actually quite hard for learners to parse.
Timwi
"look out" and any sentence using a verb like *get *put *look *...
with something like after the verb *off *out *in *out *with *...
is something to avoid as much as possible
evil
On Sunday 30 May 2004 00:33, Kurt Jansson wrote:
The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban, and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might have already made.
I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!
Shouldn't such a document kept secret?
Nikola Smolenski schrieb:
Shouldn't such a document kept secret?
I guess you're thinking about the tactics when dealing with trolls. Yes, maybe some of them only work if the troll doesn't know about them. Please feel free to send texts about this to me and I'll share them only with our trusted users.
Kurt
Kurt Jansson wrote:
The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban, and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might have already made.
Hm. This seems like something that nobody can really write from an NPOV. Some people will tell you the arbritration committee was a fantastic idea, others will condemn it as a horrible mistake...
Timwi schrieb:
Hm. This seems like something that nobody can really write from an NPOV. Some people will tell you the arbritration committee was a fantastic idea, others will condemn it as a horrible mistake...
I know that. Please have a bit of confidence in me, I'll try to make my own picture out of the puzzle pieces.
Another possibility would be to work on one text and try to make it NPOV, but that would be more work and some opinions about the topic might get lost.
Kurt
A few thoughts. Clearly communicate with those who are "trolling" or edit-warring the nature of your difficulties with whatever they are doing. Give them a fair opportunity to change what they are doing, with edit warriors generally that involves them communicating better with their opponents and getting down to the business of looking up the facts, trying to find ways to satisfy both viewpoints, etc.
With respect to mediation, you can start with one or two of you offering informal mediation, you probably have at least one person with training in mediation, perhaps someone with union experience.
Arbitration is slow and rather unsatisfying to the participants since their doctrinal disputes are not settled; rather an inquiry results into whether they have followed the rules, usually neither have. It turns out that there is reluctance to enforce some things that have been thought to be rules and conversely new "rules" develop as a practical remedy is sought for some variety of intolerable refractory behavior.
Fred
From: Kurt Jansson jansson@gmx.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 00:33:20 +0200 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] We need your advice!
Hello!
The German-language Wikipedia is more and more facing the same problems as the English one. We seldom used to have more than one troll at a time, but times they are changing, and we are a bit concerned about the future. At the moment we have to deal with a very persistent troll and another user who has been banned and keeps coming back. In addition to that we have a few long enduring edit-wars. I think we have to create new policies and develop processes to handle theses problems.
The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban, and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might have already made.
I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!
Kurt
P.S.: Any advice is welcome, but personally I'd be especially interested in the opinion of Cunc and Ray about these issues.
-- http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile Bücher, Videos und CDs mit anderen! http://wikipedia.de -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklopädie! Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Sun, 30 May 2004 06:05:42 -0600, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
A few thoughts. Clearly communicate with those who are "trolling" or edit-warring the nature of your difficulties with whatever they are doing. Give them a fair opportunity to change what they are doing, with edit warriors generally that involves them communicating better with their opponents and getting down to the business of looking up the facts, trying to find ways to satisfy both viewpoints, etc.
This is excellent advice.
My personal input on this matter: Trolling should be considered harmful. It disrupts the wiki. However, simply calling someone a troll is itself harmful, for there is far too much latitude in such a word, and the trolls themselves will use it to speak of their detractors.
Instead, clearly identify the problem behaviors. Disrupting policy pages like Votes for Deletion with absurd deletion requests? Nominating nonsense candidates for administrator? Engaging in personal attacks on other editors? Harassing editors or administrators by questioning every single thing they do? Reverting random (or nonrandom) edits without explaining or coming to a consensus on the talk page? Doing stuff like this repeatedly?
Then, you need to have some way for the community to decide whether a user needs to be banned/censured/etc. Establish reasonable guidelines there to prevent sock puppets, or allow an elected group.