On 20/09/2007, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
"Armed Blowfish" wrote
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.
And how is WP supposed to handle its problem users, without that sort
of discussion?
Problem user != troll
A problem user is someone who is hurting something, intentions irrelevant.
A troll is someone who enjoys getting yelled at.
A vandal is someone who wants to deface something.
You can certainly discuss what qualifies as a problem user
without worrying about whether they have a secret masochistic
desire to be yelled at or want to deface Wikipaedia.
Amongst the other Cassandras, there have (in the past)
been those
saying 'you realise WP will be over-run by trolls?' Didn't happen. I
don't think your argument is that strong.
See the Google searches I sent earlier.
As for
WP:DNITV, the people who don't follow that are far more
visible than the ones who do.
Tell me, why are you not criticising them, then? Why are you assuming that
those who are outside the well-known policy lines are representative of
''official'' Wikipedia? We can both agree that those people are doing it
wrong.
Firstly, Because, like Fred, I do not believe in blaming individuals
for societal problems, and society does encourage this sort of
thing, whether codified or not.
Secondly, wrong or not, these people are probably not acting
rationally. Consider fear and anger - biochemical, physiological
and emotional responses given to us by evolution, because we
need them to survive.
Fear triggers an increase in heart rate and respiration; blood
flow is increased to the skeletal muscles and brain while
blood flow is decreased to the stomach, kidneys, liver and
skin. Adrenaline, endorphines... quite spectacular what the
human body can accomplish.
'Whereas anger dyscontrol can result from long-term exposure
to adverse life circumstances, acute trauma, psychosis, or
biochemical imbalances, recurrent anger can be seen to be a
product of agentic behavior. People often select high-conflict
settings or continue to inhabit high-stress environments that set
the stage for their anger experiences. Habitually hostile or
aggressive people can create systemic conditions that fuel
continued anger responding that is resistant to change.
Alternatively, many clients are beset with exposure to toxic
psychosocial environments, from which they seem to have little
freedom of movement.' -- Timothy Cavell and Kenya Malcolm,
'Anger, Aggression, and Interventions for Interpersonal Violence',
p. 15
Fear and anger are different in significant yet subtle ways, and
often produce very similar reactions.
In conclusion, while fear and anger often lead people to do things
which we may, if we are not feeling emotional ourselves,
disapprove of, these people often are in great pain and should
be helped. (I should also point out that compared that some of
the things people I've known have done in anger - e.g. beating on
other people, calling someone a troll is fairly tame and forgivable.)
Additionally, society often triggers these responses by creating
toxic psychosocial environments. When people become angry or
fearful in reaction, they may further toxify the psychosocial
environment by triggering others. So the question is, how do you
get out of the loop?
Punishment furthers the cycle, adding psychosocial toxicity, and
fails to acknowledge the pain of the participants. Punishment is
often an act of revenge itself. Note that in physical fights, even
if someone attacks you, continuing to punch that person when
they are down is not legally considered self-defence in many
jurisdictions, but attacking. Of course, everyone is so angry or
afraid or whatever they may as well be stumbling drunk.
And what of
the wishes of the subject? And what are the criteria for
inclusion outside the main space?
You know what the 'wishes of the subject' count for. If say Robert Mugabe
put a call through to St. Petersburg, Florida, objecting to inclusion in
Wikipedia, you know what the reaction would be. The 'criteria for
inclusion'are for the article space, as you also know. Simply shifting
crabwise when you are called on these things doesn't help your cause.
In my book, the wishes of the subject count for a lot, unless the
subject is so incredibly notable that deleting the article would
leave a huge gaping hole in Wikipaedia. (Example: politicians)
In the book of much of the Wikipaedia, even a marginally notable
subject may be considered an enemy just for asking for his or
her biography to be removed, and furthermore, many people
support keeping around banned user pages (which are essentially
biographies) in order that the user's reputation may be punished.
In your book, you tell me.
[snip]
Well, you appear to be saying that the culture
encourages the
things it explicitly discourages. [snip]
Are not Recent Changes patrollers championed not only as
hard workers preserving the encyclopaedia, but as glorious
vandal fighters? Is not much time spent arguing over whether
something is vandalism rather than explaining why it hurts the
encyclopaedia and listening to why the person thought it would
accomplish... something?
Even the supposedly obvious stuff could be the work of simple
drunkards. Nothing rational about being drunk, so trying to
attribute rational explanations (such as trying to deface
Wikipaedia) really doesn't work.
Nothing rational about most of the things people do, actually.
About 90% of a person's thinking is subconscious, and the
10% that is conscious spends most the its time trying to
rationalise whatever that other 90% came up with.
[snip]
Really, what exactly is your point? That WP is not
perfect, which is a
perfectly reasonable point, or that it has no redeeming features, since
everything put in place to allow amelioration and fair criticism and
sensible policy enforcement in a transparent way somehow doesn't count?
My point is that one way to get the 'attack sites' to be nicer to Wikipaedians
might be to take measures to not be an attack site.
Examples:
* More liberal courtesy blankings, deletions and oversights.
* Blank/delete first, ask questions later.
* Discuss courtesy blankings/deletions/oversights privately, not publicly.
* OTRS should be a badge.
* Ban people kindly - allow banned users to vanish.
* Don't reveal someone's general geographic location after a CU.
* Tell Google to no-index everything but the actual encyclopaedia. (If
Google juice is a problem, there are ways to tell Google to follow the
links on a page but not index the page itself.)
* etc.
<snip>
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 [COI].
3. Someone connected to the outing of a Wikipaedia admin
cited the need to prove a conflict of interest as a reason
for outing.
As you know, outing people on the site is fundamentally against policy.
Everyone should read the COI guideline, of course. It doesn't in any way
suggest that investigative work is the right way ahead. In fact one reason
it is a guideline is because implementation as a policy would bring just
these dangers.
And also against my ethics. (The policy has exceptions, you know. Outing
someone's general geographic region after a CU is apparently allowed.
Requests for courtesy deletions/oversights of outing are often denied on
the basis that it is already out, or that a person did something to deserve it,
or that the community has a right to talk about it.... And why does the
autoblocked text let you know someone else used the same IP as you?)
Also, WP:COI already has brought those dangers. I believe the
rationalisation the person used was that it was important to find a
motivation for why the admin was 'changing history' (lying). I disagree, of
course.
Perhaps you
should consider other ways of keeping the articles
neutral-ish.
There are plenty of ways of enforcing NPOV. The COI guideline
is mainly _advice_ not to get into a false position over COI.
And when people are afraid that other people have secret
conflicts of interest, what do you expect to happen?
[snip]
This is becoming a tiresome dialectical exchange. You
are not actually
refuting my description of AGF, you are dragging red herrings across it.
Do you believe in the existence of non-evil people who are
not interested in helping Wikipaedia? If so, do you believe
that these people might be interested in interacting with
Wikipaedia in some way? (I'm hoping the answer to both
is yes, but if so, you should agree with me that the policy
as worded poses problems?)
[snip]
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.
Tell you what, one of the indicators of a human at the far end of a
Turing test would be to say "this is pointless - just being able to
answer everything isn't a sign of having anything to say".
<snip>
Charles
The thing that would probably be hardest for the smartest of bots
to imitate is irrationality. If we don't understand how the
subconscious mind works, how can a human invention imitate it?
Anyway, don't worry, you pass the Turing test with flying colours.