[WikiEN-l] Harm reduction techniques

[martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk]

Hi all.

This whole (long) post is going to go at [[meta:bans]], for people who prefer to have 
the "edit this page" button available:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans

It seems to me that our current "zero tolerance" policy towards "banned" users does 
not have a success rate that we can particularly brag about. We've got Lir (and co), 
DW (and co), 142.177.etc, Michael (and co), and so it goes on. We ban 'em, they 
come back under new names and laugh at us. But what are we trying to achieve?

* Are we trying to ensure the integrity of the banning system?
* Are we trying to punish racists for being evil people?
* Or are we trying to build an encyclopedia?

Our aim shouldn't be to "crack down" on trolls, for the sake of cracking down. 
Instead, we should practice [[harm reduction]]. When usenet lore talks of "don't feed 
the trolls" it means ignore them - not deliberately seek them out in order to ban them 
or revert them. People have talked of the time burden from Zog's ~150 edits. Let's 
look at some harm reduction ideas for how to reduce that burden.

==Harm reduction techniques==

I'm just thinking though some of this stuff, so my past actions are liable to be 
inconsistent with this! :)

Some edits were reverted under the concept that one should revert all edits made by 
a banned/troublesome user, including good edits. For example, edits to [[Chaco 
War]] and [[Amarya]] were reverted. We can improve efficiency by not bothering to 
revert reasonable edits. Plus, the encyclopedia will then improve slightly in quality. 
I'm not saying that you *have* to check every edit before reverting. I'm saying that if 
you do notice that an edit seems reasonable, there's no need to revert it.

A substantial number of edits were made to the user pages, such as [[user:Zog]], etc. 
Less harm is caused by bad stuff here. So, we could be more efficient here by 
simply waiting a week, and then reverting the whole lot in one go. If Zog edits his 
user page five times a day, and we wait a week before reverting, then we've 
magically become 35 times more efficient, just by being lazy.
In any case, getting into an edit war with Zog over a non-essential page like 
[[user:Zog]] encourages hir to come back.

By quickly making a [[/ban]] page we can save more time. No need to have the 
same discussion on a dozen pages, plus the mailing list. As a bonus, if the user in 
question wants to reform then such a page clues them in to what they're doing at no 
extra cost. Which means we don't have to waste time telling them what they're doing 
wrong, which brings me nicely on to the next header:

== Troll talk ==

Here's another way of reducing the time we spend dealing with trolls - don't talk to 
them. "Why don't you go find another sandbox to stomp in?" says one Wikipedian - 
every second spent writing that sentence was wasted time. Heck, it asked a banned 
user a question - it practically *invited* hir to respond. And, unsurprisingly, respond 
sie did - several times - and we wasted more time reverting hir. And then reverting 
hir deletion of the "sandbox" question a few times.

Flames of trolls are pointless too. We all know that trolls troll in order to receive 
flames. Therefore, telling them to "go away, Lir" is likely to be counter-productive. Is 
there any evidence that Lir will go away if asked? Perhaps somehow Lir has got the 
mistaken impression that he's welcome here, and all we ever had to do was suggest 
that he should depart and he'd pack up his trouble in his old kit bag and leave, leave, 
leave? Lir may be evil, but saying "Get thee behind me Satan" won't have a high 
success rate.

Ignore trolls. Don't flame them. Don't ask them questions. If you must communicate 
with them, to so calmly and briefly. If they flame you, take the fire out of their 
comment by rewording it - and then ignore it or give a minimal "thanks for your 
feedback" response. Alternatively, take their flame, cut and paste it onto the /ban 
page and say "this is not acceptable" - and then proceed to ignoring it. If it's a case 
of mistaken identity, then this'll become clear in due time, and then you can answer 
the question. If not, you've lost nothing.

== In five words or less ==

"Ignore trolls, don't ban them"
Or "Keep good edits, revert bad"

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper