[WikiEN-l] What is a troll?

[Mark Richards]

Absolutely - the term is not helpful in combatting
vandalism, as it has just become a term of abuse that
is levelled both a genuinely problematic users and
users with contentious but potentially legitimate
views.

Let's try to focus on behaviors, and try not to label
users.
Mark


--- Theresa Robinson <robinst at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> > Maybe there's a lot of this and I'm not seeing it,
> but what I do see
> > is a lot of good-faith edits characterized as
> trolling. The edits may
> > be poor or mistaken, and the person may be very
> stubborn in their
> > defense of a bad edit, but if they sincerely
> believe that the edit
> > is making the encyclopedia better, then it's
> inaccurate to call them
> > trolls. For instance, a rightie who hates WP's
> leftie-ness can
> > generate a huge ruckus by trying to "balance" what
> he/she perceives
> > as slanted articles, but every one of those edits
> is in good faith,
> > and the editor will think of him/herself as just
> as good and
> > dedicated an editor as anybody else here.
> 
> I absolutely agree with you.  I find that the term
> "troll" means pretty
> much nothing, or it just means "somebody doing
> something I don't like."
> Even "vandal" is used by an awful lot of people for
> things other than "joe
> is gaaaaaaaaaay" edits, which to me are pretty much
> the only things I'd
> call vandalism.  And calling someone a troll, or a
> vandal, or whatever,
> rarely solves the problem.  It would be much more
> productive to be very
> specific about what the person is doing, and say "I
> disagree with the
> tenacity with which you exclude all but one POV from
> this article" or "it
> would really help if you told us why you were
> reverting all our edits"
> etc.  This is much more likely to result in a
> resolution.
> 
> moink
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