[WikiEN-l] The ongoing trolling

[Geoff Burling]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2005, Jack Lynch wrote:

> We need better ways of catagorising one another than troll, admin,
> left -right, or whatever. These are ambiguous terms, and with the
> possible exception of "admin", each person who uses them defines them
> differently.
>
Well, having given this some thought for my presentation last Thursday,
the way I explained the issue was to first categorize conflicts into
"good faith" & "bad faith". Good faith is where two or more people
disagree on the matter, but are willing to discuss the matter in a
civil manner towards a consensus -- even if the consensus is nothing
more than to agree to disagree (which is one way *I* explain the NPOV).

Bad faith are specific destructive acts or types of people -- vandals,
cranks & troublemakers. And these labels shuold only be applied where
there is no ambiguity about the situation:

* A vandal is someone who thinks adding nonsense or offensive material
to an article is proper behavior -- e.g. taking the statement
"George Bush is president of the United States" & changing "president"
to another word like "war criminal", "wanker" or "donkey".

* A crank is someone who insists that her/his POV is the only correct
one, & that anyone who does not agree with her/his POV is absolutely
*wrong*. When confronted on this assertion, the crank will not provide
logical positive arguments for the POV, but use various non-logical
arguments to defend her/hisself -- e.g., attack the other person,
claim that a conspiracy is "keeping the truth from being known", etc.

* A troublemaker is someone who has no clear agenda for their acts
like a vandal, but unlike a vandal does not limit their actions to
simple edits. I feel that in many cases where people on Wikipedia
use the word "troll", they mean "troublemaker".

In my presentation my audience did not need me to explain these terms,
but I did make the point that people with good faith conflicts, if not
treated civilly & with respect often lapse into the bad faith behavior
I listed. (Unfortunately, there are some people who are treated civilly
& with respect who lapse into bad faith behavior -- but there is rarely
any way to know this beforehand.)

Geoff