[WikiEN-l] WP:DENY is a steaming pile of crap.

Thu Nov 8 13:15:46 UTC 2007

Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 14:43:26 +1100
From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:DENY is a steaming pile of crap.
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<b8ceeef70711071943n4a8f61e4jfa8c3adb88642930 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 11/8/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
> That sounds a lot like the Orwellian "Unperson", or Scientology
> "Suppressive Person", concepts, and can be really unfair to people
> who are unjustly labeled this way.  Didn't an early version of WP:NPA
>
> Well of course it should be possible to be unlabelled. But there are
some
advantages to this model:

- There's a very strong incentive not to be mistaken for a troll, in
case
there was any doubt.
- It saves everyone a lot of time if you actually are a troll.
- If you're a troll, and have been labelled, you're going to have to
really
try hard to get unlabelled. And you'll think twice about being trollish
next
time.

My definition of troll is basically someone who enjoys conversations
about
themselves, and particularly their behaviour, at the expense of getting
work
done.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  That's rich. You define a troll as "someone who wants attention"?
So, if I create a featured article in order to impress people, then I'm a troll?
I'm not saying you're stupid, etc, but the problem is this.

  You can't tell someone's intent from their actions.

  Another example. A small forum, most of their users came from GameFAQS. Relatively obscure. At any given time, about 8 or 9 people will be on, the lowest amount is about 2 or 3. Maybe 30, 20 users total.
  On this forum, there was a user named URfaceisback.
  Yes, that was his name. He wasn't me.
  Anyway, URface was annoying. I'll admit that. He was annoying as crap. He constantly created topics to ask mundane questions that could easily have been Googled, he constantly rambled about pointless things in his life, etc.
  After a while of being annoying, everyone decided they didn't like him. So whenever he created a topic, everyone started a gigantic pile-on of "Nobody likes you" and "GTFO the Internet" et al. URface eventually exploded into a paroxysm of fail every now and again, and he was really trying to be a nice guy, despite his idiocy.
  But so all these people would constantly create drama whenever he posted something.
  A founding member of the site left because of the drama.

  URface was banned, and his name was wordfiltered so that nobody could talk about him.
  The end.

  ~~~

  Now, I'm not going to call myself innocent. I've done a lot of fucktarded things in my Wikipedia career. I flooded #wikipedia once.
  But to call someone a troll is pure stupidity.

  Summary:
"Troll" is subjectively defined.
  Furthermore, accusations of being a troll are impossible to prove in real life, much less the Internet, where you can't even see someone's face.
  And despite the whole "Admins-are-deities" philosophy, and as much as I'd like that to be true, they're not. I like Jpgordon. He's a good administrator. But he's not God. Nobody on Wikipedia can tell if someone's trolling or not.

  And I am trying to get a reaction in this thread. I want people to talk about trolls, I want people to talk about banned users. I want discussion to happen on this mailing list so that we can change the policies and so that nobody else ever has to go through the shit I went through (and continue to go through).

  I know that there are going to be 2 people who reply to this thread with long answers agreeing with me, 3 people replying with long answers disagreeing with me, 1 admin talking from experience, and 4 people replying with "Flameviper is a troll".

If I'd wanted to troll Wikipedia, I would have done it a long time ago, under a different username. Do you honestly think I would log in with the same username for three damn years, putting myself through hell on-wiki, on the mailing list, on IRC, and on every other website with an asshole who links to my userpage with "BANNED TROLL"?
  Fuck no.

  And the entire "trolls are bad" philosophy is exactly what I'm trying to get rid of. For example, on the forum I mentioned earlier, there was a super-spammer. His username was GRILLIAN. He created an account and started spamming DESU everywhere (original, eh?)
  Well, there are 7 banned users. Itachi Uchiha (former moderator, he was abusing his power), Zeta Metroid (blatant ED-style trolling, although he was around for years), Sickler (nobody remembers why, but he was annoying), Turd (A hacker from the early days of the forum), URfaceisback (Pure, unadulterated bullying on the mods' part), the super spammer (who comes by once a year to spam for 10 minutes straight and leave), and me (same as Sickler).
Everyone started speculating on who it was. Couldn't be Sickler, because he never did that kind of thing. Couldn't be URface, because he wasn't vicious. Couldn't be Turd, because he hadn't been on the site for 3 years. Either Zeta or me.
  Well, a guy named Webernet said "It's Flameviper" in one of the spam topics. No grounds to say that whatsoever. No IP to trace, no clues to follow, nothing.
  But, of course, in less than 5 minutes, everyone had accepted the "truth" that I was the spammer.
  It goes to show how an out-of-the-blue accusation can be quickly accepted as fact and defended with blood.

  You can't simply reject the possibility that someone is an intelligent person based on some random-ass person screaming "HE IS A TROLL".
  That doesn't change someone. Unless someone's actually trolling, you don't ban them.
If I got banned on-wiki, that isn't grounds to ban me on IRC.
  I once read something that said bans were supposed to be preventative, not punitive. What happened to that?
You can't ban someone because they were banned before. You have to be realistic and you have to judge someone's "trollocity" based on WHAT THEY DO IN THAT CHANNEL, THAT DAY, not what one chanop said about another chanop's conversation to a sysop saying I was banned by an admin for evading another ban, which itself was set because I was evading bans for vandalism in 2006.
  We have to leave this shit in the past and grow up. Move forward.

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 