Wikipedia talk:What is a troll

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/Archive 1

I've cleared this so that a whole new discussion may take place. Snowspinner 22:21, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] I noticed something

Feel free to merge in contents from User:Raul654/Trolling effects. →Raul654 01:05, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A troll is someone you disagree with

That's really all there is to it. It's a pretty normal part of politics to acuse people who disgree with you of being communist/liberal/unamerican/troll (choose your insult) to devalue their opinion. Of course anyone who thinks that there are rogue admins is a troll, and can be banned for holding that opinion. Anyone who advocates reform or change that threatens the current power structure must be acting in bad faith, so they should be banned. It's politics as usual. Spak Bomb 07:12, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not at all. I have plenty of people I disagree with whom I don't consider trolls. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:59, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
I should have been clearer, it's usually not just someone who you disagree with about article content, more usually someone who threatens the current power structure. Of course, the term won't be applied to everyone with whom you disagree, but generally speaking, anyone who seriously criticises the admin system, or individual admins they consider to be 'rogue', gets labeled a troll and driven off. Spak Bomb (lost password) 16:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)


It's true. Here's a definition I found by net searching on trolling:

Don't feed the trolls
 
A phrase often used on webforums and LiveJournal communities by moderators
and those who think they're moderators. This is generally in response to
someone "trolling" their community, which usually means "having a
different opinion to one or more of the established members".

Anomo 21:29, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Semi-policy"

The semi-policy template says that semi-policies are things that are not official but have "widespread support". As no widespread support for this text has been demonstrated (only two people commented positively on it), I guess this is not semi-policy. Zocky 09:01, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I found the Wikipedia:Trolling poll which was supposed to ratify this. Out of 85 answers, 43 supported it. That's barely more than 50% and the proposed text clearly failed to get consensus. If that is "widespread support" which in enough to call something "semi-policy", I could easily write Wikipedia:Never use styles in biography articles and claim that it's a "semi-policy". I wonder how long it would last. Zocky 18:29, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
The 12 "Troll is unhelpful" votes duplicated other votes - I would consider the more accurate vote 43/28, with some people quibbling over the use of "troll" but not opposing the policy, which, at 60%, seems widespread. In general, I consider things with majority support in reasonably well-publicized polls to be candidates for semi-policy, if certain other conditions (Like being reasonable descriptions of how things sometimes work) are also met. Snowspinner 18:32, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
Not all of them. Without bothering to check all of them, I'd say that it's about half, which makes it about 43:35, i.e. 55%. Even if it's 60%, that's still opposed by 40% of people, which makes it very controversial. Either ammend the template to reflect that or abandon the whole silly notion of "semy-policy". Zocky 18:38, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
No. A) I don't think that people who didn't put their votes under oppose can be counted as opposing, and B) Perhaps you should look into who made the changes to the description of semi-policy and bring it up with them. Snowspinner 18:43, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
BTW, was consensus for having semi-policies ever established? Zocky 18:46, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
No. That was kind of the point. An official policy endorsing semi-policy would be comical. They were introduced to describe practice tthat was clearly already in place. That they have endured is probably a testament to the fact that there is not actually a coherent and internally consistant description of how Wikipedia is run. And I looked at the numbers - the absolute lowest support you can count is 57%, the absolute highest is 61%. Snowspinner 18:53, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
  1. An official policy endorsing semi-policy would be comical. The only comical thing about it is that anybody would think that this sentence makes sense. It's an argument not worthy of a high-school debate club.
  2. Those things are generally called "customs", or in case of wikipedia, guidelines. This page is not semy-policy (meaning half-policy), it failed to reach consensus support, so according to the way wikipedia works, it's 0% policy. If you want to describe practice that's already in place, write guidelines or articles on meta, don't go around masquerading completely failed policy proposals (it's a yes-no thing, no grey areas), as a weaker kind of policy. Zocky 19:09, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
"Semi-policy" is the name used for something that needs a name. There are a lot of simplistic people who can't stand ambiguity and demand that either all rules be firm ratified policy or not exist, but that doesn't match the existence of community practice and so forth. See also WP:POINT - the inconsistency in Wikipedia drives some people wild, but that doesn't actually constitute a reason to try to pretend it doesn't exist - David Gerard 19:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
That's completely beside the point, as I'm not arguing agains that. My point (at this point) is that semi-policy is a weasel term. These things are either guidelines or failed proposals. Zocky 19:09, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm... I do see your point in the whole thing, but I seriously believe that this approach is misguided. There are plenty of ways to have both rule of law and flexible rules. In fact, that's how most real legal systems work. There are alway rules that are open to interpretation, like "No personal attacks" or even "Use English", but still they are written rules, and that's why they get to be interpreted in individual cases.
The point is, we don't need to have a flexible process for defining policy to have flexible policy. Zocky 19:58, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
When there is no consistent body of policy, it's unsurprising that grey-area terms pop up. Snowspinner 19:14, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
It's the word used for something that needs a name. "A guideline that's strongly supported community practice", then? "A proposed policy that failed to make 2/3 but people seem to follow it anyway"? Bit wordy. If you don't like the actual words "semi-policy", come up with something else. If it's obviously and elegantly better that will cause an "aha, of course!" reaction in lots of people the moment they see it, that will be just fine - David Gerard 19:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
There was no grey area:
  • consensus -> policy
  • no consensus to treat as policy, but useful info supported by most people -> guideline
  • proposal which failed to reach consensus and which majority or a substantial minority actively opposed -> failed proposal.
The point is that if there was a substantial minority, there was no consensus, so it can't be accepted as a community standard. "Majority" doesn't mean much on Wikipedia. Zocky 19:25, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that it just doesn't work that way. Snowspinner 19:27, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
Again, this is a poor argument. You can't argue somebody who says "A is wrong" by saying "A exists". It's largely not how it works because you changed the way it worked before. What's astonishing in the whole thing is the misunderstanding of consensus rule that this shows. The whole point of consensus rule is that votes don't really count - decisions are accepted by acclamation or not at all. How it originally worked on Wikipedia was that if a proposal gets supermajority it becomes policy until it is changed. If not, it's pronounced failed and moot and the results are used to prepare a new proposal that might hope to pass. If the problem is that not enough policy was passed, then it's probably the proposals that weren't good enough. If the problem is that consensus rule doesn't work, then hold a poll on abolishing it. Zocky 19:41, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
What he's saying is more like "that's a nice theory but it doesn't accord with practice." Or that's what I'm saying, anyway. Hence the current version of the note showing it may not have made ratified policy, but bits are in fact treated as violations of policy or acceptable practice - David Gerard 20:00, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Of course, exactly which bits are left to the imagination and interpretation of whoever needs to fuel a flame war... essentially making the entire page act as though it were actionable. -- Netoholic @ 20:07, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

<unindent/> ...but bits are in fact treated as violations of policy or acceptable practice.

Are they treated as such because they appear on this page? I suspect not. Some of them are violations of rules on other pages, some are violations of ArbCom precedents. If ArbCom precedents are based on "semi-policy" pages, i.e. failed proposals which are likely to be changed, that's probably not good practice. In fact, if ArbCom decides that it will use a principle which has not been ratified as policy for deciding cases, than ArbCom should state so in its own right, not base its decisions on failed proposals.
This makes the whole concept of semi-policy redundant. When proposals fail to be ratified, any useful info should be salvaged, NPOVed and recycled as guidelines, the rest should be simply archived. Zocky 20:14, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Desseutude

There is a form of law that is not codified. When a community acts as if a thing were a law for a long time, then this common practice begins to have the force of law. This concept of desseutude came about because of trade disputes. However, I think it applies to the things that WP:POINT is trying to cover. The problem is that no one can announce a "semi-law" in desseutude. It has to be recognized as simply having been that way. (E.g. policy states that VfU is for undeleting and that nothing can be undeleted or recreated until the vote takes place. However, many folks will undelete or recreate and then wait for the vote, as if it were VfD-lite. Law says no. Desseutude says yes.) Thus, no one can make a policy proposal, have it fail, and then claim that it's "semi-policy" because folks are obeying it. Instead, we have to leave frustrated those people who insist that everything be written down and that everything that is not forbidden is allowed. The point of Wikipedia is to be community based in editing and laws, and we all find that inconvenient. We all wish there were a judge and a court that could interpret the wise words of our founding fathers and establish precedent. We'd know what to do, then. A lot of what Snowspinner and others do in the name of "semi-policy" doesn't bother me, as I think it's really a case of community standards, but I agree enough with Zocky to say that claiming that there is a law or policy that's supported by the part of Wikipedia that counts is inappropriate. Geogre 04:16, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

At the beginning of each arbitration case decision page, you'll see a list of principles applied in the case. Some of these quote policy, some attempt to put common sensible practice into words - the idea being to come up with something that wouldn't make people go "wtf?!" Note that if you look at the original proposed decision pages, you'll often see disagreement and discussion between arbitrators in these things. "Desseutude" appears to be the concept in question - David Gerard 16:41, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming this page

It seems a more appropriate and useful title (e.g. for first-time users seeing it in a list) would be something more active, like "No trolling" or "Don't be a troll". Does anyone have any opinion about that kind of name change? -- Beland 18:23, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since the question of what is a troll is so debatable, I think that the current title is appropriate. Besides, giving it the title of "Don't be a troll" is just as insulting as m:Don't be a dick, and therefore would violate No personal attacks if you used that article title in a discussion. I would suggest not even creating a redirect to this page using that title. BlankVerse ∅ 05:25, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proccess?

What is the process here? I think a radical re-work of this page to be more neutral might help - is this page editable? Involved in trolling 5 July 2005 16:14 (UTC)

Is there a response to this? Norrath 6 July 2005 16:23 (UTC)
My main response was to notice the username and block the account. Snowspinner July 6, 2005 16:28 (UTC)

[edit] Revision

Trolling is deliberate and intentional attempts to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia for its editors, administrators, developers, and other people who work to create content for and help run Wikipedia.
This sentence should be changed. Since deliberate intent cannot be demonstrated, it is useless to put it in here. It would be like defining dangerous driving in terms of the engine revs, only the driver has access to that information. Removing it, the sentence reads:
Trolling is an attempt to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia for its editors, administrators, developers, and other people who work to create content for and help run Wikipedia.
Furthermore, since the audience of people listed includes everyone, it is redundent, leaving us with:
Trolling is an attempt to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia.
Much better?
Except that we don't define disruption, or usability. This definition covers anything which makes Wikipedia more difficult to use, including requiring accounts, making policy and adding features like categories. Hmmm... Problematic? Norrath 6 July 2005 01:12 (UTC)
What a surprise - when you take out the words that make the sentence work, the sentence stops working. Snowspinner July 6, 2005 01:16 (UTC)

Actually the sentence works just fine, it's just that once you take out the useless flourishes, how stupid it is is apparent. Norrath 6 July 2005 16:15 (UTC)

I've no idea how you propose to get to the idea that deliberate intent is a useless flourish. Your dangerous driving analogy is strange, to say the least - perhaps the better metaphor would be "malice aforethought." Snowspinner July 6, 2005 16:25 (UTC)

The idea is useless flourish because the intent is unknowable. Since mind reading is impossible in personal conversation, let alone on the Internet, the search for intentions leads everyone down fruitless rabbitholes speculating what the intent could be when everyone knows that we cannot establish intent. Your ideas annoy me intensely. I have no way of knowing whether you intend to annoy me, or are honestly proposing things that I find annoying because you believe they are correct. Norrath 6 July 2005 16:30 (UTC)

The intent remains the highly relevent thing, and is frankly, in many cases, fairly easy to divine. Snowspinner July 6, 2005 16:54 (UTC)
Not really - this is the fundamental attribution error. For great justice. 21:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slow revert

A "slow revert" may be a psychologically effective way of dealing with a troll, but it has the slight negative side effect of leaving dubious material standing for the average reader (note, not the average Wikipedian) to come across it... this seems like a bad idea. Palmiro | Talk 23:22, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "depending on how one counts"

"Note that some behavior listed here has been taken as disruption of Wikipedia in Arbitration Committee decisions. In the Wikipedia:Trolling poll to make this proposal policy, it received between 57% and 61% support, depending on how one counts." Last time I checked there was only one way to count. 1,2,3,4,5,6, and so on. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.102.191.197 (talk • contribs) 2 Dec 2006.

[edit] Punishment

How long can you get banned for vandalising? is there a paid for that? Does it depend on how bad you do it?

Pece Kocovski 09:03, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

No idea what you mean by "a paid", but, yes, it depends on whether the account is used only for vandalism, on the nature of the vandalism, on what is vandalised, on the number of occurrences, etc. For example, a tirade of hate speech in an article about an ethnic group is likely to be dealt with far more severely than someone placing innocuous near-nonsense "graffiti" on a talk page. Anything up to and including a permanent block is possible. As far as I know, we've never sent the thugs around to beat anyone up. (That's a joke. I'm sure we haven't. And when we did, the thugs couldn't find him, anyway.) - Jmabel | Talk 19:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I ment to say, is there a page/article for the punishments, listy of punishments?

No, we don't have a "legal code". We have a loose set of policies, guidelines, and procedures. - Jmabel | Talk 05:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A suggestion for banning trolls from editing

I have a suggestion to make:

You know how trolls vandalise anything, well i say if they vandalise the same article/page twice or more, there banned from editing. Why, its no mistake, because they delete an entire page on purpose.I suggest they get banned from editing permentaly, especially depending on the vandals targets like: religeon,People, other wikipediansm etc. If the vandal wants to be forgiven, then they must either write a email to an admin, or other important wikipedians. This will reduce the number of trolls and vandalised articles. If however, they delete on accident, which would be unusual, then they need a good reason for doing so.

who aggres with me. Says either support or object?

Pece Kocovski 00:57, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

How do you think the Merriam-Webster became a proprietary dictionary well over a hundred years ago?
Accidents do and can happen given the personal time constraints most working people are under. The “Save page” and “Show preview” buttons are not that far apart and without an “Are you sure?" question its not that hard to submit comments to an article page rather than to the article talk page that was intended.
Perhaps it would help if you understood what happened to the Dialectic. The Dialectic is the concept of opposite positions: Thesis (position) vs. Antithesis (opposite position). In traditional logic, if my thesis was true, then all other positions were by definition untrue. For example, if my thesis is that "all reversions are vandalism" then all other positions (antithesis) are false. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the nineteenth century German philosopher, turned that concept on its head by equalizing Thesis and Antithesis. All things are now relative. There is no such thing as absolute truth to be found anywhere. Instead, “truth” is found in Synthesis, a compromise of Thesis and Antithesis. This is the heart and soul of the Wikipedia and the consensus process.
I know contributors who must rewrite edits ten, twenty or more times before they last more than a week due to the fact that the idea behind a Wiki is based on consensus. If System Administrators were allowed to shove a rag into someone’s mouth for making a contribution they simple disagreed with or did not like instead of using their brains to explain why their position is better then all they would end up doing is converting the Wikipedia into a System Administrator-pedia and that would defeat the purpose and philosophy behind the Wikipedia and not be any good. -- PCE 07:41, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image

There is a nice new image at commons:Image:Trolls.jpg. It's a pity we can't use it in Wikipedia:What is a troll#Not feeding the trolls or the {{TrollWarning}} template because there already is another image of the same name at en.wikipedia.org, but I've contacted the uploader about this problem. Wikipeditor 2006-09-16

[edit] New breed?

Does anybody know, whether making the article systematically too long is trolling? Real example from Lithuanian Wikipedia: user Pleckaitis makes a lot of articles for small villages in Lithuania without any regard concerning common shape of those articles, he doubles information of templates, violates implicit importance of settlements (eg. London is a city with distance approximately 10,6 km southwards from Chelsea), makes useless subtitles and so on. There a hundreds of those articles, and nobody knows, how to deal with it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.219.163.219 (talk • contribs) 26 October 2006.

Usually, the English Wikipedia is not the place to discuss other Wikipedias. Describing the location of London relative to Chelsea is clearly inappropriate (the City of London is of far more historical importance than the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and Greater London emcompasses Chelsea). Other than that, there is nothing wrong with a detailed article on a relatively unimportant place (see Wedgwood, Seattle, Washington for an example; I happen to live there, but I am not the one who wrote most of this). I have no way to judge in the abstract whether someone's subtitles are useless.
Presumably the Lithuanian Wikipedia has some equivalent of RFCs, mediation, and arbitration. That is probably how you are going to have to pursue this if you want to confront it. - Jmabel | Talk 20:56, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another view

Just another view from history of a predecessor article. Worth a debate:

A Wikipedia:troll war is an escalating conflict between multiple Wikipedia:trolls. It is not the same as a flame war or edit war, as those do not involve inventing new troll methods and technologies. These conflicts are especially disruptive as they ultimately result in new Internet trolling methods that spread to other services.

The only known long-term solution to such wars is the political virtues applied via the Wikipedia:arbitration committee. A set of tactics for this was once advanced as the Wikipedia:troll bridge strategy.

It is not really that different from diplomacy as understood between warring nation-states, each of which has their own POV and is not inclined to compromise (see Wikipedia:POV warrior) and is inclined also towards technological conflict escalation.

A major problem in Wikipedia is abuse of administrative powers in over-reaction to troll war - often called by trolls themselves "sysop vandalism": using technological powers to try to force a solution in a troll war by favouring one side or another.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Crekshin (talk • contribs) 11:42, 13 November 2006.

Nearly off topic, and not very useful, in my view. I would be against re-adding this. - Jmabel | Talk 06:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
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