[WikiEN-l] Trolls - A novel approach - don't feed them

Thu May 6 00:52:29 UTC 2004

My feeling is that they would not at all enjoy Wikipedia if they did not
have "troll" in their user name. A sharp stick in the eye is what they are
all about.

Killjoy Fred

> From: Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 17:06:56 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls - A novel approach - don't feed them
> 
> Folks,
> This is my first post here, so I'm sorry that it is on
> such an unfortunate topic, but I wanted to suggest an
> alternative approach to the users who have been
> involved with J.R.R. Trollkien and other users with
> 'troll' in the name.
> It seems to me that by continuing to ban, block, hold
> hearings about etc, that we are feeding trollish
> behavior. The recent banning of one user for
> 'disruptive edits' or something like that in
> particular, while I can understand the sentiment,
> leaves us open to a double standard - I have seen many
> other users exhibit much more disruptive edits.
> I would suggest that we stop creating a lot of light
> and noise about this, and deal with behavior when / if
> it becomes a problem. Above all, don't needlessly feed
> the trolls - creating rules like 'no usernames with
> the word troll in them' seems gaurunteed to spur
> trolls to find the limit of this eg anagrams, words
> containing 'troll', synonyms etc - I'm pretty sure the
> novelty of it would wear off if people ignored them.
> My two cents.
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
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