heros and villains

Today, I noticed an editor claiming that "some of Wikipedia's defenders turned to vandalism", and that "truth has become less important". You know I have my share of criticisms for the community, but I wanted to look into these statements.

I checked the Wikipedia account. He is, indeed, a burnout from two weeks ago. He was blocked for personally attacking an editor in October. He had been pushing an unverified POV as far back as July. He has been a highly active editor since 2005. He has now retired, citing his failed effort to push an unverified POV as reason for leaving.

I'm kind of curious what people's reactions are to this kind of editor.

My reaction: Before I looked into his background, I found myself saying "he's kind of right, maybe this guy is a hero for calling out Wikipedia's problems". Then I looked into his background and found he was the worst kind of POV warrior, and had managed to survive on Wikipedia for more than four years. In his own mind, I'm sure he sees himself as a hero. And if I only heard the surface of his story, I'd have believed that he was a hero, trying to defend the Wiki. The whole situation makes me feel very uneasy, because it really is difficult to distinguish the heroes from the villains until someone flips out and "goes nuclear".

Wonderful subject! I don't understand why nobody commented since December 17th.

I think that we must always be allowed to be for the system as well as against the system. And the line between the the troll and the well-intencioned user who doesn't agree with some feature of a project is so subtle.

I wouldn't like this system of "community recognition" to become a system of community control.

I really wanted this topic to be discussed.

Wonderful subject! I don't understand why nobody commented since December 17th.

I think that we must always be allowed to be for the system as well as against the system. And the line between the the troll and the well-intencioned user who doesn't agree with some feature of a project is so subtle.

I wouldn't like this system of "community recognition" to become a system of community control.

I really wanted this topic to be discussed.

Thanks for replying... I myself forgot about this topic.

I think we're on the same page. We want people to be able to express disagreement and criticisms. But we don't want trolls, vandals, and POV pushers to disrupt the Wikipedia and then get away with a cheesy "free speech" defense.

What do you think the difference is? Do you think it's covered adequately by policies like "No Personal Attacks"?

Well, I am from pt.wiki where most users are Brazilians and Portugueses. Both these countries are recent democracies and the traume of dictarship is still present. In this context, people who fight against the "established power" will always have some allure of heroism.

I thing that we should avoid divide people into heros and villains because Wikipedia is not a battlefield nor a political experiment so there is no reason at all to be a hero nor a villain. And I really think it is important to have this in mind. I suppose that you agree with me that trolls cannot disrupt Wikipedia if they are not able to find support inside community. If community sees a problem when someone wants to be hero, trollism will never thrive.

I don't think policies like "No Personal Attacks" cover the difference between ill-intencioned users and people who want to express true criticism. Trolls are often smart and experts on gaming these policies. They will often make "general attacks", instead, which are much harder to recognize and punish even though general and fuzzy attacks may be as harmful as any other kind of misbehaviour, as trolls will try to destroy the trust among editors and sow discord. Trolls are usually critics of sysops so when they get blocked they can say it is a retaliation.

Possibly the great difference between someone who wants to help us out and a troll is that the first kind of editor will understand that Wikipedia is an open project and they can change and improve it by themselves. Trolls will keep on critizing instead of working on solving problems. That the reason I interpret "be bold" as "stop complaining, do it better".

How do you feel the things I told? Do you think it is the same in other communities?

I'm actually really surprised to find that your experience at the Portuguese wikipedia is very similar to mind. We definitely want to avoid categorizing people as heroes or villains, but there are some people who imagine themselves to be heroes. Their imagination is often wrong. :)

Most of all, you're right that "no personal attacks" has stopped being effective, and you're 100% right about "general attacks". I might never say "Lechatjaune is ruining Wikipedia". But I might say "people from foreign countries are destroying Wikipedia", or (your excellent example) "Admins with X point of view are destroying Wikipedia". And I get away with it, because it's not "personal", and there might be enough people who think I'm a hero for saying some kind of bold truth by criticizing non-English people or criticizing a group of admins.

And then they can play the "retaliation card". If you call me for my bad behavior, I can say that you're personally attacking me, because you don't like my point of view. It's all backwards!

I think you may be onto something very important with "no general attacks". No more attacks, period.

No general attacks. No attacks on people.

If there is a specific action you think is wrong then criticise that specific action, with citations and a specific suggestions for what that user should have done differently.

If someone has made an attack on some person ask them to edit their comment to criticise that persons actions instead - yes let us encourage people to edit and rewrite their contributions to discussion pages!

I think 81.187.181.168 is on the right path when he says "if there is a specific action you think is wrong then criticise that specific action, with citations and a specific suggestions for what that user should have done differently", yes, I don't need to be vilified on a voluntary project and we shouldn't criticize people just because we think his work is not good enough. However it is hard to write a policy that allows people to express their disagreement and prevents trollism, mainly because we cannot confound expression of critic with trollism. Internal disagrement will always exist in any free community, the problem is that trolls will certainly use it as weapon to disturb.

I don't know how to deal with trollism but I think that we can't fight trolls face-to-face because you have much more to lose than they do. I think it would be more effective if we could make Wikipedia a less fruitful place for them. The first think to do is understanding why there are trolls and I think there are 3 common reasons to become a troll:

• Needing of attention: some trolls just want to perturb community because it makes them feel special.
• They are authoritarian people: they never accept to compromise in a discussion, so they use disruption as an instance of power taking community hostage as they will only stop perturbing if community do what they want.
• They are saboteurs: they had some previous bad experience on Wikipedia and they want revenge.

My proposal is make community strong enough to support disruption and not try to stop disruption.

I think you nailed the three main reason for troll-ish behavior. You're also right that we want to draw a stronger line against attacks, but without censoring ordinary disagreement or criticism. Especially criticism of legitimately bad behavior.

Even when you look at the "no personal attacks" page, they have to clarify "what should you do instead". Trying to find a way to generalize that policy to "no attacks, period", we'd have to outline what people should do instead of making general "group attacks" and battleground behavior.

Yes, you're right, we could have guidelines on how to critize and where.

It would be also useful if there was a safe place for meta discussions. When I say a safe place, I mean a place where you don't disrupt the project and its editors. Indeed I think wikiproject entangles too much those different kind of discussions.