I don’t think a formal definition of the word “troll” would be useful; the term is used somewhat informally to the general blob of “problematic users”—trolls, idiots, cranks, aggressive and self-centered users, people who won’t shut up about their pet topic, etc. - the borders are somewhat fuzzy, and any attempt to try to formalize them is likely to be too broad or too narrow. Would you be able to properly formalize the kind of behavior you don’t want on a website you run, without being too broad or too narrow?
“Troll” is a bit like an unambiguous example of the class of behaviors to be discouraged, but if the policies hit a broader target and also discourage non-trolling obnoxious cranks and idiots, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Incidentally, I agree that using ’trolling” to describe any downvoted comments (like the “troll toll”) is somewhat unfortunate, meany downvoted comments are from users who sincerely want to convince everybody that if they would stop being blinded by politically correct groupthink they would recognize that lizard-men are controlling the government. But then, “troll toll” has a nice ring to it.
term is used somewhat informally to the general blob of “problematic users”
I can see how this would be more useful from the perspective of the person doing the banning, but I don’t see why it would be useful from the perspective of the person who is attempting to avoid being banned. Flexible for one purpose, too vague for the other.
Would you be able to properly formalize the kind of behavior you don’t want on a website you run, without being too broad or too narrow?
Somebody has probably already done so. Not perfectly, of course. But they’ve probably already done so. There might even be a description of undesired behavior in an open source context, either as part of a free legal terms of service agreement, or as part of a piece of open source software. It is quite possible that a good free description has already been written and just needs editing. It’s also possible to do better than be flexible/vague and provide a list of behaviors (such as the one you created above) that briefly describes the main concerns, without it being perfect, and simply aim to make an improvement on flexible/vague.
if the policies hit a broader target and also discourage non-trolling obnoxious cranks and idiots
The problem is that people with idiotic ideas do not know they are being idiotic, and I think that although some cranks do know that they’re wrong and are content trying to scam people, other cranks are just as clueless as their customers, and have no idea that what they’re selling is a ripoff. For instance: I’m not religious, but do I consider a priest a crank? No. I consider a priest somebody who genuinely believes the ideas they’re selling, not somebody intentionally deceiving people in order to collect donation money. For this reason, using the words “cranks” and “idiots” is probably not likely to work—something like “If you don’t bother to support your points with rational arguments and don’t update and keep bothering us, we’ll boot you.” would be more likely to help them realize it’s targeted at them.
I agree with most of what you say here, there are probably some places where “troll” could have been replaced by something more precise in a way that would be more useful.
I agree that it’s important to help “borderline problematic users” to mend their ways, but I don’t think the deletion policy is the best place to do that; a precise and detailed deletion policy risks increasing the amount of nitpicking over whether such-and-such moderator action was really justified by the rules (even if those “rules” are actually just said moderator trying to explain by what principles he acts, not a binding legal document!), or nitpicking about whether such-and-such hypothetical case should be banned or not; neither of those two conversations are things I’m particularly interested in reading.
So I think it may be more efficient to help good faith users by improving welcome pages, or talking to them in welcome threads, etc.
The not wanting to nitpick is a good point. I don’t know whether a more specific definition of troll would necessarily result in more nitpicking. If readers take “troll” by the stereotypical definition (like what ArisKatsaris provided over here and then somebody gets deemed a troll and censored for saying idiotic things without an intent to annoy (or for some other reason not typically associated with the stereotypical troll), then this could spark controversy, and you still get the nitpicking conversation. Verbiage like “anybody who trolls, but not limited to that” or “we think trolls are this that and the other, but not limited to that” may make any nitpicking conversations rather short. “We said it wasn’t limited to that. End of conversation.”
I don’t think a formal definition of the word “troll” would be useful; the term is used somewhat informally to the general blob of “problematic users”—trolls, idiots, cranks, aggressive and self-centered users, people who won’t shut up about their pet topic, etc. - the borders are somewhat fuzzy, and any attempt to try to formalize them is likely to be too broad or too narrow. Would you be able to properly formalize the kind of behavior you don’t want on a website you run, without being too broad or too narrow?
“Troll” is a bit like an unambiguous example of the class of behaviors to be discouraged, but if the policies hit a broader target and also discourage non-trolling obnoxious cranks and idiots, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Incidentally, I agree that using ’trolling” to describe any downvoted comments (like the “troll toll”) is somewhat unfortunate, meany downvoted comments are from users who sincerely want to convince everybody that if they would stop being blinded by politically correct groupthink they would recognize that lizard-men are controlling the government. But then, “troll toll” has a nice ring to it.
I can see how this would be more useful from the perspective of the person doing the banning, but I don’t see why it would be useful from the perspective of the person who is attempting to avoid being banned. Flexible for one purpose, too vague for the other.
Somebody has probably already done so. Not perfectly, of course. But they’ve probably already done so. There might even be a description of undesired behavior in an open source context, either as part of a free legal terms of service agreement, or as part of a piece of open source software. It is quite possible that a good free description has already been written and just needs editing. It’s also possible to do better than be flexible/vague and provide a list of behaviors (such as the one you created above) that briefly describes the main concerns, without it being perfect, and simply aim to make an improvement on flexible/vague.
The problem is that people with idiotic ideas do not know they are being idiotic, and I think that although some cranks do know that they’re wrong and are content trying to scam people, other cranks are just as clueless as their customers, and have no idea that what they’re selling is a ripoff. For instance: I’m not religious, but do I consider a priest a crank? No. I consider a priest somebody who genuinely believes the ideas they’re selling, not somebody intentionally deceiving people in order to collect donation money. For this reason, using the words “cranks” and “idiots” is probably not likely to work—something like “If you don’t bother to support your points with rational arguments and don’t update and keep bothering us, we’ll boot you.” would be more likely to help them realize it’s targeted at them.
I agree with most of what you say here, there are probably some places where “troll” could have been replaced by something more precise in a way that would be more useful.
I agree that it’s important to help “borderline problematic users” to mend their ways, but I don’t think the deletion policy is the best place to do that; a precise and detailed deletion policy risks increasing the amount of nitpicking over whether such-and-such moderator action was really justified by the rules (even if those “rules” are actually just said moderator trying to explain by what principles he acts, not a binding legal document!), or nitpicking about whether such-and-such hypothetical case should be banned or not; neither of those two conversations are things I’m particularly interested in reading.
So I think it may be more efficient to help good faith users by improving welcome pages, or talking to them in welcome threads, etc.
The not wanting to nitpick is a good point. I don’t know whether a more specific definition of troll would necessarily result in more nitpicking. If readers take “troll” by the stereotypical definition (like what ArisKatsaris provided over here and then somebody gets deemed a troll and censored for saying idiotic things without an intent to annoy (or for some other reason not typically associated with the stereotypical troll), then this could spark controversy, and you still get the nitpicking conversation. Verbiage like “anybody who trolls, but not limited to that” or “we think trolls are this that and the other, but not limited to that” may make any nitpicking conversations rather short. “We said it wasn’t limited to that. End of conversation.”