I agree with most of what you say here, there are probably some places where “troll” could have been replaced by something more precise in a way that would be more useful.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I agree with most of what you say here, there are probably some places where “troll” could have been replaced by something more precise in a way that would be more useful.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.”