Handling Trolls for Fun and Profit

[Abd]

(1) the documentation I'm referring to is not here, it is on the blog. WPO "documentation" is only readable by members there, so all those posts are being copied to my user space on wikitop.cc (where any user could do the same, absent objection).
(2) what is here is commentary on the situation and what is called "philosophy."
(3) Obviously, boredbird doesn't like it. This troll is invited to not read it.
(4) Yes, I'm calling boredbird a troll, because that is how the posts are appearing. The topic here is how to handle trolls. What he just posted is a claim that what I'm doing is unnecessary, since redundant. But the documentation pages are just that -- documentation --, and do not include response or my commentary (generally).
(5) So boredbird doesn't like being called a troll? Consider that, on Reddit, I'm being called "short eyes." I was a prison chaplain, but that term never came up. It means "pedophile," and call someone in the prison environment "short eyes," you are saying that they should be killed. People are actually murdered because of accusations of pedophilia.
(6) So in a context where the most extreme epithets are being routinely applied, a minor one like "troll" -- which I've very often been called when there was no justification -- raises boredbird's dander. Q.E.D.: Troll.
(7 )But I have not yet concluded "troll" with sufficient clarity to stop responding to him.

The idea that trolling is entertaining, I am directly confronting. It's toxic, in general. I've given what are rare examples where trolling can be maintained with justice.

Because this maintains relevance, I'm not moving it. The distinction between defensive reaction and documentation -- which is undeniable fact -- is important to what I'm suggesting. Allowing the community to defend, if defense is appropriate, is very important to it. And, little by little, the community is defending.

[Abd]

Comment above linked from WPO by EVilgent. Comment?

[boredbird]

Comment above linked from WPO by EVilgent. Comment?

That link is not to Wikipediocracy. It's to your wiki which is a honeypot to catch readers' ip addresses. I think most people know the url by now so if they want to read what's going on between you and Vigilant they can visit. Doesn't need to be linked here every day like you've been doing.

[Abd]

I don't link to all posts in that copy, and only link when it's relevant to a specific post here. As to "honey pot," that's repeating an
EVilgent lie. Each URL is unique to the original post timestamp. As well, what was stated was not that it was a link to WPO, but that WPO had a link to this thread, and then that was linked to where non-WPO members could verify it.

Passing on a false claim from a troll as if fact is definitely trolling.

This is not about disagreement, it's about useless comments that add nothing but sealioning and more excuses for EVilgent.

This claim came originally from the Smith brothers, and has been repeated on Reddit by EVilgent, for which I created this archive as a response. It's preposterous, so, EOT.

No more responses to boredbird from me. He becomes an object of study, if anything, and when appropriate, not a person to be respected and with whom discussion is possible. It gets easier and easier.

If anyone else wants to discuss the linking issue, let us know.

[boredbird]

This claim came originally from the Smith brothers, and has been repeated on Reddit by EVilgent, for which I created this archive as a response.

Guess who I heard it from? You.

[ericbarbour]

Comment above linked from WPO by EVilgent. Comment?

That link is not to Wikipediocracy. It's to your wiki which is a honeypot to catch readers' ip addresses. I think most people know the url by now so if they want to read what's going on between you and Vigilant they can visit. Doesn't need to be linked here every day like you've been doing.

o rly

[Abd]

In over thirty years of on-line conferencing experience, it has been my experience, again and again, that being sanctioned by moderators or administrators, led to major personal breakthroughs. I can cite many, many examples. As one, when I was banned on Wikipedia, I moved from trying to neutralize Wikipedia coverage of cold fusion -- and other areas --, to creating educational resources on Wikiversity, which served their purpose, and ultimately, from that, to extensive -- and financially supported -- involvement with the scientists and the community of interest, up to and including writing an invited article for publication under peer review in a mainstream journal. Light-years ahead of being a Wikipedia editor, a quite doubtful privilege.

So, starting at the end of 2109, responding to a perceived personal affront, Vilignat began a campaign of harassment, both on Sucks and on Reddit, with trolling comments, often bearing no relationship at all to context. There is a phenomenon I've observed since the 1980s. If two people are involved in a flame war, the community will assume that both are at fault, unless they agree with one or the other, in which case the one they disagree with is to blame.

Trolls know this, and one of the goals of a troll is to provoke the target into calling down the wrath of a community. If they can find a moderator who is sensitive and unsophisticated, they can push that moderator's buttons, who may assume that because X is being attacked, X must be provoking it. After all, why would someone post 200 highly negative comments to Reddit unless provoked?

And that is exactly what happened in r/Sudoku yesterday. Vilignat says:

[–]hosieryadvocate 2 points 2 hours ago
Yep. Another user mentioned how divisive he can be, and showed a comment, where he seemed a bit harsh to the newbie.

I do wonder who the other user might have been... a mystery for the ages.

It's not a mystery, it was Vilignat. It was likely this post, which has been deleted, but the context can be seen. The text was:

“Wow. What a dick.”

The moderator, back in January, said much the same thing and when asked for an example, found none.

r/sudoku is a sub where naive puzzle solvers ask questions and want to know how to improve their skills, and often display attitudes that cripple them. I write about this, but never intending to be harsh. There are common misconceptions, and I always encourage newcomers. And it is not the newcomers who complain, it is others, and in this case, it has mostly been trolls who have no understanding or interest in sudoku. And bottom line, this mod doesn't care. He blames me for attracting that disruption.
In fact, there were three moderators until yesterday. One, who had been very active, resigned, I believe over this, definitely not blaming me.

(Reddit moderators have powers over other moderators, based in seniority. A more-senior moderator may remove a less-senior one. So as the sole moderator for years, this mod has absolute authority, and if users don't like it, they can go somewhere else. Which, of course, I've done, more than once.)

So what I did, this time, was to start another sub, which is how Reddit deals with the problem of abusive moderators. Don't fight with them, start your own damn sub! And this "power hungry mod" -- his language -- with whom I did not fight, rather I attempted to follow his demands -- can't stop me from cross-posting if I choose to, and pinging users who ask questions, or PMing them. The ban makes it just a little more complicated to respond to questions, the freedom is well worth the few seconds that it takes, but it works for me, and whether or not anyone else posts there doesn't matter. I can still answer questions, and my experience is that those who ask them appreciate detailed answers and discussion.

I continue to respond minimally to the intense and repeated trolling from Vilignat. The community will defend or it won't. If it doesn't, it gets exactly what it deserves. As was explained long ago in [[meatball:DefendEachOther]], it is not my responsibility to defend myself. But I find that documenting the attack without arguing with it creates a sense of power and victory.

They can't stop me from declaring what I know and what I stand for.
Last count: the WPO thread (public copy) is at 208 posts, and I have recorded over 200 trolling comments from WOVigilant on Reddit since December 30, 2019. Originally I was answering on the issues -- but quickly not in-situ --, then realized that this was far too much work, so I just started posting a link to a generic "Reply". And if anyone wants detail, they can ask. I've saved a lot of time this way, why respond to allegations if nobody cares?

[Abd]

The comment above, of course, was cited on Wikipediocracy. Thanks for the links. Every little bit counts. It's worth looking that this, it is a radical misrepresentation, but points to what is worth noticing.

Post by Vigilant » Thu Mar 05, 2020 4:41 pm
I totally wanted this to happen for ... personal growth ... [link to above post]

I did not say that I "wanted" this -- or any of the other events. I didn't. However, my stand has long been that reality is better than what I want or even imagine. And again and again I have found that some "bad event" turned out to create what was much better than what existed before.

I've cited DefendEachOther, from the old meatball wiki. What happens if we follow that advice? What if the community does not defend us? We learn that the community is not worth supporting, that's what, and we do something else more worthwhile. And that's been happening for many years.

Yes, I started a new subreddit, and this is definitely an improvement, even if nobody else comments. People will read it, because I'm cross-linking and naming the OP, they will get a notification -- if they don't opt out. I can also send PMs to people who ask questions.

What the mod there wanted is not what people who have questions want, terse answers. Real people with real questions appreciate detailed answers. Those who don't are the know-it-alls who don't realize that noobs don't read the whole reddit and don't know that something has been answered before, so repetition is important -- unless a page is cited.

So I learned that the mod would follow the lead of a troll, and would blame me for creating disruption by being a target for the troll. Given that this happened twice, being banned again for longer made it completely clear. Time to move to something new.

But it is *not* that I wanted it. Vilignant imagines the arguments of denial and projects them onto me. And what I've seen, looking into his past, is that he did this, intensely, with Jeff Merkey. Merkey was paranoid and was under attack by a large community, but he wasn't as crazy as Vilignat made out. Vilgnat has not changed his behavior at all, in over a decade.

It's not sour grapes, because labelling a commentary "sour grapes" implies that there was no problem with the grapes. It is simply recognizing that maybe there is something better than those grapes, and actually in reach.

[ericbarbour]

would still like to see the Vig log in here and engage, without namecalling like a 12-year-old or pulling Reddit bullshit (which usually gets him downvoted anyway!) Since Wikipedocracy is down I suspect he could manage the time.

[Abd]

Remarkable for me has been how the continued trolling lands. Always I think up some snarky or clever retort. Which may or may not be clever, but it all would feed the troll and it all would contribute to possible community opinion that this is simply a flame war between two retards or nut cases. So I don't. And then reality supplies more than I could possibly add.

Vilignant is up to 210 attacking comments on Reddit and was at 122 posts on WPO in the Sucks thread (which was really about me, Sucks being an excuse.) All this exploded because I called him a troll on Reddit, where everyone following that sub would agree.

Now, with Wikipediocracy down, he's beside himself, with 7 comments today so far. He's blaming me for the site shutdown. (I have never complained to a hosting company other than maybe twenty years ago for email spamming).

He's desperate, because all he is accomplishing with his intense campaign is making himself look like an idiot. He did get some traction with the reactive mod of r/sudoku, but the result of that has been positive for me, a co-moderator resigned over the temporary ban, and one of the mods left must have lifted the ban because it was then reinstated by that original mod. I'm still responding to all sudoku questions where I have something to contribute, in more depth, it's all good.

There is some risk on Reddit (I've seen troll targets banned), but much more likely than what he is now demanding -- that I be banned -- is that he is banned. He's trolling, adding comments completely irrelevant to what is being discussed, for the most part, and all I'm doing is posting a single link as a reply to each. He's stalking me, it's obvious, responding to everything I post, unless it is in a place where he's gotten his fingers burnt. I'm not stalking him, all his comments are responses to me -- because he wants me to read them, but since the end of the year his entire corpus of Reddit comments have been trolling me. I'm an actual Redditor, with other contributions, being given gold, etc.

So I used this today, because the Wikipediocracy shutdown has been noticed. I wrote:

u/WOVigilant stalks me here, so he'll notice this and maybe he will comment. Does he know anything more than anyone else?

Meanwhile, a simple copyright dispute would not ordinarily cause a site to be taken down unless something was more serious, like an ignored DMCA take-down request, or massive violations.

Trolls can also sometimes cause site take-down by filing apparently distinct complaints (or trolls can cooperate like anyone else, sometimes). A service provider -- or an administrator or, say, subreddit moderator -- can get tired of receiving many complaints and may decide to exclude the target, i.e,. to give the troll exactly what the troll wants. It happens. And then trolls learn how to damage their targets -- if, indeed, someone is damaged.

So at this point, the most likely outcome is that the site comes back up in short order

Answer to my question. No. Vigilant doesn't know anything about this. Or if he does, he isn't saying.

However, I find it of interest that he imagines that I could file a complaint and get the site taken down. Really? From what? And the answer is fairly obvious. Vigilant has been accusing people of things that can actually get them murdered, and he's been doing it for years. He's not the only one, but he's the most persistent and the most dedicated, and he's been doing it for a very long time.

There is a discussion on Wikipediocracy -- yes, it's been archived -- where Vilignat admitted provoking Merkey, which he did, in spades. Merkey was paranoid, to be sure, but the reality was that an entire community was after him, and he probably did receive death threats as he claimed -- and which Vilignat treated with amusement. Merkey became a poster boy for "crazy lunatic" in Wikipedia criticism circles, and that was largely Vilignat's doing, because he repeated it over and over and nobody pointed out the other side.

Vilignat's first response was pure troll:

Did you touch yourself in the bathing suit area while you typed this?

And it went on, and there is more in another WiA sub.

His poor butt.

He is being trolled by reality, I need do very little.