User talk:Trolling Motor

Since folks appear unwilling to listen to advice from a user with this username, and since if his behaviour is so unacceptable as to warrant blocking it seems odd to leave evidence of that behaviour scattered around Wikipedia, I'm consolidating this user's comments below. Martin 21:12, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

from Wikipedia talk:Three strikes you're out policy

This thread suggests a naive understanding of why people contribute, an assumption that a preferred motive is a prerequisite of contributing, that administrators are qualified to assess motivation, and that contributors' motivation is consistent from moment to moment and from day to day. All of these flawed premises represent a lack of clinical experience in dealing with human behavior.

People likely contribute for a variety of reasons. A most likely reason for contributing is a trend for people to do what they are told. A repeated compliance message that states "edit this page" will likely provoke responses from a large number of people whose interests might not, at any given moment, coincide with the interests of a large group comprising a revolving membership. A primary reason people contribute, regardless claims to the contrary that suggest egalitarian motivation, is that people obtain personal satisfaction by adding text to the database and seeing it appear in a shared corpus. People might seek to satisfy both the request to "edit this page" and whatever internal and transient motivation they experience at that moment. Any act that threatens to diminish satisfaction potentially escalates contributions offered by a member whose contributions are widely disliked. A more rational approach used in clinical settings attempts to identify the interests of an individual, seeks to identify conflicting interests that might motivate an individual and helps the individual identify the interest most likely to result in satisfaction. Efforts to force individuals to satisfy a group are only likely to succeed with individuals who have a need for group acceptance. A one-size fits all approach seldom works in clinical practice, and efforts to identify irreparable socio-pathology stand little chance of success with the limited testing instruments employed by administrators or members of an asynchronous electronic network.

The term troll used in a username might merely be a well-meaning effort to desensitize a group to terms that previously triggered reactions, in effect making the group more durable and more resistant to provocation. It might be better to avoid speculating about the semantic function of a slang term and rather to engage in more precise efforts to discover contributors' interests and help them realize those interests in the context of other contributors'efforts to realize often competing interests.

There is quite a bit of technical information available to support the clinical approaches I have represented here. I am most likely to find satisfaction offering that information if I am not alienated and if my motives are not disparaged.

In general, a three-strikes policy better demonstrates a group's inability to find productive strategies for realizing its interests than a means of controlling unwanted behavior. Trolling Motor 18:06, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I find it difficult to take someone seriously who uses the name "Troll" during a discussion of trolling instead of a standard user name or anon login that they must have (since they have no trouble finding all the policy discussions) and has a history that extends to this morning. - Tεxτurε 19:30, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is the second person to have created a username with the word Troll in it just to prove that in and of itself the word in a username means nothing. May I point people towards the proposed policy State your point, don't prove it, and Jimbo's response [1] to the creation of the account "Telgur the Trollslayer". fabiform | talk 20:01, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

While this is stirling advice, I see Silsor has blocked Trolling Motor for reason="trolling", so sie'll have to take it on board for the next sock puppet account sie creates. Martin 21:08, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)