Wiki Patterns
grow your wiki
EditWikiTroll
What is it?
It's important to distinguish trolling from constructive criticism, or even outright criticism. Trolling usually provokes people by saying something philosophically negative about the current topic, while criticism should point out a fairly specific procedural or functional problem. Whereas a troll might say, "This whole company stinks and makes a crappy product. You should go check out my company instead." a critic might say, "The export to PDF feature in this software crashes if the file is more than 10 pages long" or "The glue supplied with the build-it-yourself table is weak and doesn't bond."
How do I notice it?
Keep in mind that trolling is a rare occurrence in wiki sites where a physical community parallels the online one, i.e. in a wiki used for collaboration within a company.
One place to watch for trolling is a public support or documentation wiki, where someone who doesn't like your product (usually not a customer) might post overly negative, disruptive comments. One way to reduce the chance of this happening is to require registration to edit the wiki, though this may deter some otherwise legitimate users who just don't want to complete a registration. If you decide to require registration, don't distract users with any unnecessary steps - make sure registration requires only one step and as few clicks as possible so users can get right to posting.
How do I fix it?
When a WikiTroll disrupts progress, if possible, meet with the person and find out why they're trolling. Sometimes what seems like wiki trolling is the result of a person not understanding wiki community etiquette. If a meeting is not practical or possible, email is a good option #2. If no email is available, most wiki tools have a topic:talk or a user:talk page where discussions like this can happen.
| Rate this pattern? |
|
Related Patterns
- Vandal - A WikiTroll's actions may at times look remarkably like a Vandal's
- Copyright infringement - A WikiTroll may want to prove that (s)he is right, and therefore use content flooding to dominate a discussion. The flooded content or a part of it is likely to belong to someone else.
- Champion - A champion will swiftly deal with the disruptions of a WikiTroll to keep the wiki running smoothly, and try to help the WikiTroll become a more productive community member.
- WikiGnome - Also known as WikiGardener, a person who keeps the wiki running smoothly by fixing broken links, typos, and improving the overall flow and quality of content. WikiGnomes are critical to the success and quality of the wiki, and are considered the opposite of WikiTrolls.
Further Reading
Adoption Patterns
Adoption Anti-Patterns
Wikipatterns.com is sponsored by Atlassian Software, creators of JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo and Crowd
Designed by Headshift Ltd
Could it be useful to add here (or as a separate page for a new people anti-pattern) a brief explanation of what a vandal is? Although is more common in wikipedia and other open wikis, it can maybe give advice about how to face vandalism, in terms of an (usually) anonymous and deliberate attempt to damage content. What do you think?
Eric,
I think that's a very good idea - I'm leaning toward a new anti-pattern since in my opinion a Vandal can be much more malicious than a troll. I could imagine someone trolling to be annoying, or because they don't understand how to behave in a wiki community, but I think a vandal has much more deliberate negative intent. What do you think?
As a negative or (at least) not constructive behavior, I agree with you, since it could be even worst than trolling. In wikipedia vandalism is defined as "any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia".
Sorry for referring again to them (I know not all wikis are wikipedia! /
I like the first part but I don't like the terms "compromising the integrity of", maybe it could be defined as a "deliberate attempt to disturb or spoil the collaborative work done on a wiki", or something similar...
Enric, I don't think it's bad to refer to wikipedia on this. They have been at this for many years and have hammered out a lot of these issues. Wiki adoption wouldn't be close to where it is without them.
I think it might be useful to mention the type of Troll that I've encountered most -- the person who rolls back changes on pages they've originated or added to simply because they can't stand being edited. Or they're editing for style instead of content. They might make the argument that a post is "rambling" or "irrelevant," and roll back the entire version to one they originally created.
I've encountered these people in non-wiki situations as well (working as an editor at a newspaper) ... sometimes people have a natural defensiveness to being edited, and they turn into a Troll on wikis without meaning to. Could we help the trolls realize the distinction between editing for style (usually destructive), versus focusing on editing for content, which can be helpful.
What do you think? Does this deserve a mention?
Laura,
Absolutely - this is a great example of the kind of troll you're more likely to encounter in an organization's wiki than in Wikipedia. I think it would be great if you add a mention to the page.
Cheers,
Stewart