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Article states:

"True vandals and trolls (as distinguished from users who dabble in minor vandalism) usually suffer from chronic alienation and real or perceived powerlessness and seek recognition and infamy by interrupting and frustrating the Wikipedia project and community"

Here I would like to add:

"or alternatively, is a person who regardless of actual age more or less cannot help behave childishly" - or something in line with that

I don't expect this to "help" against vandalizing trolls, but is nevertheless also true, I believe. Especially regarding those who only vandalizes without any kind of agenda. Boeing720 (talk) 00:29, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see how that would help. Any summary describing human behavior will be incomplete, and a psychiatrist could probably provide dozens of cases showing somewhat different backgrounds of "true vandals and trolls". The point of WP:DENY is that a large proportion of dedicated vandals/trolls seek recognition for the reasons currently mentioned, and denying recognition is often best. Undoubtedly trouble comes also from people who will never mature, but why would such people persist at Wikipedia if they were not getting some recognition from it? At any rate, it would be undesirable to expand possible reasons for why some contributors are vandals/trolls because such a list would always be incomplete and unhelpful. Johnuniq (talk) 00:43, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Septrillion here attempted to modify the fourth dot point in the section "How to mitigate vandalism", which says:

* Otherwise, quietly revert or blank. Reserve list them as miscellany for deletion (if you see a group of similar pages, make a group nomination) for serious matters, noting that a high profile forum discussion of vandalism is the opposite of "deny recognition".

Why? Nominating at MfD is actually the opposite of DENY, it is an attention-escalating reaction. The troll wants the attention. This feeds the troll. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:59, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear to me what you are supporting. The current text (shown above) is fine although it needs copy editing as "list" should be "listing" and the stuff in brackets is too clumsy. The point is that there are a lot of vandals/trolls and simply blanking their pages might generate the least fuss. Often someone will cruise in and have fun for a few days, then disappear. People should not spend a week arguing over the sanctity of a user page in such cases. OTOH if the blanking is repeatedly undone then deletion is available. Johnuniq (talk) 03:55, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just CSD the page and get on with it, as long as there isn't any meaningful history available in the userpage. Blake Gripling (talk) 04:18, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CSDs G3, G5 and G10 are the first three suggestions. If these can't be applied, it is rarely that serious. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:21, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am opposing the diff provided and supporting its revert by User:CFCF. Copy edit? I removed the parenthetical stuff. I agree with all you wrote. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:19, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That basically tells us that something is going on and the main article is likely full of sanitized half-truths. 88.234.197.238 (talk) 23:09, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was not aware we locked talk pages. --DB1729^talk 14:19, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There is some logic to the principle, but some would point out that ignoring has not been a good response in the more recent environment. Some politicians have taken the stand that people should be called out, and there is also concern that letting things go unchallenged means some uninformed people will believe that incorrect statements are true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.192.29 (talk) 20:57, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The psychological analysis included in the first paragraph is remarkably dark, uses basically dehumanizing phrasing in assessing people as pathological while also not citing any sources at all to back up this rather extreme assessment of motivations behind a problematic phenomenon. I feel like the problem of vandalism on Wikipedia can be handled without employing the tonality of a law-and-order right-wing politician talking about perpetrators of urban graffiti. Seeing as this page is being treated as an official guideline on Wikipedia, should it perhaps be toned down a bit, or if such strong statements are going to be made about psychological traits motivating vandalism shouldn't they be sourced? 80.56.159.130 (talk) 14:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It's very offputting and not a good look for Wikipedia as a neutral resource. 107.12.51.118 (talk) 06:57, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For context, I have often done anti-vandalism. This has led me to leave the standard warnings on a variety of pages, including on pages of probably good-faith disruptors (e.g. someone adding to their own page unsourced information about their children). In some cases, I have been reverted by others, with no other justification than "WP:DENY". I think others will agree that this is a blatant misuse of this page, aimed at those that intentionally disrupt Wikipedia. Still, I wouldn't have objected that much if the editor in question just didn't themselves use warnings, as opposed to trying to impose their way of doing on others through reversion, which is disruptive. This has not happened many times, and last example I remember was months ago, but I was wondering, how should I answer/react to such reverts? Thanks, — Alien  3
3 3 10:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]