User talk:The Cave Troll

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Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 17:18, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Is there any doubt that this is the same user as User:The Fellowship of the Troll? RickK 06:12, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I should imagine so. Seems to me that this chirpy fellow is our old anonymous friend "EntmootsOfTrolls" aka "The Fellowship of the Troll" aka "24" aka "142.177.etc" aka "Craig Hubley" (have I missed any?), or at least a close friend thereof.
Hi Craig. So, is it a new ISP, or are you trolling from work these days? :) Martin 23:24, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi there, I was just looking at your contributions to Slashdot trolling phenomena (love this article) and I wanted to drop you a hint - you should fill out the "summary" field every time you make an edit to let others know what kind of edit you made (anything from typo, added link to ____, to rewrote article!). Cheers, fabiform | talk 23:27, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC).

Please don't use misleading edit summaries. If you are adding a large amount of text to articles, it is not a good idea to call that a "copyedit". --No-One Jones (talk) 22:54, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Removing mentions of Wikipedia[edit]

Hi, I'm fairly new to Wikipedia myself, but in reviewing the changes that you've made and the articles that you reference as justification for removing all references to wikipedia, I don't interpret the articles that way--in fact they appear to say that info that is actually *relevant* to wikipedia needs to stay there (e.g., if someone looks up the name of a group or source that wikipedia is using as source material, and it *doesn't* say that wikipedia is using it, then it's actually missing relevant info.

I take the articles to mean that one should avoid *gratuitous* use of "Wikipedia" as in "This Wikipedia article is about" or "If I wasn't placing this article in Wikipedia, I'd..." which do *not* add any info.

Anyway, I see that people are reverting some of your edits, and I would, too.

This might be a topic to bring up on Village pump if you think that some policy is being violated by these texts and try to clarify what the established policy is. Elf 23:42, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think Elf's advice might be wise, though I think in a lot of cases your edits are correct. I've only seen a couple that I think were unwarranted. It will certainly be controversial, though, and controversial moves usually go better if you alert others/discuss them with editors at the pump or a talk page first. As long as you're only removing Wikipedia references you find unjustified (and not simply all mention of Wikipedia) I think you have a very reasonable argument. Jwrosenzweig 23:48, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I reread my post & it sounds harsh; didn't mean it that way. Didn't want you to spend time doing stuff that might be undone. And BTW thanks so much for including the links in your comment field; made it easy for me to see what you were doing. Elf 00:13, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry -- surely I'm missing something. I thought these policies meant that claims about Wikipedia were to be held to the same honesty and NPOV standards as anything else, and that Wikipedia should not be treated as special or honored. Please, could you explain how these comments were in any way neutral, encyclopaedic, or providing relevant information:

As an example, based on the quality of Wikipedia articles, one could form a hypothesis that Wikipedia articles can only be edited by highly qualified professors with multiple Ph.Ds (from Hypothesis -- the article does need a better example)

The Wikipedia community is remarkable for being not overtly hierarchically structured, as no contributor possesses inherently higher standing than another. However, some would note that although there is no explicit hierarchy there are social norms which make contributions unequal. Some contributors have more influence because their edits command higher respect and administrative privileges. (from Hierarchy -- these claims are discussed on Meta.)

Most other cases were similarly unjustified. This outrageous groupthink is what loses Wikipedia all its credibility.

Cave, I think saying "all its credibility" is a severe overstatment, but I'll definitely agree that those two examples were particularly egregious, and I'm very glad you caught them. Please don't be too hostile? :) I think both Elf and I are agreeing with much of what you did (I know I am, and I think Elf's last post was also). Jwrosenzweig 00:27, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Sorry it took so long for me to get back here. Here are a couple of examples that I think are OK. Note that "I think" doesn't necessarily mean "the wiki community at large thinks." :-)
  • From Copyleft article (one you edited): "Copyleft licenses for materials other than software include the Open Content License, and the GNU Free Documentation License. The latter is being used for the content of Wikipedia. " This is a relevant fact about the relationship between copyleft and wikipedia and I'm guessing that that connection might be something that people would search for.
  • From Graph theory article (one you didn't): "For example, the link structure of Wikipedia could be represented by a directed graph: the vertices are the articles in Wikipedia and there's a directed edge from article A to article B if and only if A contains a link to B." I think it's a good example and one that presumably will make sense to anyone accessing wikipedia. I don't think that generalizing the example to the internet as a whole, for example, would be as clear because its organization and interconnection is much murkier.
Hope these are helpful in showing how I'm thinking. Again, village pump might be a better place for this discussion--I really came here and posted because I wanted to get word to you quickly that some of your changes were being reverted which meant that someone(s) were disagreeing with your efforts. Elf 01:50, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Question[edit]

On Wikipedia:Plautus satire vs Raul654 evidence, you recently added a large number of first person rebuttals. Are you Plautus satire? If not, why are you adding evidence from him - what is your relationship with him? →Raul654 20:51, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)

Cave Troll was just copying the relevant mailing list posts to wikien. He is presumably interested in issues of Wikipedia governance. Cave Troll predates Plautus, and has a notably different style.
It is said, "Please do not feed the trolls". Martin 21:41, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)