User:Isaacl/Top ten ways to avoid trolling

This is a companion page to Top ten ways to troll. Instead of saying one of the quoted phrases, consider the following approaches:

 "Calm down."Excited editors generally don't react well to being told directly to calm down. Try diverting away from areas of high contention and focusing on a very narrow area where there is agreement or good progress towards agreement. De-escalating the dispute will give the editors the opportunity to calm down. "I'm afraid you don't understand."It's always tricky to know if other editors don't understand or if you are misunderstanding what they are saying. Consider responding in accordance with active listening principles: explain what you believe they are saying, and ask clarifying questions. In some cases, you may be able to reveal what you believe to be a misunderstanding in your questions, without sounding like you are accusing the other editors of a failure.If it becomes clear that another editor really doesn't understand, and asking clarifying questions hasn't helped, recall it's not necessary to get all editors to understand. It's often better to just move on. "I consider your statement to be a personal attack."In most cases, actual personal attacks are evident to other people involved in the conversation, and so you don't have to point them out. It's generally more productive to take the high road and ignore any attacks on you. "Stop being uncivil."There is a lot of disagreement in the English Wikipedia community on what being civil means. Consider thinking how others and you can be respectful of each other, and couch any advice you have with this in mind. For instance, an editor's actions might be poor because they demand time and effort from others, because they do not enhance collaboration, because they do not acknowledge other valid views that proceed from different underlying assumptions, or something else. "Comment on content, not on behaviour."Modelling the desired approach may be more effective. Try responding in a manner narrowly focused on a specific concrete action taken as part of the dispute, ignoring the editor's behaviour and not assuming anything about their motives. "I don't understand why no one has thought of this simple solution."Odds are, someone has thought of it, it's been discussed, and for some reason or another, it didn't gain consensus approval. Just skip saying this and focus on the substance of your proposal. "I'm not responding to you anymore. Thank you for your contributions."There are situations where it may be useful to signal to another editor that their contributions are repetitive and so you won't be responding to them until something new is said. Most of the time, it's more efficient to stop responding without announcing it, or to focus on moving to another aspect: "We've covered these points; does anyone have anything new to add?" "Stop trolling."Denying a troll the satisfaction hit they feel from a response is more effective. (The problem too often is that someone ends up responding. Nonetheless, try not to be that someone.) "The requests for adminship process is broken." (more generally, "Process X is broken.")When decrying the problems of any process, try to offer specific criticisms of things that can be counted, and also consider the opposing arguments to your criticisms and honestly evaluate their validity. Acknowledge that all process implementations have their pros and cons, and be aware of the tradeoffs being made with one over the other. "We're here to build an encyclopedia."A comment less on-the-nose is more effective. Skip to what specific aspect you suggest be given higher priority, and explain why. 