Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Warriors and puppet masters

File under "and why not use the existing term?" I found this today in a Wikipedia entry:
The Bogdanov Affair article has been plagued by vicious POV warrioring from a number of sides, including IPs belonging to Igor Bogdanov, the subject of the article.
Aside from being hard to pronounce, it seems that the term "fighting" would be appropriate. So why does the author use "warrioring"? Because it appears to derive from a noun "POV warrior," which (heh) Wikipedia helpfully defines as "someone whose writings consistently lack a Neutral point of view." Another Wikipedia entry uses the term in a similar way:
In short, I object to RoB's knee-jerk reverting of any change I make to the article, without any consideration for process (explaining his edits, responding to my explanations). Moreover, I object to his knee-jerk POV warrioring, refusing to accept views other than his own.
So within the Wikipedia community, this seems to be established. The verb is just a, uh, bonus.

As for turning "xxxx warrior" into a verb, we can find other examples:
  • An Amazon reviewer (of PlayStation) who signs himself "warrioring."
  • A clear example where "weekend warrior" (not completely defined) is converted to "warrioring."
  • A straightfoward example from a page that addresses machismo: "Macho posturing is a hangover from hand-to-hand combat times when tribal societies were in need of fierce warriors to survive. Now that women fly combat planes, warrioring no longer suffices as a sufficient proof of masculinity." [Note: site is perhaps not work-safe. -- M]
  • Ditto: "Warrioring is a necessary evil, like chemotherapy against cancer - not the kind of remedy I like to celebrate - we should use it sadly, only when necessary. Think of all the greatest atrocities in our history, like the holocaust - they were all committed by warriors. Warrioring is how we evolved as societies."
Etc. Google lists a paltry 486 cites for "warrioring" right now, which I take as weak support for making "warrior" into a verb.

BTW, the original Wikipedia entry also introduced me to a term I hadn't heard before: a "sock puppet," which they define as "an additional account created by an existing member of an Internet community. This account allows them to pose as a completely different user, sometimes to manufacture the illusion of support in a vote or argument." I generally suspect that overly enthusiastic reviews on Amazon and CitySearch.com are put there by sock puppets. But then, I'm a skeptic.

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