Talk:Frank Trollman case

Cleanup, or Clean Out

First I am going to address what I see as the minimum necessary "cleanup" here, and then I will discuss why I think we should either delete this page or signficantly pare it down.

Minimum for cleanup: This is written in present tense, but it is over twelve years past and needs to be in the past tense. Even if the case is ongoing, we can still stick to that to keep this page "current" ("As of May 2020, blah blah" or such.) It needs to be updated if possible with some resolution, as it gives the reader the impression this is an ongoing matter. Every statement should be clearly cited from an external source. That's what I see as minimum.

Now, what I feel is best: I am very uncomfortable with having pages like this on the Wiki, as it is all too easy to, even in Good Faith, stumble into Libel. Issues like the Unseen have a significant impact on the playerbase and the look and contents of the products, and I feel that needs some coverage. This does not feel like that kind of situation. Rather than trying to cover it in detail, if we keep this page and others like it at all, they need to be minimal, primarily pointers to outside sources that cover the details. Those outside sources are probably not Wikis that anyone can edit, and in any case Sarna.net is not liable for their contents. Right now this page is linked from Loren L. Coleman and InMediaRes Productions, LLC, both of which have summaries that, while maybe some more citations would be desirable, seem quite adequate (and have some closure attached). Maybe those sections of those pages should just be merged here?

Summary: my preferences for this page are Best Outcome: Delete perhaps with Redirect to one of the linking pages, Acceptable Outcome: take those summaries out of Coleman and IMR's pages and just use that here, Minimum Outcome: make it past tense, pare it down and cite extensively.

--Talvin (talk) 14:41, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Would it makes sense to have a single page for all the various lawsuits? Madness Divine (talk) 15:03, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Not seeing a practical benefit to that, and I do see a possibility for confusion between cases. I just don't think we should have much coverage of behind-the-scenes legal matters like this unless it directly impacts the BattleTech Universe in some meaningful way (hence the comparison between this and the stuff surrounding the Unseen.)--Talvin (talk) 16:42, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Removal of unsourced information and follow-up on the court case would be a good idea. If you haven't already, take a look at the edit history of the Eridani Light Horse lawsuit for an example.--Cache (talk) 18:53, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Having already stated my clear bias toward "Let's just not be responsible for this sort of thing", I prefer to leave it to someone more centrist on the issue to handle that.--Talvin (talk) 19:06, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

The article is mainly an unsourced summary, plus an uncredited copy&paste job of a posting on the Dumpshock forums from back then. It could definitely do with a revamp.

Do we even need this article? I think yes, because it was a huge mess back then. Yet at the same time, nothing much ever came out of it and it’s only tenuously connected to BT. I still favor keeping it a separate article so that it isn’t the sole big thing effectively hijacking the Loren Coleman article. Frabby (talk) 12:47, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Maybe a different name, as per my concerns below? Along with, yes, a lot of trimming/pruning.--Talvin (talk) 12:54, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Some expansion of my thoughts

Been giving this some more thought, and I want to see if I can better articulate why this page bothers me more than the Unseen. Even the Eridani Light Horse lawsuit doesn't bother me as much.

It feels more personal.

The Unseen article talks about conflicts among corporations. When corporations clash, it is typically (not always, but usually) more professional in nature. The ELH lawsuit was an individual suing a corporation. The articles for the Unseen and the ELH lawsuit are named for the topics at hand, not the person. That also makes it feel less personal.

This article uses a person's name and attaches it to lawsuit for a title. That makes it feel more personal. In the first line we have "Frank Trollman, publicly accused Loren Coleman" and that can easily be perceived as a personal dispute as well as a legal one. The relative lack of citations and sources and the use of present tense rather amplify that.

We have to consider the context of our community with pages like this. Sarna.net uses the same software and many of the same principles of policy and etiquette as Wikipedia, and for good and valid reasons. Wikipedia, however, covers the entire world. There's almost always going to be someone who has that six degrees of separation to look at an issue. The BattleTech Community is much smaller: six degrees of separation is quite a bit of distance between two people from Sarna.net and IMR. Full disclosure: I do not know Loren Coleman socially, but we have emailed back and forth in a friendly manner regarding a non-BT-related Kickstarter. (I first learned about this matter from this page on the wiki, I note, and have never discussed it with anyone outside this talk page since.) I bring this up because my situation is actually quite common in this community: we chat every day with people who are part of the creative teams that make BattleTech and Shadowrun happen. Our relationship with CGL is personal!

We have a policy against Personal Attacks, as we should. I do not have any reason to believe that this page was intended to be a personal attack against anyone, but it does document a Real-World dispute among named individuals that are close by, rather than distant. I do not advocate hiding or ignoring such matters entirely, but we need to have higher and stricter standards for how we document Real World Events, and we need to weigh the benefits of such pages against potential legal liability as well as the effect on the community.

--Talvin (talk) 10:22, 30 April 2022 (EDT)