Doctrine:troll
From eg
"The weak must have the right to fight dirty, otherwise the strong will always win... The weak must be entitled to resort to the lesser evil of terrorist violence and without this right they will subject to eternal subjugation." - Michael Ignatieff, known troll, summarizing the moral argument for terrorism, "The Strength of the Weak", 2002
"...the lack of a cult of personality seems partly motivated by the desire to project an image of a faceless but omniscient and omnipresent state." - troll: tecspectr
"You get to knowledge faster with a bad answer than a good question." - Lowy's law
Contents |
[edit] Tactics
Tactics advised by doctrine troll:
- learn to detect spin, i.e. deliberate shifting of ontological metaphors to cause more favourable operational distinctions to apply and thus avoid transparency
- encourage Crocker's Rules, E Prime and insist that all users are trolls
- be bold, so bold that mediocrity attacks excellence and stupidity attacks insight (two manifestations of Forrester's Law)
- encourage ethical trolling of any venue supporting sysop vandalism or sysop vigilantism
- adopt troll-friendly rulesets on your own venues, e.g. troll-friendly wikis, and develop and share wiki best practices and advocate laws that will make such venues more practical to run, e.g. eradication of Canadian libel
- operate trollsnests to support the above activities, ideally all users are sysops
- develop trollish language (tag:trollish)
- extend troll ontology, e.g. living ontology, to include operational distinctions learned from trolling (tag:trolling)
- do your tagging in trollish wherever feasible (tag:tagging)
[edit] Origins
The doctrine known as troll is named after a term, originally a pejorative, that was used to label individuals who dissented from majority or technological power holders' views on public wikis. This term is also used to describe an underclass of creatures in Norse and Germanic mythologies, despised and persecuted by the gods, who hunt them down like animals. A vast number of other legends apply to the so-called trolls. Advocates of more democratic domains, and more "troll-friendly" policies in managing shared webs such as Wikipedia, began to call themselves "trolls" by way of protest, and to use the verb:troll to mean, basically, any activity likely to cause any controversy or challenge any power structure. In doing so, they sought to emulate other groups such as black rappers, gay and lesbian and native activists, who had reclaimed pejorative terms in order to defuse them, and make them insider terms that others became afraid to apply. In other words, while all users are trolls at least potentially, calling someone a troll for purposes of social exclusion, sysop vandalism or sysop vigilantism would trigger reprisals that could end in the namer driven off by trolls, and potentially even a large public wiki being taken over by trolls. The first such incident occurred at Wikipedia itself, where the movement began, with first chief editor and ontologist Larry Sanger departing angrily claiming this had occurred. He named at least one individual whose doctrines had apparently caused this "takeover", and later described this attitude as "anti-expertise". Not everyone was so disturbed.
A movement of smug pro-trolling trolls soon emerged, advocating such revolutionary and disturbing tactics as elected officers including a chief editor, elected sysops and more rigorous processes to desysop or appeal rulings. They argued that infrastructure owners trust alone was not enough to guarantee integrity of mass peer review, and certainly not intellectual integrity of the material. To publish wiki materials, they argued, would also likely result in a rapid degradation in quality due to spam and funded trolls without some advisory board intervention. It was apparently the suggestion to bring on such a board that caused Sanger such distress, and which Jimmy Wales resisted strongly for years, eventually agreeing only to create a Wikimedia board controlled entirely by himself. This of course did not satisfy the SPTTs, some of whom vowed to continue the troll-sysop struggle, others elaborated the doctrine, and still others continued to troll deep.
[edit] Culture
A troll culture began to grow in mediawiki space that began with open defiance of the administration of Wikipedia, but then created its own venues, e.g. Anarchopedia, Consumerium, Wikinfo, to escape the unrighful administrative hierarchy created by people whose only distinction is 'being here first': called old trolls in the doctrine.
As use of wikis spread, wiki troll culture began to merge with other troll cultures: activists, aboriginals, advocates of green economics, opponents of DRM, even patent trolls. Many troll organizations now exist seemingly to annoy control freaks and contest property rights but also simply to raise the price of not obeying the doctrine: In general, the more troll-friendly your actual policies are, the less likely it is that you'll be bothered, and the more likely that trolls will actually contribute. The open politics in force doctrine emphasizes this.
[edit] political view
It remains common in net discourse to refer to anyone who 'does not mean what they say' or 'annoys others' or 'goes on the net to cause trouble' as a troll. This of course is exactly what any sincere advocate will be accused of in politics as usual - thus all advocates are, rightfully, trolls in exactly the same sense, as they are labelled by some similar pejorative (troublemaker, uppity, malcontent, commie, etc.).
But administrators also, in setting rules and ejecting those who disobey or dissent, are a sort of troll. According to the doctrine, it creates a more equal power relationship if all of the participants admit, on day one, they are trolls.
[edit] linguist view
The doctrine advises converging trollish with REST: trolls use the verb:namespace as a dictionary: put, get, post, redirect, etc. all mean the same as in HTTP.
[edit] technical view
Technically, a RESTful network protocol is one based on URI axioms based on the prototype protocol HTTP. Trollish thus also separates verb/noun/type development into three different problems wherever possible. There are better URI axioms that require only operational distinctions.
Some trolls seek to eventually speak directly to a web server and be understood without error. Rumours say this already happened. See troll ontology for more on the usefulness of REST to trolls.
