New troll
A new troll is a user who has gotten into one or more conflicts but is not clearly associated with any faction yet, or has deliberately denied being representative of any faction. Basically, it's just someone who has been called a "troll" or otherwise told their point of view is idiosyncratic or invalid, and who has not yet developed any steady allies or collaborators here.
According mostly to trolls, the New Troll point of view is a real and coherent thing that can be established by consensus and keep large public wikis from freezing into simple cliques of the existing participants. In this factional view, the treatment of new trolls is central to all wiki governance. This view is strongly opposed to any imposition of community point of view or trusting any neutral point of view that the established "community" agrees with. But also there is the view that new trolls are pests and deserve no status or consideration, or that only those who use real names should get any help or only those who pay to keep things running should be able to edit any disputed article.
Factional views
Trolls
A new troll is a user who has gotten into one or more conflicts but is not clearly associated with any faction yet, or has deliberately denied being representative of any faction.
Although every effort should be made to accomodate their New Troll point of view, in case it is in fact an under-represented or previously excluded view, there must be limits to this, if only to ensure that even more new trolls continue to arrive and challenge the dominant groupthink. Therefore it's probably wise to think in terms of the marginal value of accomodating each new troll:
- We want to be just troll-friendly enough that the next new troll feels just as welcome as this new troll; Consumerium:Policy will ideally make each new troll slightly more welcome. Accordingly, it's fair to ask new trolls to make specific accomodations for the next, unknown, troll to arrive, and perhaps to prove worthiness as trolls by initiating new trolls in the intricacies of faction politics, the vileness of sysops, etc., so as to breed a worthy polity based on dissent and not on any groupthink.
- Accordingly, Consumerium:We should be able to confidently say that no user arrives without being fully empowered and motivated to join some faction that they themselves find empowering; If they reject the trolls' view, then, they can join some other faction. But in no case are they left entirely alone vs. a sysop power structure.
Fair? If not why not? How else can democracy be organized? See also the theory of the open party.