Heroic trolling
Heroic trolling is trolling that is broadly and objectively recognized by most people (other than the sysop power structure of course) as doing something useful. That is, defying lifetime bans and other such made-up nonsense to continue to try to improve tabloid-quality crap, e.g. those articles published by Wikimedia about neoclassical economics from Fox News point of view.
Heroic trolling also seems to justify the enormous amount of time wasted on Wikipedia and other large public wikis, trying to make them useful. See Talk:trolling for the Wikiactivist view of this work.
Due to politics as usual, views of heroic trolling tend to be wildly contradictory. For instance:
- engaging in witty combat until someone very stupid or doing things clearly contradicting the wiki mission is driven off by trolls, e.g. the author of this nonsense (note ironic self-link implying this article is itself nonsense):
- VERSUS
- For instance, replacing useful articles with poorly-written, poorly-linked, semi-coherent rants that use an idiosyncratic vocabulary that nobody else understands.
- Clearly they do by now, as they are able to mimic this vocabulary while attempting to mock it! Poorly linked? Hell if anything they're over-linked.
- Or, trumping up supposed issues of systemic bias and tarring anyone who disagrees with the label of "sysop" (equivalent to "witch" or "devil" in the heroic troll's vocabulary).
- This doesn't even make sense, hard to troll back
- Or, simply hijacking (or attempting to hijack) various large public wikis in service of what appears to be an odd pseudo-Green agenda, or possibly just for the thrill of annoying people without any possibility of retribution - hard to say.
- Heroic trolls are naturally too lazy to set up their own projects, but love to stomp all over others' - perhaps they take delight in castle jumping.
- The GFDL does not specify that contributions are the property of those who set up the project that handles the group editing, the trolls are as entitled as anyone else to edit, and to exploit the outputs of the editing.
- raising and suggesting ways to fix issues of systemic bias (which sysops will always claim does not exist).
- simply acting as Lowest Troll when there is no one else doing so. Some honour may accrue to those who take such responsibilities, and stigma will likely accrue also via the sysop power structure which sees trolling as vandalism and their own activities, necessarily, as being never capable of becoming equivalent to vandalism. The lower the social status and the more stigma applied by vile people, the more heroic. Especially given nonsensical attacks like:
- VERSUS
- Very little honour may accrue to those who take such "responsibilities", and stigma will likely accrue also via anyone who sees through the trolls' silly masturbatory fantasies of importance.
- Funny, it would seem Wikimedia has such fantasies, and seems also to generate the importance of both its own sysop power structure and the bogeyman they claim is its justification for existence.
- Naturally, the individuals who believe in "heroic trolling" get some sort of thrill out of their electronic chest-beating and dung-flinging; why they do will forever remain a mystery.
- Perhaps magnificent trolling or suing for funding is the objective?
- Very little honour may accrue to those who take such "responsibilities", and stigma will likely accrue also via anyone who sees through the trolls' silly masturbatory fantasies of importance.
Because the Lowest Troll usually has some infrastructure owners trust, however, they cannot achieve what is called magnificent trolling - this term is reserved for very despised trolls who drive off even GodKings and discredit ontologists, which is later seen to be a Good Thing. The Wikipedia Red Faction seems to engage in heroic trolling and to recognize that there is some potential for magnificence in their activities to oppose Wikimedia.