Troll war

The outbreak of troll war is a problem on large public wikis full of trolls from all factions. Usually characterized by a large number of revert duels going on everywhere.

The purpose of a troll war seems to simply be for one faction to achieve dominance over another. It makes no reference to any single external w:ethical code.

See w:Wikipedia:troll_war for policy suggestions that may also apply here.

troll jihad

This is the actual term that has been used by real trolls probably in an attempt to upset anti-w:Islam bigots and confuse them into making stupid mistakes or making obviously racist statements. Consumerium takes no position on the desirability of using the term w:jihad to describe such an effort, but notes that it would be at best a Lesser Jihad, not a Greater Jihad, in the terms applied in w:Islam, and so this use of terminology might well be offensive. We report it here only to better understand trolling itself.

A troll jihad is an openly declared well-organized attempt to drive off a particular user permanently from all wikis frequented by trolls.

It is a rare move undertaken only against deeply offensive people clearly guilty of actual crimes and specific open content license violations, not just offending people's feelings. Some w:Ethical code might well be involved though most trolls do not explicitly claim to subscribe to any one such code, only some vague right to exist and advance opinions unharassed by sysop power structure.

Actual targets of such activity seem to be those guilty of libel and persistent sysop vandalism justified only by amateur psychiatry and echo chamber lies. One such troll jihad declaration was against Erik Moeller, who often attempts outing, and has advocated developer vigilantiism and encyclopedia-damaging activities to harass his many enemies.

Larry Sanger, the first chief editor of Wikipedia (and never a sysop - he did not have or did not use the power to IP block himself) claimed that similarly deliberate troll activity was responsible for his permanent departure from all Wikimedia projects - this was probably false, as there were many other reasons, mostly economic, for him to depart in disgrace.