Troll

"Today, the word troll are both verb and noun, and are applied loosely to any outsider. If you don't like someone's manners, he is a troll. If you don't like a gadfly, he is a troll. If you don't like a philosopher, he is a troll. If you don't like a inquirer, he is a troll. If you don't like a humorist, he is a troll. If you don't like a teacher, he is a troll. If you don't like witches, they are, well, witches and must be witch-hunted." (see ad hominem and witchhunt). "Thusly, from weirdo to witches, from teachers to philosophers, from gadfly to firebrand, from loner to gay, they are all trolls online at your call. Quick spun the guild of killfilers and troll-criers. Anyone who has contrariwise things to say or the manner of saying it is a troll." - "troll ignorance", Xah Lee

"I find that the term "troll" means pretty much nothing, or it just means "somebody doing something I don't like." - Theresa Robinson

"...a term of abuse that is levelled both at genuinely problematic users and users with contentious but potentially legitimate views." - Mark Richards

Obviously, under these definitions, we are all trolls from time to time, that is, we are all likely to be in some dispute or conflict between users and then if there is some sysop power structure, we can be labelled "troll" and so marginalized. This is a fairly typical process, not different from authorship:

"The author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, chooses and impedes the free circulation of fiction." - Michel Foucault

One view of "real trolls" is that they are those who wilfully agree with Foucault and so reject both authorship and the association of authorship with fiction. To trolls, there is no such thing as an individual "troll", so the use of the term in the singular is confined to sysops. See Internet troll (Wikipedia) for examples of their anti-troll propaganda and troll (Meta-Wikipedia) for a troll view, in which sysops are defined as simply "less mature individual troll personalities who have not yet found a group they can comfortably be trolls in". A hierarchy with the sysop (those who require technological power over others to feel they can belong) at the entry point, and the troll as the culminative outcome, is formed. If this is desirable, then, troll-friendly wikis are the best:

A wiki is troll-friendly when a friendly troll gets due process, and consideration of his "fiction" as a peer to other fiction, without regard to reputation. That is usually all they want.

A wiki is by contrast troll-hostile and ruled by a GodKing if "deliberately disrupting work... in order to foster change, etc." can be unilaterally labelled as "problematic trolling" by one person or a small group, e.g. Jim Wales

See also:

• http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=360db514.18861087%40news.pipeline.com