(the consensus on CommunityWiki is not that TrollingIsGood; this is merely a page to discuss arguments in that direction).
Trolling has many definitions.
(German machine translation of this page: EnDe:TrollingIsGood)
There are, accordingly, various schools of thought which define trolling in various ways and think it’s good for various reasons. (only one is explored here)
Note that in most cases, it’s impossible to tell if any of these schools of thought are serious, or just a joke.
The http://develop.consumerium.org wiki contains an interesting and peculiar philosophy of trolling.
Trolling is defined there along the lines of “…a term of abuse that is levelled both at genuinely problematic users and users with contentious but potentially legitimate views.”
However, the entire Consumerium project is seen as one big “troll” against powerful corporations, governments, etc: “…culture of trolling (of which Consumerium is necessarily a part, since it always will be perceived as “trolling perfect corporations with bad untrue things” until of course the corporation must admit that all the “trolling” is true…”
The Consumerium school’s definition of trolls is notably lacking an aspect of “lying to and messing with people for a joke at their expense”. Compare to other sources:
Of course, maybe “the Consumerium school of pro-troll philosophy” is just one big joke at the expense of anyone who believes that it exists. There’s certainly some evidence that some troll(s) on Consumerium feel this way (see bottom of this page).
The Consumerium school shares with the SoftSecurity school a distaste of HardSecurity. Similar to the view of hardcore proponents of SoftSecurity, use of HardSecurity is permitted when all other avenues are exhausted, but this is considered a semi-shameful failure on part of the person forced to wield it. On this page may be found a joking prescription for an apology if you have to use HardSecurity.
The Consumerium school may be said to think along the same lines as the SoftSecurity school of thought, but to also think that SoftSecurity doesn’t go far enough. SoftSecurity (at least, on MeatballWiki) feels that HardSecurity (TechnologySolutions) should be replaced with CommunitySolutions. SoftSecurity advocates that a CommunitySolution include ConflictResolution when possible, but resorts to social pressure and specifically to the community “closing ranks” against an offender when the conflict cannot be resolved. By contrast, the Consumerium school feels that social pressure and “closing ranks” is also abusive and should also be avoided.
The underlying assumption behind this villification of people who most consider “community leaders” is that there is no way to objectively determine whether the target individual is actually harmful.
The Consumerium philosophy attempts to limit the power of these sorts of subjective value judgements. The only thing that is “real” is power. The Consumerium school assumes that the world will always be mostly divided into various factions, who are willing to do sneaky things (for example, to violate FairProcess to kick out someone they consider “obviously harmful”) to win.
The Consumerium prescription is not, however, to AssumeGoodFaith all the time, no matter what. They don’t think that individuals should always be nice to others whom they consider offenders (see, for example, the way that they treat “sysops” such as Jimbo Wales of WikiPedia). Rather, the prescription is that checks in the underlying social system prevent the community from considering any individual as “offender” in an objective sense. This is to serve as a check against GroupThink.
For a specific proposal as to these sorts of checks, see Consumerium:SysopPowerStructure
In general, there is a strong emphasis on DueProcess? as a check against abuse of power:
So, the underlying assumption of the Consumerium school is that power is the only reality and people won’t play fair when they deeply disagree. Their philosophy allows individuals to be nasty to each other (because there cannot exist any neutral arbiter who could stop them), but attempts to prevent “the community” from taking sides (because this might lead to GroupThink).
The underlying assumption of SoftSecurity is AssumeGoodFaith, i.e that most individuals, if given a chance, will be fair even to others with whom they disagree. Under SoftSecurity, individuals are supposed to be nice (& even polite) to others. Even if the community decides to reject an individual, individuals are supposed to be polite while carrying this out. But SoftSecurity gives “the collective” a blank check to consider some things, and some people, as beneficial and others as harmful.
Another difference between the two philosophies is their attitude towards disruption. Consider an individual who ‘deliberately disrupts work… in order to foster change, etc.’
SoftSecurity would say that the individual is working against the interests of the community, and that the community should protect itself. The Consumerium school says that disruption is sometimes necessary, and therefore almost all disruption be tolerated (since no one is in a position to say which disruption is good and which is bad).
In almost direct opposition to CommunityWiki’s dominant philosophy, the Consumerium pro-troll philosophy holds that a system where individuals can acquire positive reputation is a bad idea and leads to power and hence to abuses of power. Incredibly (perhaps as a joke?) some within the Consumerium school apparently believe that reputation is useful, but only negative reputation, i.e. the best situation is where individuals can have bad reputations, but no one can ever have a good reputation.
One approach according to these lines seen on Consumerium is: “any conflicts between users necessarily lowers the repute of all involved - thus whoever is involved in all disputes by default is “Lowest”, and there is no assumption of any positive repute at all.” This explains their name of LowestTroll for one kind of what we might call a “community leader”; someone who takes the time to make peace in the community, and, when necessary, defend against trolls.
The Consumerium school has a particularly bad view of “sysops”, what we would call “hosts”. A bad sysop is what we would call a GodKing.
In SoftSecurity, a arrogant host may be considered a GodKing, but for the most part only the use of HardSecurity is thought to be a sin. By contrast, the Consumerium school faults any community leader for any abusive use of their positive reputation in the community. “Abusive,” though, is defined quite broadly, and encompasses any effort to rally the community against perceived harmful individuals or points of view.
By contrast, the LowestTroll is the Consumerium model for good leadership. The LowestTroll actively fights GroupThink by favoring outsiders instead of reputable community members:
As expected for a postmodernish philosophy, the philosophy of Foucault makes a confusing cameo:
"142" seems to be into this philosophy (although of course (s)he would dispute the characterization of 142 as an “individual”).
Note however that some of 142’s positions contrast with the Consumerium pro-troll philosophy, as described above. (for example, 142 advocates excluding certain specific people from positions of power in Consumerium, which is in conflict with the community-shouldn’t-exclude philosophy seen above).
Perhaps the philosophy was misunderstood here; perhaps other people contributed the contradicting parts; perhaps 142 changed hir mind; or perhaps 142 does not have stable “positions”, since 142 does not consider itself an individual.
Note: Although I started this page, but I do NOT side with any of the TrollingIsGood philosophies. I think discussion is best when everyone is sincere and nice to each other. I also believe in reputation, and think that positive reputation is a good thing.
My guess is that the “Consumerium pro-troll philosophy” is a strange mish-mash of the sincere beliefs of some “trolls” and the jokes of other “trolls”, rolled up into one.
(By the way, in the context of the Consumerium pro-troll philosophy, I especially fear for the Consumerium:ConsumeriumGovernanceOrganization, which seems like it will be constructed with an eye towards wielding the force of LegalSolutions against organizations with whom it disagrees on process)
Define external redirect: DueProcess