Trolling

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/78/Trollface.svg/365px-Trollface.svg.png[/img] Unfortunately I've been running into too many trolls on a variety of forums and its unfortunate that innocent users of different forums have to get banned because they don't understand the repercussions of pushing back against them. Most of the time trolls can be avoided with great Moderators and careful precision to watch forum usage. Whether it be harmless, a joke, or a way to emotionally hurt someone, trolls are never fun to deal with. So I thought I would start a thread to work against any future trolls and users who tend to have significant problems with them. Article 1: http://www.flayme.com/troll/ The object of this page is to bring together a definitive document to cover the utter sadness of the Internet troll. Usually, a troll is nothing more than a passing nuisance, but, as this page will show, they can be a worry (stalkers). However, it is almost invariably an inadequate individual who can be safely ignored. This page will define the activity, and help with early recognition; once acknowledged, trolls can take up residence, and, like athlete's foot, can be difficult to shift. And when you've finished here, I recommend this fairly comprehensive guide to managing sad thirteen year olds loose on Mom's computer. What Is A Troll? The term derives from "trolling", a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The troll posts a message, often in response to an honest question, that is intended to upset, disrupt or simply insult the group. Usually, it will fail, as the troll rarely bothers to match the tone or style of the group, and usually its ignorance shows. Why do trolls do it? I believe that most trolls are sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful. Disrupting a stable newsgroup gives the illusion of power, just as for a few, stalking a strong person allows them to think they are strong, too. For trolls, any response is 'recognition'; they are unable to distinguish between irritation and admiration; their ego grows directly in proportion to the response, regardless of the form or content of that response. Trolls, rather surprisingly, dispute this, claiming that it's a game or joke; this merely confirms the diagnosis; how sad do you have to be to find such mind-numbingly trivial timewasting to be funny? Remember that trolls are cowards; they'll usually post just enough to get an argument going, then sit back and count the responses (Yes, that's what they do!). Troll - Angler or Underbridge Dweller? How can troll posts be recognised? No Imagination - Most are frighteningly obvious; sexist comments on nurses' groups, blasphemy on religious groups .. I kid you not. Pedantic in the Extreme - Many trolls' preparation is so thorough, that while they waste time, they appear so ludicrous from the start that they elicit sympathetic mail - the danger is that once the group takes sides, the damage is done. False Identity - Because they are cowards, trolls virtually never write over their own name, and often reveal their trolliness (and lack of imagination) in the chosen ID. As so many folk these days use false ID, this is not a strong indicator on its own! Crossposting - Any post that is crossposted to several groups should be viewed as suspicious, particularly if unrelated or of opposing perspective. Why would someone do that? Off-topic posting - Often genuine errors, but, if from an 'outsider' they deserve matter-of-fact response; if genuine, a brief apposite response is simply netiquette; if it's a troll post, you have denied it its reward. Repetition of a question or statement is either a troll - or a pedant; either way, treatment as a troll is effective. Missing The Point - Trolls rarely answer a direct question - they cannot, if asked to justify their twaddle - so they develop a fine line in missing the point. Thick or Sad - Trolls are usually sad, lonely folk, with few social skills; they rarely make what most people would consider intelligent conversation. However, they frequently have an obsession with their IQ and feel the need to tell everyone. This is so frequent, that it is diagnostic! Somewhere on the web there must be an Intelligence Test for Trolls - rigged to always say "above 150" Where are you likely to find trolls? Wherever they are tolerated - this means forums and networking sites that have loose or lazy moderation, and places like Usenet (newsgroups) where there may be no moderation at all. Where trolls are successful is a slightly different issue - some forums allow members to set an 'ignore' function, so they just do not see troll posts, after the first one, and some specialist forums are tightly focussed so that troll posts stick out a mile and are ignored - it's larger, more general forums that have issues, as it only takes a couple of members to be drawn in for the whole forum to suffer. They also thrive on 'opinion' sites, such as politics and religion, where feelings often run high anyway. But, again, only if moderation is weak. Usenet has a special problem, as moderation is impossible; for trolls to be controlled, requires committed members using their killfiles effectively, and avoiding accidental cross-posting - which is all too easy with many newsreading software setups. Some career trolls have set up their forums to exchange notes. These rarely thrive, as most trolls are not team players, and they simply fight among themselves. in other cases, they become centers for cyberbullying (see stalking); while that's a sad development, it makes it easier to have the sites closed. Who is at risk? Any newsgroup, bulletin board, forum or chatroom can attract trolls, but they don't have the brains to attack nuclear physicists, and they are drawn to the quick response where sex, religion and race are found; so politics is easy prey. One troll famously tried to infiltrate a mensa group; the results read like 100 trolls and one regular, it didn't have a chance - but it was stupid enough to persist until removed. When Should You Be Concerned? Usually, no, though fractured funny bones and occasional waves of nausea have been reported. When a troll become persistent and personal, you may need to consider the possibility that it has fermented into an Internet Stalker - equally pathetic, if not more so - but sometimes requiring weedkiller. Article 2: http://curezone.com/forums/troll.asp What is an Internet Troll/ Forum troll? An "Internet troll" or "Forum Troll" or "Message Board Troll" is a person who posts outrageous message to bait people to answer. Forum Troll delights in sowing discord on the forums. A troll is someone who inspires flaming rhetoric, someone who is purposely provoking and pulling people into flaming discussion. Flaming discussions usually end with name calling and a flame war. A classic CureZone troll is trying to make us believe that he is a genuine skeptic with no hidden agenda. He is divisive and argumentative with need-to-be-right attitude, "searching for the truth", flaming discussion, and sometimes insulting people or provoking people to insult him. Troll is usually an expert in reusing the same words of its opponents and in turning it against them. While sometimes, he may sound like a stupid, uninformed, ignorant poster, do not be deceived! Most trolls are highly intelligent people trying to hide behind a mask of stupidity and/or ignorance! They usually have an agenda. Very few trolls come to CureZone out of pure skepticism. A CureZone Troll is generally a person who is extremely skeptical of the main forum subject. He is generally interested to make other forum members look stupid. A troll will sometimes use insults to provoke other people to insult him. Then, he will complain to moderators of being insulted and will request that his opponents get banned from further discussion. It is generally very easy to troll any one of several hundreds of support forums on CureZone. As the majority of support forums on CureZone are about alternatives to commercialized medicine, all you have to do to start a flaming thread questioning the main subject of discussion and to provoke insults from hard core proponents. It has been done every few weeks. It is strictly against our rules! Initiating debates on CureZone support forums is strictly against the rules. CureZone has plenty of debate forums where those interested in questioning can have free rain. Even debate forums on CureZone can be trolled by name calling and by provoking name calling. Those trolls are quickly banned from CureZone. He (and in 90% of cases it is he) tries to start arguments and upset people. Sometimes, he is skeptical, trying to scare people, trying to plant fear in their hearts. Many curezone trolls are people trying to promote Quackwatch / ratbags agenda through fear mongering. For many trolls, lack of hard evidence about any therapy equals "DANGER". He will try to scare people from even trying the therapy just because there is no hard evidence that therapy is more effective then placebo. Sometimes, Internet troll is trying to spin conflicting information, is questioning in an insincere manner, flaming discussion, insulting people, turning people against each other, harassing forum members, ignoring warnings from forum moderators. Trolling is a form of harassment that can take over a discussion. Well meaning defenders can create chaos by responding to trolls. The best response is to ignore it, or to report a message to a forum moderator. CureZone moderators usually delete troll messages or block trolls. Negative emotions stirred up by trolls leak over into other discussions. Normally affable people can become bitter after reading an angry interchange between a troll and his victims, and this can poison previously friendly interactions between long-time users. Finally, trolls create a paranoid environment, such that a casual criticism by a new arrival can elicit a ferocious and inappropriate backlash. When trolls are ignored they step up their attacks, desperately seeking the attention they crave. Their messages become more and more foul, and they post ever more of them. Alternatively, they may protest that their right to free speech is being curtailed. Perhaps the most difficult challenge for a webmaster is deciding whether to take steps against a troll that a few people find entertaining. Some trolls do have a creative spark and have chosen to squander it on being disruptive. There is a certain perverse pleasure in watching some of them. Ultimately, though, the webmaster has to decide if the troll actually cares about putting on a good show for the regular participants, or is simply playing to an audience of one -- himself. Next time you are on a message board and you see a post by somebody whom you think is a troll, and you feel you must reply, simply write a follow-up message entitled "Troll Alert" and type only this: The only way to deal with trolls is to limit your reaction and not to respond to trolling messages. It is well known that most people don't read messages that nobody responds to, while 99% of forum visitors first read the longest and the largest threads with the most answers.