Trolls: Article

r3nu4l

Found a nice article defining trolls and how to deal with them online!

I thought I'd post it as a lot of people post here asking "wtf is a troll?" and whatnot!

[Bush]Maybe it will help boardies become ever more vigilant to the threat that these intarweb terrorists pose to the democracy of the free world![/Bush]:D

Crucifix

Trolls: The petulant two year olds of the internet

keynesian

My thoughts exactly

Binomate

Trolls are the best.

Sangre

Whats a troll?

Bicky

I recently introduced a friend to boards. He accurately pointed out that people troll in nearly every thread. Ruins the excellent site that is boards.ie

aodhu

The OP's Link doesn't work

layke

Sorry, We Can't Find That Page

You might try retyping the URL, or searching below

I'm a sad Panda.

Stark

http://web.archive.org/web/20060130042526/http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm

Archive.org ftw

Sangre

Sangre wrote:

Whats a troll?

They live under bridges and/or have a weird billy goat gruff fetish.

petes

Deleted User wrote:

They live under bridges and/or have a weird billy goat gruff fetish.

I thought that was just me.

Terry

Pillow pants

Nevyn

http://www.genesbmx.com/trolls.jpg

raido9

Thanks for posting up the description of a troll. Perhaps now people will stop being called a troll for differing in opinion to the majority/ an over opinionated mod.

Its ridiculous the amount of times on these boards that I see someone with the minority opinion labled a troll.

aidan_walsh

raido9 wrote:

Thanks for posting up the description of a troll. Perhaps now people will stop being called a troll for differing in opinion to the majority/ an over opinionated mod.

Its ridiculous the amount of times on these boards that I see someone with the minority opinion labled a troll.

Troll.

raido9

aidan_walsh wrote:

Troll.

I was expecting that. But its true enough. It seems to me half the people who post on boards are a mod of some forum. Personally I don't think its the best way to run a forum. There are so so many threads locked/ moved/ deleted/ people banned for a period of time its ridiculous.

Alot of these mods are just looking for an excuse to flex their modding muscles and remind us who's in charge.

Most forums moderate themselves, a handful of global mods would suffice.

r3nu4l

Well Holy [insert Deity here]! Only one reply at the time of posting...then the link goes 404 and all of a sudden there are 14 replies...it's either a very strange world or you are all trolls*!







*i.e. anyone who disagrees with my point of view

@ Aidan Walsh...Kudos to you sir, very AH**, very AH indeed

**No insult intended

@ raido9...what Aidan Walsh said! Nah, I love boards.ie, right level of moderation overall, occassional slip-up but we all have our off days. Mods are spot on 99.99% of the time imo.

the_syco

r3nu4l wrote:

Mods are spot on 99.99% of the time imo.

Get banned once for trolling?

r3nu4l

the_syco wrote:

Get banned once for trolling?

hee hee
/tempts fate: I've never been banned from any forum...yet

raido9

r3nu4l wrote:

@ raido9...what Aidan Walsh said! Nah, I love boards.ie, right level of moderation overall, occassional slip-up but we all have our off days. Mods are spot on 99.99% of the time imo.

I think the structure of boards has a mod of each board who has a massive interest in the forum he's modding. Which leads to these mods being very passionate and opinionated on their forums. It is great for discussions to have them there, as I find input from the mods is usually the best, but this doesn't make them great mods. Often their interest can affect their modding where they ban someone for disagreeing with them or locking threads left by someone who doesn't know alot about the subject and is posting useless posts in their forum (in their opinion).

Just my opinion. Modding should be kept to a minimum, deleting offensive posts and banning repeating offenders. Therefore they don't need to know anything about the subject being discussed.

FlutterinBantam

Yaaaawn..much ado about nothing.

raido9

For example, just say I thought parkour was a load of balls (which I don't), and I had my reasons and wanted a bit of a discussion about it, do I post on the parkour forum?
No point, my post will be deleted.

Do I post anywhere else?
No point, my thread will be moved to the relevent forum or deleted.

What to do?

raido9

FlutterinBantam wrote:

Yaaaawn..much ado about nothing.

Yes because your input was much more enlightening. What is the point of posting that anyway. All you have to do is stop reading. The fact that you went to the effort of replying to say that says alot about you.

The_Minister

I think that the person who wrote about the motivations of a troll, has never actually talked to one. There is some truth to what he says, but I must disagree with alot of it.

Feral Mutant

I dislike trolls as much as the next boardsie but

Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism (constructive or otherwise). You cannot negotiate with them; you cannot cause them to feel shame or compassion; you cannot reason with them. They cannot be made to feel remorse.

anyone else think it sounds like that line from Terminator?

ziggy

This post has been deleted.

Sangre

But seriously, anyone else hate travellers?

Pigman II

Deleted User wrote:

They live under bridges and/or have a weird billy goat gruff fetish.

I think you'll find most of them live in their mothers basement and have a weird goatee beard fetish.

Backtoblack

I don't get it.

faceman

The OP's link didnt work, hmmm.

By focusing and defining trolls just draws attention to what otherwise should be something ignored. Whats a troll tho? lol

Black Swan

"Troll, troll, troll your boat, gently down the stream..."

Sangre

Sangre wrote:

But seriously, anyone else hate travellers?

Faith

raido9 wrote:

Yes because your input was much more enlightening. What is the point of posting that anyway. All you have to do is stop reading. The fact that you went to the effort of replying to say that says alot about you.

Lollers!

fulofh20

I also classify a certain type of troll as coward.
A troll that signs up for a second account and posts his/her views on a topic that create upset or outrage. Yet when/if they get banned they go back to using their "im so popular" username.
Cowards lol

Ruu_Old

Banned, trolly mctroll. How many accounts is that now? *flexes*

dSTAR

raido9 wrote:

Yes because your input was much more enlightening. What is the point of posting that anyway. All you have to do is stop reading. The fact that you went to the effort of replying to say that says alot about you.

I know AH seems to be filled with these kinds of people notching up posts WITHOUT actually saying anything.

I very rarely post in AH anymore because I get a little bit tired of the cynicism and low level awareness of some people.

r3nu4l

@dStar: People not really saying anything in their posts?...

...I think that at the end of the day, really and truly, to be honest, if you look at it from a different angle and think about it you'll find that most posters in AH can always be found to post comments in threads that can be pertinent to the fact of the matter in that they can make a point that doesn't necessarily conform to the opinon of the majority of users that would normally post but that's just my opinon and I accept that your opinon might be different to that of other users such as myself but honestly, saying nothing in a post is the kind of thing that if you consider the relevance of the post in conjunction with or comparison to the nature of the thread in general and make special note of...d'ya see what I'm saying?