9 replies to this topic

[Eza]

Troll

The word troll has several meanings. The first one is the oldest meaning. With trol is ment a little creature. The small creature lives in the woods. The small creature likes to annoy people.

Since the rise of the internet and the use of forums and social networks the word troll is used for a person, who spreads negative messages. The purpose of the troll is to spoil the pleasure other people get by using the website.

The word trolling is used to describe the activity of the troll.

One of the best ways to react towards a troll is to neglect the messages of the troll. The reason why this approach works the best is that the troll enjoys to see that his activities have success. The more a person shows that the person cares about the messages of the troll the more the troll likes the situation, itself and its actions.

Edited by Eza, 01 December 2010 - 06:42 PM.

[rob86]

Eza, on 22 November 2010 - 08:38 PM, said:

Troll

The word troll has several meanings. The first one is the oldest meaning. With trol is ment a little creature. The small creature lives in the woods. The small creature likes to annoy people.

Since the rise of the internet and the use of forums and social networks the word troll is used for a person, who spreads negative messages. The purpose of the troll is to spoil the pleasure other people get by using the website.

The word trolling is used to describe the activity of the troll.

One of the best ways to react towards a troll is to neglect the messages of the troll. The reason why this approach works the best is that the troll enjoys to see that his activities have success. The more a person shows that the person cares about the messages of the troll the more the troll likes the situation, itself and its actions.

Wow, those trolls are handsome fellas aren't they?

[CalebFTW]

rob86, on 22 November 2010 - 09:09 PM, said:

Wow, those trolls are handsome fellas aren't they?

troll troll is obvious j\k but to op I honestly don't know how to respond to a definition good definition then?

[sheepdog]

Cute picture!

Actually, trolling also refers to fishing. You know, rods, reels, bait on hooks, lakes, rivers, boats, that sort of fishing. Then you have your trolling motor.

No wonder english is such a weird language, so many meanings for our words. Has to be tough to figure out.

[Harlot]

I think troll has turned into a word used to end or stifle debate, at least this is true online. Trolling in my opinion is hard to define because where exactly is the line drawn? If someone is stating something that is factual and they have credible sources to prove it, even if it is negative or offensive, I don't consider it trolling. I consider it telling an unpopular truth. If an individual is honestly trying to push a point of view across and not trying to cause trouble, it is not trolling. People tend to call someone a troll anytime something is said to offend them, no matter how authentic that person is in their debate or argument. Technically, I hate the word "troll". We all have different perspectives and views, so I may call something trolling that someone else may not consider trolling. I remember when I was on a forum and this guy brought up the issue of racial superiority, and his argument was that Asians were biologically superior to whites (Europeans ancestry), and that white were biologically superior to blacks (African ancestry). If you ask me, he neglected to take culture and social issues into account in his argument. There were also so many loop holes that I could only dismiss it as bigotry covered in science.

Nevertheless, there were others who agreed with the guy and didn't feel as if he was a troll or a bigot. That clearly shows that we have different views on what bigotry really consist of. In another instance, I was in a forum discussing race. The majority of the people in the room were black. There was only two whites out of about a fifty people. A black guy stood up and said, "If I were religion and I were white, I would be scared of the hell fire." I considered that bigotry, nevertheless, there were quite a few laughs and claps. I think the guy was from the Nation of Islam who made the statement. So obviously some people in the room didn't see it as bigotry. I think the same applies online or anywhere, and it is hard to not be personally bias when it comes to determining what is bigotry and what is not. Although my example consist of race, where it is usually easy to detect bigotry, there are also other issues such as religion and ethnic groups that were less easy to define as trolling or not. Like, what about the issue involving Israel and the Palestine. I would imagine that the issue is likely to garner a troll accusation. This is especially true if an Israeli and a Palestine are the two individuals pushing forth the debate.

I try to remove the word from my online use unless it is plainly obvious. I usually define trolling as personal attacks on the poster rather than the facts or argument in the post. I try to never throw personal insults unless they are first thrown at me. I can, and I love to, play the dozens. But I usually do not personally attack someone for their opinion. I say the comment seems like bigotry, rather than saying the person is a bigot for example. I dissect the individuals comment and attack each element, and not just attack the individual's character or bash the person. It can get emotionally tense sometimes, but people have their own opinions and that is something that we have to deal with.

[sheepdog]

Quote

I think troll has turned into a word used to end or stifle debate, at least this is true online.

I definatly agree with you on this one. The word Troll springs up from the lips of anyone who seems to be on the loosing end of an online debate, no matter how factual and relavent and accurate the supposed "trolls" opinion may be.

I try to resevere the word troll for those annoying humans that just pop up and start blasting foul language or excedding stupid comments, like someone who comes into a G rated chat room and asks if anybody want to suck his ____ well, you get the idea. Anything for shock value. What ever it takes to get a rise out of people and create a nusance. I personally don't understand this mentality.

[DynamicReviews]

Eza, on 22 November 2010 - 08:38 PM, said:

Troll

The word troll has several meanings. The first one is the oldest meaning. With trol is ment a little creature. The small creature lives in the woods. The small creature likes to annoy people.

Since the rise of the internet and the use of forums and social networks the word troll is used for a person, who spreads negative messages. The purpose of the troll is to spoil the pleasure other people get by using the website.

The word trolling is used to describe the activity of the troll.

One of the best ways to react towards a troll is to neglect the messages of the troll. The reason why this approach works the best is that the troll enjoys to see that his activities have success. The more a person shows that the person cares about the messages of the troll the more the troll likes the situation, itself and its actions.

I have to agree on that one. The funny thing is, when people call someone a troll on youtube or something like that, I always image that person as a look-a-like troll xP.

Edited by DynamicReviews, 02 December 2010 - 01:35 AM.

[Bikerman]

sheepdog, on 01 December 2010 - 08:36 PM, said:

I definatly agree with you on this one. The word Troll springs up from the lips of anyone who seems to be on the loosing end of an online debate, no matter how factual and relavent and accurate the supposed "trolls" opinion may be.

I try to resevere the word troll for those annoying humans that just pop up and start blasting foul language or excedding stupid comments, like someone who comes into a G rated chat room and asks if anybody want to suck his ____ well, you get the idea. Anything for shock value. What ever it takes to get a rise out of people and create a nusance. I personally don't understand this mentality.

Those of us of a certain age remember the word as it was first used. Early trolls were normally quite clever and trolling wasn't exactly frowned upon by all. A troll was someone who, spotting a naive poster, would cast the net by issuing some blatantly wrong-looking statement in a posting (this was on Usenet of course - before the web). The idea was to provoke indignation and outrage in the poster, and then show them that what they thought was a ridiculous point was actually correct and that their understanding was at fault.
There was quite a bit of this sort of trolling in the days of UseNet and the reaction to being hooked was normally 'damn, I swallowed the bait whole, didn't I?' at which point there would be general smiles and all would then be fine.

Nowadays, as stated, the word is used to define anyone and any posting that someone takes objection to and it has therefore become almost meaningless.

Other terms from those early days have also morphed. 'Mail Bomb' was an interesting one with two possible origins. The generally accepted one is that it was a punishment (often used against those who tried to do commercial business on the early internet - Oh the irony!). Selling stuff was a big no-no and as a punishment you would be sent hundreds of copies of a large document (the bible was sometimes used). This mattered in those days, because access was mostly slow and expensive (1200/300 modems) so you would have to pay a small fortune to download the emails that you didn't want anyway - and there was often no other way to clear your inbox.

The other possible origin results from the academic unwillingess to conform to authority. It became known that the authorities were routinely scanning email and usenet postings, using filters that would pick up on suspicious words or phrases (terrorist, explosion etc). As a protest against this many academics would deliberately include the word 'bomb' in every email or usenet posting they made - the idea being to jam the monitoring software, rather like a modern-day denial of service attack.

Those were the days :-)...

Edited by Bikerman, 12 December 2010 - 10:08 PM.

[darko100]

I was an Internet troll. A bad , bad troll tricking people , rickrolling them all

You can't be a troll. Internet trolls never survive. Detecting trolls is not a simple case. There are many kinds of trolls , messages , links , and different target. Stealing passwords , making jokes , making people sad or stupid A typical troll makes too much gramatical misstypes.

[fermin25]

I don´t know if I am rigth but in some cases like in the knowledgesutra actual problem maybe is good to have trolls who made some post and atract to more posters to be more active and create debate in some topics because I have seen that in the maybe all the topics there are maximum 5 comments to the first post. So I was a troll in a poker forum when I was trying to learn some good strategies to win. Of course I didn´t win anything and i only lost all the time I blindly dedicate to this stupid things. It was entertained to share my crazy ideas in that forum and the webmaster of the forum who insult me in the regular topics I made send me emails saying me to keep posting because my post was the best in the forum and generate a great amount of traffic because a lot of the guys who was in the forum learning poker returned to the forum to watch my topics and comments. Those were wonderful days but actually I lost the interest for poker and stop to post and in knowledgesutra I don´t practice trolling because this is a serious forum where there are moderators and all the people is interested only in the hosting plan and only post when they need Mycents to get their free web hosting to get paid. So it´s difficult to survive like a troll in knowledgesutra and maybe there are spammers infiltrated here but trollers there aren´t. I doubt it so much. I want to see the opinion of a moderator about trolling and see If I can troll a little here. To me trolling is not annoy to the people but entertained to the people with controversial information that generates debate and leave a lot of comments.

So maybe trolling in some forums is the best way to get traffic and if you doubt that you can look for fermin25 in the pokerstrategy.com forum and you will found that some of my post was 10 pages large because all the guys wanted to comment and share their opinion about my topics.

If there is no moderators like anwii say maybe i can troll a little in this forum. If not I will continues here posting with quality and sharing my knowledge with honor. Bye.