Do Not Feed the Trolls

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Some reading, to help with some peace in here.

Internet troll
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A troll is someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy or antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion, including the personal attack of calling others trolls. Often, trolls assume multiple aliases, or sock puppets.

Vicious circles
For many people, the characterising feature of trolling is the perception of intent to disrupt a community in some way. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation. The greater the reaction from the community the more likely the user is to troll again, as the person develops beliefs that certain actions achieve his/her goal to cause chaos. This gives rise to the often repeated protocol in Internet culture: "Do not feed the trolls."

Often, a person will post a sincere message about which he is emotionally sensitive. Skillful trolls know that an easy way to upset the person is to falsely claim that they are a "troll." In forums where most users are similar to each other, outsiders may be perceived as trolls simply because they do not fit into the social norms of that group. It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between a user who merely has different values, views, or ideas, and a user who is intentionally trolling. This can lead to genuinely hostile behavior, including flame wars.

Internet troll communities have sprouted up all over the Internet. Troll groups are often established due to their members' ill behavior not being permitted nor tolerated on regular forums.

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Trolling as identity deception
A common tactic that many trolls resort to is the strategy of using multiple usernames or pseudonyms that are ready to use just in case a debate or argument emerges. By using multiple usernames (called "sock puppets" in this context) and a variety of artificial personalities the troll would have the ability to protect his or her image in a community. A troll would then also be able to increase his or her influence in an entire online community by simply using those other self serving nicknames to increase the attention towards his or her most favored account. However, many users with more than one computer such as hardware buffs (Colloquial), computer repair shops and thrift stores often give each computer a unique name and use that name as the e-mail or newsgroup account username to identify the computer being used versus the user. Contrary to the purpose of deception this practice is followed with the intent of creating a verification record for the computer that was repaired or tested rather than to promote malice, ill will or evil intent. Sometimes the email reply address or other changeable header line is used for this purpose rather than the username line.

Online game communities that take tournament statistics and player rankings seriously are especially vulnerable to this type of trolling behavior. This is mainly due to the fact that since players take their rankings seriously, that some would resort to solidifying their reputations by creating self made threads designed to praise his or her favored account. Threads such as "most favorite players", "name your top ten players", etc. are suspected to be highly manipulated self-made threads designed to increase the influence and reputation of a specific username.

Ito_^ SG

list em lor.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Donath provides a concise overview of identity deception games which trade on the confusion between physical and epistemic community:

"Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroups members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they and the troll understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group.
Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community. Furthermore, in a group that has become sensitized to trolling where the rate of deception is high many honestly naïve questions may be quickly rejected as trollings. This can be quite off-putting to the new user who upon venturing a first posting is immediately bombarded with angry accusations. Even if the accusation is unfounded, being branded a troll is quite damaging to one's online reputation." (Donath, 1999, p. 45)[3]

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Examples

One-shot trolls
One-shot troll messages are intended to be disruptive, and tend to be very obvious to ensure that they will receive annoyed replies.[citation needed]

Disruptive trolls
Off topic messages: Those that are irrelevant to the focus of the forum. This can also be done in the middle of an existing thread to attempt to hijack the thread, or otherwise change the topic at hand. Off topic messages usually occur when a member has been completely disproved in a serious debate, thus causing that member to use his or her other multiple pseudonyms for the purposes of changing the subject matter. These disruptions may result in the degeneration of a well informed thread into a heated juvenile exchange consisting of insults and childish accusations between multiple parties.

Inflammatory messages, including racist, sexist, classist or otherwise needlessly hateful comments.

Opinionated statements: Posting messages expressing their own opinions as generally accepted facts without offering any proof or analysis.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Other examples

Some trolls may denounce a particular religion in a religion newsgroup, though historically, this would have been called "flamebait". Like those who engage in flaming, self-proclaimed or alleged Internet trolls sometimes resort to innuendo or misdirection in the pursuit of their objective. It is possible to distinguish between comments that are flamebait and as a result of trolling: flames have the intent of being anti-social and offensive, while trolling comments are intended to provoke a reaction, though trolling comments may also be perceived as being anti-social, although that may not have been the intent of the author.

A variant of the second variety (inflammatory messages) involves posting content obviously at odds with the (stated or unstated) focus of the group or forum; for example, posting cat-meat recipes on a pet lovers forum, posting evolutionary theory on a creationist forum (or vice versa), or posting messages about how all dragons are boring in the USENET group alt.fan.dragons. Other examples include fans of TV shows, movies, music artists or videogames going onto forums of rival shows/movies/artists/games and flaming them; for example, Halo vs. other first-person shooters in videogame forums, and flame wars between The Simpsons, South Park, and/or Family Guy forums, three popular and similar-themed adult cartoons that occasionally take pot shots at each other in real life.

The "sock-puppet" troll enters a forum using several different identities. As provocative postings from one identity draw increasingly critical comment from other forum members, the troll enters the discussion under a second identity in support of the first. Alternatively, the troll may under the second identity criticise the first in order to develop credibility or esteem on the forum. (However, use of alternate IDs to identify a particular computer or the changing of a user ID after system crashes and other legitimate reasons for using more than one ID by the same person may not be intended as a deception.)

Cross-posting is a popular method of Usenet trolls: a cross-posted article can be discussed simultaneously in several unrelated and/or opposing newsgroups; this is likely to result in a flame war. For instance, an anti-fast food flame bait might be cross-posted to healthy eating groups, environmentalist groups, animal rights groups, as well as a totally off-topic artificial intelligence newsgroup.

An example of a successful troll is the well-known "Oh how I envy American students" USENET thread which had 3,000-odd follow-ups. Trolling may go beyond merely making posts and may include creation of new public forums or websites. A new USENET newsgroup, "alt.genius.bill-palmer", was created by Igor Chudov for the purpose of creating an outlet for discussing a controversial USENET personality, Bill Palmer, himself an alleged USENET troll who managed to make his personality the center of all discussions -- a characteristic that is common amongst attention-seeking trolls. A swirl of messages attempting to disprove his alleged status as genius, cross-posted to a wide variety of groups, made "a.g.b-p", the most popular new "alt.*" newsgroup of the year. Its creator was nominated for the "Troll of the Year 1996" award.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Agents provocateurs: Attempting to discredit a group by posing as a member of that group, and posting inflammatory messages to give the appearance that the group espouses such opinions. This type of troll sometimes gives him or herself away fairly quickly.

Resolutions and alternatives

In general, conventional wisdom advises users to avoid feeding trolls, and to ignore temptations to respond. Responding to a troll inevitably drives discussion off-topic, to the dismay of bystanders, and supplies the troll with the craved attention. When trollhunters pounce on the trolls, ignorers reply with: "YHBT. YHL. HAND.," or "You have been trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day." However, since trollbaiters (like trolls) are often conflict-seekers themselves, the loss usually is not on the part of the trollhunter; rather, the losers are the other forum-users who would have preferred that the conflict did not emerge at all.

Literature on conflict resolution suggests that labeling participants in Internet discussions as "trolls" can perpetuate the unwanted behaviors. A person rejected by a social group, both online and offline, may assume an antagonistic role toward it, and seek to further annoy or anger members of the group. The "troll" label, often a sign of social rejection, may therefore perpetuate trolling.

Better results normally ensue when users take the moderator role and describe more constructive behaviors in a non-judgmental, non-confrontational way. Trolls are excited by trollhunters, and frustrated by "ignorers," and neither of these emotions produce positive results for the forum. Engaging trolls results in "flame wars." Trolls frustrated by the "ignore strategy" may leave the forum (and either troll elsewhere, or become constructive users) or may become progressively more inflammatory until they get a response.

Novice trolls may experience serious "troll's remorse," a feeling of great regret after losing their account (whether it be from an Internet service provider or from a website) as a consequence of their reckless trolling.

There are those who argue that a lack of response to trolling can also inspire trolling, a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" result. Particularly fanatical or irrational commentators will respond to a forum that irks them largely independent of responses. Trolls also often continue to post, taking umbrage with peripheral arguments or arguments that were less well-founded, until their positions become untenable, then turning either to insults or moving to another topic. By this logic, relentless confrontation through argument of trolls (when such argument is to be found) can be vital.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Should make sticky leh…

^tamago^ SG

no need~!

can go wikipedia read~!

Very Happy

laurence82 SG

Nah, while its useful when it comes to foruming, i think the way to do it is for the core group of Christians to come together and steer the direction of the forum towards proper discussion

Icemoon SG

no one wants to discuss proper topics.

even those anti-christianity topics can be discussed properly, too bad someone messes it up.

Attitude also matters. So far the Catholics have taken the humble attitude when engaging with non believers. I won't say who is the disgrace on the Prot side.

I am all for ecumenical topics 'cos I know the majority of Prots here have shallow understanding of the Catholic faith (and other religions).

laurence82 SG

not one, but also some others, dont wanna mention their name

Icemoon SG

I know of one other. That makes it two.

Maybe we are thinking of same person. Laughing

laurence82 SG

And all those who signed up within a short span of one mth, pls register them with the clone master hor

vince69 SG

ok... I shall return to the bunker and face the wall.... Sad

laurence82 SG

While you're at it, pls turn off the gas stove, i left the soup boiling

davidche SG

hey, do you guys mean im a troll???

may wanna think of it objectively.

[email protected] SG

Who's the troll u ppl are talking abt? Hope that it is not me. Very Happy

Honeybunz SG

No no no.
Not you, not you.

/me nose growing longer

Really lah. Not you.

/me eyes keep blinking

Icemoon SG

bad luck coming?