Identifying a Troll on a Site

Surfboard posted something in regards to this subject, and i wanted to open this blog post to see if we can identify Trolls on boonex.

Internet Troll Help

The first step to dealing with trolls is learning how to recognize them. The following traits are clues:

• Does the person ask the same questions worded in different ways? Does the person ignore suggestions or responses from other members of the community? If the community has a frequently asked question (FAQ) section, does the person seemingly refuse to read it?
• Has the person posted inflammatory remarks that have no real substance to them?
• Does he or she make it a habit to post messages that include insults and vulgar language?
• Does he or she respond to other members in a purely negative, critical way?
• Does the person post messages that are generally off-topic? Does he or she seem to want only attention rather than discuss the topic at hand?
• Does the person resurrect old conversations or discussions that were once controversial within the community? Some trolls enjoy bringing back old arguments to encourage dissent within a group.
• When confronted with a counter argument, does the person in question change tactics rather than answer the points made by another member? Does the person employ logical fallacies within their posts?

If the answer to these questions is yes, there's a good chance you're dealing with a troll. Whether the member is consciously trying to troll the community or not is another matter. There are times when even respected members of an online community might behave like a troll. But if it's a new member who is very active and displays these qualities, you've probably got a real troll on your hands.

Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images
Trolls can also be crackers, some of whom use their skills to deface Web sites (or abuse systems or priveleges?)  like this UN page.

What do you do? If you're simply a member of the community, the best a­dvice is to ignore the troll. The troll's goal is to disrupt the community and rile up its members. By ignoring the troll, you deny him or her a victory. There's a common phrase that dates back to the early days of Usenet: Don't feed the trolls. Trolls love attention -- depriving them of it usually means they'll lose interest and move on to a different community.

Now as you can clearly see most of these traits can be attributed to a Trolls behavior. We as a community, need to pull together and beware that Trolls exist and are only out for self gratifications.

read this carefully also take a few minutes to read the entire set of articles at howstuffworks.com http://computer.howstuffworks.com/troll.htm

this is some interesting reading and i may follow up on this post with the entire series.

Good information to be made aware of.

Regards,

DosDawg