Trolls

Trolls, flamers, griefers, jerks: They are known by many names, but they are always KNOWN. Let's peel back the mystery and take a look inside the world of the troll.





But seriously

Trolls are awful. It's tough to do anything worthwhile on the Internet, and even tougher when you have these living roadblocks doing their best to interfere. We suggest medication, or, failing that, intensive psychotherapy.

The best way to deal with trolls varies by type. To deal with the professor and critic, ignoring their rants goes a long way. They may get angrier at first, but the lack of an audience will drive them to more easily riled up communities, soon. Screamers should be gagged somehow, and are usually easy to pick out by their caps lock and swears-to-normal-words ratio. The prophet of doom should be mocked--nothing gets them to go away like knowing their dire warnings aren't being listened to. Robots need to be banned. It's hard, but necessary.

STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS!

Well,very good post and extremely informative and entertaining.I personally take a long time before responding to posts that someone as created a thread about.

I think about the subject and read other responses before I post..

One person you forgot is the "celebrity".They are those who wander through threads posting pithy and slightly sarcastic remarks that upon review barely have anything to do with the post.

They have a following of "fans"who follow them around and respond not to the thread but to his pithy response.

They basically hijack the thread and any possibility of a civil discussion is lost and the thread dies.