A troll is a person who seeks to disrupt conversation online. This is generally done to thwart an economic or idealogical competitor's work. The term most likely predates the internet as the most successful technique it to ask a misleading question which exposes the ignorance of your opponent. This is a common debating and journalism trick. While pseudo names have been used to stimulate discussion, Ben Franklin did this in his own news paper, the troll is not interested in idea exchanges. Online discussion forums have been hit with wave after wave of this kind of attack and concerted effort by large numbers will destroy even the most sophisticated system. "Steve Barkto" is an early troll who disrupted OS/2 forums. See:
http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg01529.html In response, news organizations such as Slashdot adopted user moderation schemes. See the history on this page: http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml The lengths that some people will go to simply to disrupt others can be seen in this troll howto: http://www.geocities.com/spiralxuk/old/howto.html Examples of the kinds of thing you might see in these posts can be found in here: http://www.stanford.edu/~akalin/bookmarks/troll.html Trolls are indeed horrid little things. They waste your time and make it difficult for people to learn and solve problems. Dustin is not a troll. Someone who claims that free software can't do this or that in a linux forum is a troll. On 2003.02.26 20:04 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Ok, OK, I'm a "newbie" > > Isn't a "troll" a horrid creature that lives under bridges and when someone > comes along and tries to cross, he eats them?? > > Although I have never had the pleasure of meeting Dustin, I don't think he > fits that description. LOL! > > Cap'n Buck" >
