PITA, Pain in the Ass Sometimes the word "Troll" is used inappropriately. Sometimes it is warrented. I thought we needed a Public Service Announcement. I actually got the data off of the Politics Forum (which IS well Moderated) where some one (not the Mod) wanted the data about Trolling to be posted. Just an FYI.
I don't think it's appropriate to compare trolls to stalkers. A stalker goes after one person or maybe a group and poses serious emotional and physical concerns. Trolls are more like devil's advocates or rabblerousers and only pose a threat to those people too naive or stupid to know a troll post when they see it. I think a habitual flamer who attacks one person repeatedly is more analogous to a stalker.
Some trolls do just that. The more extreme will even follow that one person to other newsgroups or forums. People who play devil's advocates are often not trolls. Trolls come in to intentionally cause dischord, not to encourage someone to consider all perspectives. Trolls generally are flamers, not just rabblerousers, at least as I have always understood the term (and seen it applied). Furthermore, they cause a threat to any community in which a small portion of the members respond -- I've seen boards fall to shit because 3 people kept engaging the troll, everyone else got tired of it & went away. Score one for the trolls. The most successful way to deal with one is for nobody to acknowledge it -- it will soon become starved for attention & move on to easier targets.
Well, for those of you who don't know how Maggie Sugar operates, this thread actually has to do with me, and the fact that I started a thread on false rape allegations. The fact that most false rape allegations are perpetrated by women would suggest that this is a women's issue, but I guess because it portrays women in a negative light, it's not a "legitimate" subject, in the opinion of the resident radical feminist. It would seem to me that Maggie Sugar is starting this thread in order to make herself out as the righteous and concerned party; but I think that anyone who care to read her posts in the False Rape Allegation thread, among many others, will realize that her conduct if far from exemplary. What I find most interesting is Maggie Sugar's apparent annoyance with troll behaviour, yet here she is a radical feminist, and did not radical feminists "makes posts [or the technological equivelant thereof] that are solely intended to incite controversy or conflict, or cause annoyance or offense" during the course of pushing their agenda? The hypocracy is astonishing.
re: User Support Response: If this is not a topic of concern for you, please just ignore this post as you would anything else that you don't care about. X
