What is a Troll?
European mythology gives us the troll, a creature with many variations but all quite ugly and malicious. The gigantic troll was often dim witted and lived in caves with a fondness for human flesh. Eventually, dwarf sized trolls emerged from the mythology. These smaller trolls were not as large or as strong as the giant trolls, but just as dangerous. Trolls were popular in Scandinavian folklore. There is much written about the trolls’ habits, including an aversion to noise and sunlight. A troll could be destroyed by sunlight, which could turn them into stone. If a person learned a troll’s name, they would have the power to destroy it, though retrieving the name of the troll often resulted in the death of the person prior to the death of the troll.
The term derives from “trolling”, a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The troll posts a message, often in response to an honest question, that is intended to upset, disrupt or simply insult the group. Usually, it will fail, as the troll rarely bothers to match the tone or style of the group, and usually its ignorance shows.
The term “troll” can mean a number of different things, but in essence, a troll is a person who aims to have ‘pleasure’ at your expense. There are two main types of trolls: • people who have the psychological need to feel good by making others feel bad. This is a sort of “psycho troll”, whose deception involves deceiving themselves as well as others. Such people may use their real names on the internet, and they may not even realise that they are “trolling” because it is all subconscious. • people who pretend to be someone that they are not – they create personae that you think are real, but they know is fictitious. There are four types of these trolls: Playtime Trolls: an individual plays a simple, short game. Such trolls are relatively easy to spot because their attack or provocation is fairly blatant, and the persona is fairly two-dimensional. Tactical Trolls: This is where the troller takes the game more seriously, creates a credible persona to gain confidence of others, and provok
In email discussion lists, online forums, and Usenet newsgroups, a troll is not a grumpy monster that lives beneath a bridge accosting passers-by, but rather a provocative posting intended to produce a large volume of frivolous responses. The term can also refer to someone making such a posting (“a troll”) or to the action (“trolling”, “to troll”). The content of a troll posting generally falls into one of several categories. It may consist of an apparently foolish contradiction of common knowledge, a deliberately offensive insult to the readers of a newsgroup or mailing list, or a broad request for trivial follow-up postings. The result of such postings is frequently a flood of angry responses. In some cases, the follow-up messages posted in response to a troll can constitute a large fraction of the contents of a newsgroup or mailing list for as long as several weeks. These messages are transmitted around the world to thousands of computers, wasting network resources and costing money
Trolling is any deliberate and intentional attempt to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia for its editors, administrators, developers, and other people who work to create content for and help run Wikipedia. Trolling is a violation of the implicit rules of Internet social spaces and is often done to inflame or invite conflict. It necessarily involves a value judgment made by one user about the value of another’s contribution. (Because of this it is considered not to be any more useful than the judgment ‘I don’t agree with you’ by many users, who prefer to focus on behaviors instead of on presumed intent). Not to be confused with large warty monsters thought to dwell under bridges, in caves etc. Trolling is not necessarily the same as vandalism (although vandalism may be used to troll). A vandal may just enjoy defacing a webpage, insulting random users, or spreading some personal views in an inappropriate way. A troll deliberately exploits tendencies of human nature or of an online commun
