ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
Interesting discussion. One of the fundamental problems with the argument is that there is probably no objective definition or measure of what a Troll is. In some cases, it's easy to tell and there would be close to universal agreement (can't define it, but know it when we see it).
I define a troll as someone with strongly held beliefs who comes to this forum with the sole intention of stirring the pot. These trolls typically have no genuine interest in the game but have enough knowledge to make them believe they are subject-matter experts. Some have never owned the game yet on they come. Unfortunately some newer players aren't familiar with these individuals and unwittingly feed them. The trolls may lay low for months at a time and then suddenly spring to life. A surefire method to ensure their arrival is to start a "which is better" debate. These controversial debates often center around the "Wildcat vs Zero", "Iowa vs Yamato" and other issues that players sometimes unintentionally start.
There was a time when I would engage these trolls and my appearance was certain to spin at least one troll out of control. This led to some very epic exchanges. I have since mellowed and have decided that there is no point. I'm not going to change their opinions and they aren't going to change mine so why bother.
Chez
As the saying goes, "don't argue with a fool, people might not be able to tell the difference."
Many moons ago I came across a website dedicated to the trolling phenomenon. It went into great detail about the different types of trolls and their motivations. I haven't seen it in years, but I recall it made the distinction between a conscious and unconscious troll. A conscious troll is a kid (or someone emotionally a kid) who takes joy in getting people all riled up. They join discussions with the conscious intent to cause trouble. These are the most straight forward species of troll.
The other types are unconscious trolls. These people don't have the conscious intent to cause trouble, but they do anyway. They may believe they just "speak the truth" and others may not like it, or they might be miserable and want others to wallow with them, or some other kind of unconscious motivation that makes them a pain in the backside for everyone around them.
I've seen both around here. There are those who "just want to make the game better", but won't shut up when told that what they want isn't possible without a major rewrite of the code, or just beyond the current capability of a Windows based computer. There are also people like you describe who don't own the game or don't really care about the game, but just want to stir up trouble.
I'm not talking about those who suggest something they'd like to see in the game and when explained to them why it won't happen go "oh well, it was just a thought" or something along those lines. Most of the players are not programmers and don't understand what is and isn't possible, so questions like that are OK. It's the people who won't take "it can't happen" for an answer.
An example from another place... I am an administrator for a mailing list that has been around for a long time (since 1993) and there has been a no HTML/formatted e-mail policy for some time because they screw up the digests. The server now strips out any formatting and makes messages plain text, but about 10 years ago it didn't, so we had to enforce it. One guy would go on and on about how he was waiting for some computer scientist to come up with a way to add fancy formatting with colors and such to plain text e-mails. I explained to him in some detail the nature of ASCII and what he was asking for was an oxymoron, but he would not shut up about it.
He also would complain at length about just about everything else in his life. He did have some serious physical problems, but everything was about how tough the world was on him. While I can have sympathy for his physical issues, being reminded of all the things in the world he had problems with on a daily basis got very old after a short while.
The conscious trolls can usually be dealt with by refusing to play their games. If you don't play the good victim, they will move on to someplace else where the trolling is better. The unconscious trolls are the toughest ones to deal with. Many times it takes a lot of effort to get them to see they are the problem.
Bill
Bill
