Troll School- presented by wizer

Some troll tips will be taken from other websites, although in no case will i simply do a cut and paste and simply regurgitate information that I find elsewhere. At the very least I will add my thoughts and comments to the words of others that I present here.

Todays Troll tip deals a rather detailed analysis of the four different types of trolls, how to spot them, and what to do when you encounter them. This tip will be spread out over a few days because there is quite a lot of information here. Each type of troll will be discussed in it's own section.

The term "troll" can mean a number of different things, but in essence, a troll is a person who aims to have 'pleasure' at the expense of another. There are two main types of trolls:

1. 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.

2. people who pretend to be someone that they are not - they create personae that you think are real, but they know is fictitious. The trolls you are most likely to encounter, and the trolling that you will be doing, is part of this group of trolls.

There are four basic types of trolls: they may have different names but they generally can be classified this way:

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 provokes strife in a subtle and invidious way.

Strategic Trolls: A very serious form of game, involving the production of an overall strategy that can take months or years to develop. It can also involve a number of people acting together in order to invade a forum.

Domination Trolls: This is where the trollers' strategy extends to the creation and running of apparently bona-fide internet forums.

Playtime trolls are usually easy to spot, if you are on the look out for them. They may exhibit some or all of the following signs:

* a lack of buy-in to the forum philosophy or values (examples would be some of the now-banned TV members who just wouldn't settle down and continued to flame others including myself on the upper boards after repeated warnings).
* generally low level of activity, with sudden spurts of interaction - or perhaps a new persona that has strong opinions on controversial subjects
* a mixture of friendly posts with a confrontational style of interaction
* the use of provocative language and sweeping generalisations about certain topics or categories of people
* a lack of in-depth understanding of the topic
* a lack of personal information
* a lack of a genuinely unique perspective on the topic
* a lack of humour (not sure I agree with this one- humor has its place in trolling)
* restarting topics that have already been done
* use of language that encourages the dialogue to enter topics that are controversial and likely to upset some team members
* the use of an attention-seeking gimmick (e.g.: "I was once exploited by an XYZ")
* they follow up their own posts if the group doesn't respond to their posts
* inconsistencies in the style and nature of the post and any proclaimed information (e.g.: claiming to be a child but writing with an adult style; claiming to be adult, but writing with a childish grammatical construction).
* also note that trolls often seem to use free email services (such as hotmail.com), however, bonafide forum members use these types of email addressses too, so email address by itself is no guide as to whether the persona is a troll.

To counteract playtime trolls, the best action is to ignore them, which I stated is the number one rule in dealing with trolls. If you are convinced they are trolls, then you can advise the admins. However, if other group members respond to the suspected troll's posts, then you may have to consider some of the responses outlined for tactical or strategic trolls, to be discussed in the next part of this 4 part Troll Tip.