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Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

Good post, but as someone who dabbles in trolling as a hobby, I'd like to suggest the following:

Trolls are important.

Trolling, especially as seen on places like slashdot/4chan/somethingawful/etc., can oftentimes be a mechanism of critique for ideas and rhetorical styles.

One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really matters. None of it. It's a big joke. My twitters and my wikis and my posts don't mean anything. They're bits in the stream. My karma is an int on a server somewhere, incremented and decremented by the whims of my fellow users.

Trolls can help remind all of us that hey, this is all light-hearted. They say outrageous things, they stir up trouble, they cause annoyance, they sully the pristine conditions of these high-minded realms of discourse.

In short, folks, they keep us all honest. They call us on our bullshit. And when a community takes itself so seriously that it becomes a habitat for trolls, it usually is a sign that that community needs to be dispersed, cleaned, and reformed elsewhere.

HN is a pretty cool place, and I hope it lasts a long while before ossifying and becoming infested with trolls.

View on HN

"None of it really matters." That's your opinion. For some people finding a place, a community, with people disciplined enough to keep conversation interesting, to call people on BS without using troll tactics, that annoy and disparage, matters very much.

PG in his article, 3 years ago, describes the second kind of troll in more broad terms and notes, "Now when people talk about trolls they usually mean this broader sense of the word." 3 years ago. The first definition of troll is, in my opinion, near dead. The broad, asshole, troll reigns. They don't just 'sully the pristine conditions of these high-minded realms of discourse,' they break it down, and erode it.

A troll might think everything is a big joke, but many people deal with problems communicating in person: they don't have groups interested in the things they are near them, they have social and personality issues, they feel passionately about their views and enjoy expressing them but don't feel confident face to face or in a room of people. Connecting and communicating can happen legitimately on the internet, to say it's all a joke devalues that connection and that communication, which is how trolls hurt communities and people.

Ahhh. I missed the date on the article and couldn't believe that HN was only getting 8k uniques/day.

> "None of it really matters." That's your opinion.

Actually, it's more of a deliberate choice than an opinion, and I think it's clearly the correct choice based on the nature of anonymous online communities. Other people can choose to take anonymous trolling seriously, as if it were a person insulting them or being inappropriate face-to-face. But to do so is to misunderstand the idea of anonymity and online communities. I would argue that anonymous online communities really don't matter, in the sense that it's foolish to even be invested enough to be offended by insults or inappropriate behavior. I think people who choose to invest themselves personally in an anonymous online community are failing to understand the nature of the community, analogous to someone who misinterprets a work of parody or farce as sincere and is thus offended.

Obviously, there are exceptions, namely when people aren't acting anonymously online. No one is suggesting for example that an entrepreneur or a VC shouldn't be held accountable for things they post on twitter or their blog. When you're not anonymous, then online communication is essentially equivalent to face-to-face communication, with full liability.

Also, I'm not necessarily arguing against moderation in online communities. It's fine for admins to be restrictive in who they allow in a community, or to remove "troll posts." I'm just arguing that to invest yourself personally or emotionally in an anonymous online community is to misunderstand the nature of such communities, and is objectively unwise.

Anonymity shouldn't be an excuse for mean or inflammatory behavior, and it shouldn't be a reason to accept that behavior. And, I can speak from personal experience in dealing with people that have emotional issues that it isn't always a choice to take such things seriously. It wears on them.

I don't think it's in 'the nature' of online anonymous communities to be cruel, flippant, and intentionally inflammatory. Anonymity is not in place to devalue the communication, or the community. the asshole problem is a negative side effect.

I would argue that some people, just as in face-to-face problems, have issues disconnected themselves from online abuse or trolling.

This goes beyond emotional issues, though. It matters to me that Hackers News (or a handful of other sites I spend time on) is a place where you and I can have this discussion in this way. When I'm done writing this there will not be 5 replies of "fag" to my or your post, because we are all invested in keeping this community respectable. We're invested in well thought out discourse, and we take the rules seriously. There's a trust that ripples throughout this online anonymous community that the users need to conduct themselves respectfully. It matters to me, and while I'm not invested to the point of letting it hurt me if someone were to troll me, I'm invested enough that I treat people and their words with respect because I expect the same. Good, healthy, strong online communities are of great value to me, they matter.

I never once justified the act of being cruel. I am only saying that it is foolish to invest oneself into an anonymous online community because to do so is to nearly guarantee that you'll be hurt. Perhaps some people do have emotional issues, or even just naivete about the Internet, that cause them to unknowingly become invested in online communities as if they are real face-to-face communities. I think learning the nature of anonymous online communities isn't "automatic," so I shouldn't have sounded so harsh toward people who are ignorant or who may have real emotional issues.

I should add that the biggest problem isn't necessarily with insulting users. Something I see a lot these days, especially on reddit, is people clearly looking for real human connections through the communities, only to get burned. I think there have been several times where someone makes a highly emotionally-charged claim (they have cancer and need emotional/financial support, they caught someone abusing a child or animal and want justice, etc.) that the community rallies around, only to find out that the post was complete bogus. I don't condone the people creating the hoaxes, but I'm more concerned with the widespread tendency, even active desire, to invest emotionally in an anonymous post with absolutely no proof provided. Call me cynical, but I'm content to only emotionally invest myself with my real life friends and family.

I'm sorry I implied that you justified cruelty, that wasn't part of your point. And, I'm actually only deeply emotionally invested in friends and family, too. I might have gone overboard on the emotional, bleeding into the cyberbully arena.

My primary issue is the, "it doesn't matter," as a correct choice. It might be the correct choice that it doesn't matter if someone calls you a fag on the internet, you should shrug it off and carry on, or ignore it altogether. I read angersocks answer as basically saying it's OK to go into online communities and disrupt them because they don't matter, but they do. People wouldn't take time to type all this stuff out, to talk to each other, to engage, if it never mattered.

A community works to create an atmosphere and an environment, if it didn't matter they wouldn't try to maintain it. I do believe that the communities we create online matter and its a wonderful thing when a community can maintain itself respectfully. I guess I just feel that discussion and exchanging ideas is important face-to-face or online, and we should invest enough to show respect.

> One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really matters.

I disagree. I think the shift from personal to electronic interaction is largely to blame for the level of shrill nastiness that pervades our present-day culture. It's okay to express yourself in ways that would have been completely socially unacceptable, or just plain embarrassing, in past times. Social norms can be stifling, and self expression is good, but it's possible to take it too far. And on the internet, it frequently is. (Although this problem predates the internet. Talk radio in the 80s and 90s comes to mind.)

Nowhere is this more evident to me than in the realm of politics, where things really do matter. The process is seemingly held hostage to whoever can scream the loudest. The result is the sort of do-nothing congressional bitchfest which is currently pleasing to a whopping 8% of Americans. I read accounts of the way things used to work (30+ years back) in Washington and am amazed--it's like studying a lost civilization.

One of my hobbies is reading a lot of history, and I don't see much support for this narrative. American politics has long been really nasty. Take a look at the 19th century presidential campaigns: there is some pretty shrill stuff in there. The 1828 election in particular was really nasty. And people regularly fought duels---actually shot each other---over politics. Political brawls were not uncommon. A Congressman beat one of his colleagues with a cane on the floor of Congress itself!

Even today, offline culture somehow seems more nasty/violent to me than online culture. It's not only in movies that people get into bar fights over stupid things. They not only yell at each other, but actually punch each other, and occasionally stab or smash bottles over each others' heads. It's a crazy world out there.

Yeah, things used to be rougher, but they also used to actually get something done on occasion. Can you see the current congress accomplishing that?

The current Congress can't get anything done because one of the political parties has decided that it isn't in their interest to get anything done, to keep the other party from getting credit for it.

I don't mean to call out the Republicans for being uniquely unpleasant in this regard -- there have been periods when the Democrats have been just as calculatingly obstructive.

> The current Congress can't get anything done because one of the political parties has decided that it isn't in their interest to get anything done, to keep the other party from getting credit for it.

Hmm.

The House passed a budget this year. The Senate hasn't for almost three years.

The House passed an extension to govt financing/ operations. The Senate hasn't.

The House passed an extension to the payroll tax cut. The Senate refuses to even vote on it.

I wonder which party controls which branch of the legislature.

Absent a 60-member supermajority, passing a bill in the Senate requires both parties to at least agree to let it come to a vote. Passing a bill in the House does not require it to be palatable to the other party, the Senate, or the President, nor is it required for it to have any realistic hope of ever becoming law.

I didn't really mean for this to be an unpleasantly partisan post, just a statement of facts about the situation in Washington as I see it. The current Democrats in power have many flaws, but I see no reason to think their goal is to avoid action, because a lack of action would provide no benefit to them.

To argue that the House has genuinely tried to get things done during this session, I would think you would have to assent to one of the following two things:

1. Even with a divided Congress, it is not required for both parties to work together in a bipartisan spirit of compromise to pass meaningful legislation.

2. The current House of Representatives has genuinely tried to work closely together with Senate Democrats and the President in a bipartisan spirit of compromise to pass meaningful legislation.

Do you believe one of these things?

The Dems didn't even bring any of those things up for a vote (even on cloture), so how did the Repubs keep them from passing? (Actually, there were two Senate votes on budget proposals. One was an Obama proposal and it went down something like 97-0. The other was what passed the house, and it went down 47-53. Yup, the Senate Dems haven't voted yes on a budget proposal for three years....)

> a bipartisan spirit of compromise

I see that the repubs have given the dems some things that the dems want and the dems have refused "the deal" because they didn't everything that they wanted. How does that translate to "the repubs won't compromise"?

For example, the Dems claim to want an extension of the payroll tax reduction. The Repubs gave it to them. Is it unreasonable for the Repubs to get something as well?

I'm not saying that the Repubs are blameless, but it's absurd to claim that they're the only ones to blame.

You disagree, so please define this "bipartisan compromise" that the Dems are (at least somewhat) willing to do and that the Repubs are unwilling to do. Do you agree that this definition should be somewhat symmetric?

Note that the payroll tax extension package that passed the House did get some Dem votes. Do you interpret that as "some Dems were willing to compromise" or "Repubs offered a package that was acceptable to some Dems"? How, exactly, did you come to your conclusion?

The idea that Republicans are "compromising" by passing a tax cut really says it all here.

> The idea that Republicans are "compromising" by passing a tax cut really says it all here

You're not paying attention. Obama and the Dems DEMANDED a specific payroll tax cut, which the Repubs provided.

Which reminds me, for two of the three years when the Senate didn't pass a budget, the first two years of Obama's presidency, the House didn't pass a budge either and the Senate didn't even try a vote.

During those two years, the House was controlled by Dems and Dems had 60 votes in the Senate (until Kennedy died). How did the Repubs block things then?

We're talking about the time period leading up to the Civil War, aren't we?

I thought we were talking about 220 some-odd years of history as a constitutional republic.

Still, until Lincoln was elected and states started seceding, they did manage to pass routine funding bills. So that puts them one ahead of the current bunch of goons.

Was it Preston Brooks?

I remember reading about it in one of my american history class.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks

I'd watch CSPAN more if they had officiated brawls :)

I think it is true both that politics were more substantive 30 years ago and that many 19th century presidential campaigns were incredibly nasty.

There tends to be an ebb and flow in these sorts of things. I think that there is a clear case to be made right now that the decline in common news sources among people with different political views in the last 20 years has led to nastier politics. When everyone more-or-less agreed on the facts and many of the terms of debate but disagreed on what the outcome of the debate should be, I think the form that debate took was healthier.

But that period was the byproduct of a limited number of TV news programs all of which adopted a sort of consensus mainstream agenda, combined with a newspaper system with one or two papers per town that tended to do the same. This was a specific period, not an all-purpose "in the old days" thing.

In some earlier eras, it was common for there to be a number of different newspapers in a city, each of which had quite a different agenda -- as still survives in the UK, for example.

> The process is seemingly held hostage to whoever can scream the loudest.

Some might say that the kabuki theater of American politics is now exposed for the facade that it is given how corrupt and captured our system really is... in fact, the corporatist coup happened a long time ago, and only with the Internet (ie, electronic interaction) is this layer peeled back and exposed.

I'd suggest there's two types of trolls:

First there are the discourse enhancing trolls, those who provide value to a discussion by suggesting alternative, usually taboo points of view.

Then there's the troll trolls. You know the type. The ones who spew racist or derogatory comments just for the hell of it.

Many people commonly mix the two into a single bucket, which I think is wrong to do, since one is a ++ for a forum, the other a -------.

Anyway, that's my take on the situation as someone who has ran 3 mid size forums in the past.

I don't think the racist and similar ones are the worst. Usually people will just ignore them and they'll get downvoted to hell anyway. Example from Slashdot: "You forgot to mention that you're still gay." I read it and forget it. It doesn't mean anything.

The worst are the flamebaters. Another example from Slashdot (context is Firefox compilation hitting memory limits):

    A- My resource usage rarely goes about 1 GB with multiple applications open.
    B- If your usage rarely goes above 1GB then you're not a user of Firefox

The problem with this is that it's poised to incite a discussion between the people who feel strongly about the issue without adding anything new or useful.

I think your view of trolling is colored by your participation in it.

I would like to participate in and read honest discussion. Trolls poison honest discussion. The "none of this matters" line of thought is a red-herring. Trolls get in the way of what I, personally, get out of forums.

I like honest discussion also, but also enjoy discussion that's "playful" in various ways, especially when it's on the gray-area border between serious and trollish. You can get interesting sides of people when they have something of an alibi because they aren't "really" saying something (but aren't "really" not doing so, either).

I do think it's probably better if it's in areas where there's at least tacit agreement that those are the local discussion norms, though. If you post somewhere like SomethingAwful's FYAD (though I haven't taken a look in a few years), or 4chan, you can hardly claim to be surprised or misled by the conversational norms. On HN, the local culture prefers a different style of discussion, and I like that in its own way as well. Though I also liked some subset of Slashdot trolls in their heyday, even though they weren't officially welcome at Slashdot: OGG THE CAVEMAN, the BSD Troll, and a few others were some of the more interesting posters, some mixture of net-art and actual discussion.

FYAD isn't what it used to be, but I agree that it's part of what made SA great. Not necessarily the actual content of FYAD, but the fact that it kept everyone outside of FYAD in check. The other forums did a great job of keeping the post quality high (no AOL speak, etc.), and FYAD did a great job of making sure they didn't get too full of themselves. Even if you were the most popular poster ever, there was always one forum that you would never, ever be accepted in.

Playful discussion requires familiarity and trust. Trolls poison trust.

I guess I just frankly disagree with that, though perhaps we have some different definition of "trolls". I haven't seen more trust (and community) in a forum than in the more playful/trollish forums I've been part of. Too much seriousness, on the other hand, I think poisons intellectual discussion.

HN is a good example, I'm not afraid to post an idea, a response, or understanding, here. I know that if I'm wrong, but I presented my thought well with reasoning, I'll receive an honest and intelligent response as to why I am wrong or why someone differs in opinion. That's trust. Trust in a community to respect each other.

Even in the most openly hostile troll communities (FYAD, /b/, etc.) there is a solid "trust": you will be trolled.

This idea of trust is a very strange thing, to me. If I present an argument or point logically and it is accepted, then there is no problem. If I do so and it is rejected logically, there is no problem. If I do so and are assailed with noise and rubbish, then it is usually pretty clear that it's just garbage and to be ignored.

If I seek affirmation and reassurance from people online instead of flesh-and-blood folks I can talk to directly, I being to wonder if this is actually an okay state of affairs. If my support group could be replaced with a bunch of clever Python scripts, Markov models, and machine learning algos, I would suggest that something is deeply wrong--and that is exactly the sort of inscrutable interface forums provide.

Only when you start to "trust" the personas you encounter online and become invested in your model of them do you actually run the risk of getting hurt. Treat it like a game, learning what you can when you can and ignoring the rabble, and things go best.

The kind of trust I'm talking about is trust in honest discourse. If I don't trust that others on a forum will engage with me honestly, then I am less likely to engage with them honestly. As a consequence, the overall discussion on the forum degrades.

I don't strictly disagree, but imo you're trying to generalize a personal preference for discussion styles into general observations, by using normative and inflammatory (is "inflammatory" like "trollish"?) terms like "poison" and "degrades", as opposed to "I don't like".

But when a community has set a precedent and an expectation for trust and respectful discussion, it is poisoning and degrading that community to come in and disrupt it intentionally for your own amusement. If you dump toxic waste into a pool, you've poisoned the pool, accusing the fish of just not liking it doesn't work.

He appears to be arguing that it's bad even when the community doesn't have that precedent/expectation, though (my examples were of communities where various varieties of "trolling" are expected/normal, like SA's FYAD, and 4chan's /b/). Plus, ecosystems are complex; Slashdot's is a bit of a mix. You can't napalm the "intruders" and accuse everyone burnt by napalm of just not liking it!

lol, good point :)

Then preface everything I say with the places I want to spend my time behave as:

Out of genuine curiosity, how would you define "honest discourse"?

Online forums are, by definition, right there on the 'net along with Google and Wikipedia and other resources, so flat-out misrepresentation of facts seems somewhat difficult. If somebody chooses to be irrational, they are readily identified as such, right? So where does honesty fit in all this?

Honest discourse is when both parties are willing to work to understand each other, and not just trying to "win." Both parties default to the most reasonable interpretation of what the other says - having all of the facts available doesn't help much if you spend most of your time clarifying what you're trying to say.

Every time I have seen (or heard in person), "I would like to participate in and read honest discussion", it has been someone who turned around and accused anyone who disagreed of "trolling" or of being "close-minded". I have found it a waste of time arguing with them, if it hadn't been the general topic of this thread, I would have just ignored the comment entirely.

Trust on the internet is dangerous. You should exercise your judgement and not let it be impaired by a perceived absence of trolls. There are trolls, flamebaiters, astroturfers, bots, vested interests, paid posters and spammers everywhere on the internet. Once upon a time, appeal to authority arguments actually influenced most of the population. Let us not go back there, it is better for us all if we don't trust everything we see and hear.

I'm a very trusting person. I don't lock my doors, for instance. But I exercise, or at least I like to think I exercise, a healthy scepticism without falling into paranoia. You can never really know or understand what everyone else's motivations and intentions are and you should remember that fact at all times.

They're bits in the stream. My karma is an int on a server somewhere

Like your bank account is just a database entry somewhere, like a dollar bill is just a paper, like all of your life's memories are just some information stored in your brain -- again just a few cells. In the end, everything is just some atoms anyway, right?

as someone who dabbles in trolling as a hobby

Oh wait, I fell for it! :)

"I fell for it!"

I wondered on that myself ;)

My bank account is just an int in a server somewhere, but that doesn't make it unimportant. Obviously my karma isn't important, but that's because it has little effect on my outside of HN. Being bits on a server somewhere doesn't make it unimportant.

Similarly, when someone posted a fake obit of Steve Jobs (well before he died), it caused quite an impact despite none of it mattering.

I hope your bank account isn't stored as just an int(!)

But seriously, it is a representation of something physical. Money. Money which can in turn be used for other physical things. Reputation "karma" isn't. It /is/ meaningless in this context, because you can never log into HN again and your life will go on.

I don't think the argument was "anything digital is pointless."

Only difference between money and karma is that we can't easily trade karma. Modern money is not physical, it is just a figment of our imaginations. It has only the value we collectively give it.

So, in other words, it's really important? Like, pays our bills, heats our homes, puts food on the table? If you want to apply reductionist arguments, then ancient money is just piles of metal. Not like it had any "value" beyond what they collectively gave it, either.

Do we have to revisit the barter system where value is traded for value to once again realize the reason money was invented? Fish for tools works, until you want apples.

It doesn't matter whether something "intrinsically" has value (wood as fuel, apple as food) if you can trade it for something that does. As long as that remains true, karma remains an int and bank accounts remain buying power. Fin.

Whether it puts food on the table or not doesn't matter. People spend their time here, when they could be doing other things (or earning more money to put more food on the table). Ultimately karma has a certain value to some people, whether or not it does to you. Just as I might not understand why some people will pay 10s of thousands of dollars more for a car that, ultimately, does the same thing as another car. "intangible" does not mean "valueless"

Anyway, for karma to be effective, all it has to do is have enough value to outweigh the (equally intangible) value of the satisfaction of posting something trollish.

But money is just an abstract idea that we exchange for those other physical things. It isn't really a representation of anything physical anymore.

It's not like a bank keeps a physical amount of cash equal to all account holders' deposits (if they did, they'd have nothing to lend). Instead all you do with your money is transfer it, or get paper vouchers for it in forms like checks, money orders, or federal reserve notes......

That people accept those for things that are physical doesn't change the fact that the money is in fact not a representation of anything physical.

i wonder how well a site would run if users had to give up karma to upvote a comment or submission.

I read the argument precisely as "anything digital is pointless"

"One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really matters. None of it. It's a big joke. My twitters and my wikis and my posts don't mean anything. They're bits in the stream."

I Really don't see any other way to interpret that. The "bits in the stream" are having an increasingly large amount of impact on the world outside the internet every day, and to pretend otherwise is irresponsible.

I think the implicit assumption is that he was referring to the more social aspects of the internet (forums, blogs, etc.).

Honestly, your karma doesn't have much impact inside of HN either. It's just a number that lets you know you are a reasonable fit with the community.

That's more accurate than you know. A down voted comment doesn't mean it's a bad comment. Simply that it doesn't adhere to what the community deems as right. This defeats the purpose of shading out the comments. Since the quality of a comment can't be determined by it's color, you have to read it yourself.

Karma has evolved to merely mean: I don't post unpopular opinions.

This is merely anecdotal, of course, and should go without saying (but needs to be said here). I see this happening with other people's comments far more often. It's a shame that while we removed karma from posts, we still display and indicator of the groupthink to the world.

In the end, a comment should either be displayed, or flagged and removed.

The one big thing from Slashdot that I miss the most on HN are the "funny" comments. I know it's hard to separate the funny from the malicious sometimes, but there were/are some GOOOOD, and often creative, senses of humor over there. This seems to be largely suppressed here in HN, for better or worse...

In some ways I do too, having been an early /. user.

However, I think HN supports truly funny comments, but they have to be original, creative, and slightly non-obvious. I've made a few valueless pithy comments that got a decent amount of up-votes, and I've seen others do the same thing.

But, repeated and reused jokes aren't met with much enthusiasm here, so you don't get the same memes developing like you did on /. There is practically no spin on "a beowulf cluster of these" (or similar) that would ever fly here.

Overall, I'm pleased with HN's handling of humor-based comments.

Trolling also wastes valuable time from reasonable and constructive arguments. You may not value your time, but I do, greatly. If ones goal is to achieve nothing intellectually on the Internet, then trolling is fine, but if ones goal is to learn and debate, then (given, only very skilled, non-obvious) trolling is destructive.

People who bitch about trolling might as well bitch about cold weather or inconsiderate drivers. Yeah, it's not always fun, but it is just the way things are and will be. You can't remove the human factor.

That's not really true. In tight knit online communities it is very easy if not completely effortless to ban trolls. There are various ways to handle trolls and they all have value, as trolling is often purely a negative thing.

Disagree. Karma systems actually do that quite well, or at least have to potential to. Humans are like clay, and mold themselves to their environment. If you have an environment where there are no repercussions for bad behavior, you can expect such bad behavior. (read the recent NYT article on Steven Pinker, and how he was an anarchist until he saw how quickly people start looting when the police and firefighters went on strike)

So you can remove the human factor?

I don't know what "the human factor" is. Or maybe I should say, I don't think there is a single "human factor". Humans in a first world, upper middle class neighborhood coffeeshop behave very differently than humans in 1994 Rwanda, or the humans in the Stanford Prison Experiment. It's not that the humans themselves are different (or started out different), it's that the environment in one place encourages a different sort of behavior than the environment in another place. (I guess you could say I tend to favor Situationism over Dispositionism)

So, as a corollary, ideally you'd design the environment so that humans adapt to it in a particular way, thus getting rid of the 'human factor', whatever it is.

Well, getting rid of the sides of that human factor that we collectively wish to suppress. You can do it algorithmically with things like karma systems, but it's really nothing new, it's just a higher-tech way of doing what Hammurabi (and others before him) did.

There are plenty of places where it does matter, very much. e.g. support groups for abuse survivors, terminal disease patients, etc.

And even when it does not matter very much, trolls deny others the right to be serious, derail discussions, and spew bullshit. By insisting on turning everything into a joke, trolls are selfish.

One thing I have seen a lot of people do when teaching is to troll. You come up with a crazy hypothetical that is obviously wrong but hard to show why, assert it, and watch your students try hard to prove you wrong. Things like:

"There is no consistent legal principle that prevents an attempted murder charge from being prosecuted against someone for the use of voodoo dolls."

"I think it's perfectly Constitutional to require that parents, if necessary, donate kidneys to their children."

Both are classic trolls. However, they are fun, and they are hard to grapple with.

But how do we know the real trolls from the assholes? Emoticons help, but we can't see their FACE, so it's hard to tell.

I'd imagine that those two are not a mutually exclusive set.

Besides, if a troll makes a reasonable point, does it matter that he was actually trolling? Truthfully it's snark that bothers me most - I can deal with someone being playful or contrary for the sake of it, but too much snark just triggers a very primal part of my brain that makes we want to start cracking skulls, and that's not very conducive to continuing the discussion.

That's part of being a human, right?

I am presented with another person's responses to my inputs in the form of communications, and I build a model of the person. Sometimes this model is correct, sometimes this model is incorrect. I might misjudge a person who is kind to my face as being decent, when behind my back they spread rumors and gossip. Similarly, I might have a coworker who always criticizes my approaches to problems, but is the first to stick up for me in meetings.

Sometimes you judge rightly, other times wrongly, and in either event life goes on (real or virtual). This is just part of the human condition--and trolls remind us of this fact and the fact that sometimes you can't tell.

I think PG only aims to keep the "asshole" kind of trolls out not the ones that say controversial things, as he gave examples of how people tend to be stubborn and not delete their own comments that are being downvoted for controversy, but do delete their asshole comments.

Your interpretation is that trolls are court jesters.

That's an interesting take, though it'd be only certain kinds of trolls imo. Some trolls inflame negative situations: the guy who shows up at comp.lang.lisp and restarts one of the many canonical flamewars is doing sort of the opposite of what a court jester is supposed to do. But I think comp.lang.lisp might actually benefit from a real court jester; there's a certain stifling, vaguely bitter seriousness that could use disruption.

There are obviously people who don't add any value and instigate vitriol that should be banned.

On the other hand, you have people like Ted Dziuba who often provoke controversy and critique popular ideas/products. I find those critiques both entertaining and legitimate in their content.

I worry you lose a lot in a community when you rule out both types of Trolling.

I haven't visited the SA forums in over 6 years, but last I remember, trolling in non-troll forums (FYAD) was usually met with a ban, resulting in a loss of your :10bux:. This was loosened a bit with the introduction of the... what's it called? Prison? Time out? that prevents a user from posting for X number of hours.

Probation, with the time choosable via mod.

I would argue that all of positives you cite can be accomplished without trolling. What distinguishes a thoughtful but contrary comment from a trolling comment is that the troll wants to force other users into negative behavior. Trolls win when somebody blows up, or somebody's self-image is toppled, or whatever. That attitude adds zero value to a conversation.

Whether any of this matters or not is immaterial. If someone thinks it matters and you want to convince them otherwise, pushing them to drop the banhammer in anger isn't the way to do it.

They call us on our bullshit.

It's recursive, then.

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