NYTimes article on web trolls

Read the whole article here.

This was the most interesting thing I’d read in a long time. The author obviously did a lot of research, and it’s very accurate; I don’t generally go into these sorts of articles (articles having to do with online/tech/internet related topics) expecting the writer to know more about the subject than I do, but that’s just what I got.

I have personal experience running forums, so I know that the one guaranteed way to get rid of trolls is to ignore them, and that’s essentially the conclusion the author came to. If someone goes to a Mac forum and posts a rant about how Windows is better than MacOS because “I can right click lolz” or something, and everyone ignores it, the troll will leave. If some idiot responds with a badly written, angry rebuttal, full of spelling errors (which is invariably what happens), that’s like setting out a feast for the troll.

Reading this almost made me want to write a story about these people. I found them very interesting, especially Fortuny.

Posted by probabilityZero on August 1, 2008 | Filed under: Other, Tech and games