I was going to put this in ATMB, but I figured more people would see it here. Let’s stop letting threads, especially threads about developing news, get sidetracked into sparring with trolls who would rather pick fights than discuss the issue. I think the warning sign is when someone takes issue with how a post was worded, and responds to clarification with, effectively, “Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Well, I hate this board and you’re all stupid!”
I’m not providing a link because that would not be sufficient. It’s not any one post; it’s the pig-wrestling that goes on for pages. If someone doesn’t want to discuss the issue at hand, don’t respond. I’m tired of the delusional trolls who think they can nail an insult to the SDMB cathedral doors and reform the whole board. Let them see that they can either adapt, or seek their intellectual equals elsewhere.
The things that cause arguments (or pig-fighting) here: abusive ad hominem, mob appeal, anti-social behavior, the Offenderati, people who aren’t as smart as they think they are lashing out at others, and snobbery as exhibited above.
I think it’s easy to spot some trolls, especially when they are guests, but some longtime members have also engaged in some some trollish behavior, and it’s not so easy to spot those.
Do you really think this cry for action is going to change the board’s posting habits? By naming them (trolls) in a thread topic, you have fed them yourself.
How is that trollery? That’s an honest declaration of his legitimate views, not something he posted just to stir shit up and get a kick out of the response.
No, not really. It’s a hostile response that says “I can do whatever I want and you can’t stop me”. Like other methods of trolling, it degrades and deflects the conversation away from whatever it was about and attempts to make it about the alleged Censorship/Fascism/Whatever and/or the person’s right to angrily defend their right to whatever the hell they think is more important than the original point.
Or to quote a substring of that person’s post that was quoted in my post;
Which is rich considering the next part of his post does exactly that, and could be considered an Ad Hominem (attacking the person as a snob), which the poster railed at just previous to this statement.