Here there's a nondescript coloured button that blocks a troll from from being here at all, whether fed or starved.

It too is a moderated system....that works just fine...

Yeah, that's what i did in my moddie days. Works great. You do tend to get angry pm's from them when they doublecheck using another account. 

Look, trolling has been around in the media long before the internet was made public.  The real difference between the internet and everywhere else is all this amazing equal convenience brings it down to a micro level.  It raises your attention now because it targets you directly in addition to personally.  Before that was not the case.  Trolls had to go broad instead of surgical by attacking things people identify with.  Whether that's done through a petty billboard sign or an intentionally skewed newspaper article.

Toady, anyone who wants can google up an e-place and meet someone with an opposing viewpoint with little effort.  Before it wasn't quite that easy.

The good that has come from all this negative juvenile behavior is people will eventually recognize it where ever it manifests in society and reject it.  Who knows?  Maybe a real positive change will come.

Not to just talk about our little space here. But the news sites on their comments section, it's like a full flaming war that it gets off topic very quickly. Oh, I don't want to talk about other sites I go to like AICN, IGN and CBM...But yeah, not here but at other sites, I believe what you say could be true...

Indeed. There's nothing inherently magical about our forums other than Jafo, Kyro, myself and others don't faint when we get called brown shirts for taking out the riff raff.

Even Neowin, which has pretty good moderation, has a pretty high troll level (still good compared to most sites but compared to here).  The trolls, however, would say our community is a bunch of fanboys who suck up out of fear the moderator-gestapo.

Here is a good example of a run-of-the-mill troll. Probably around 15 to 17 years old. Mostly harmless.  Still a jerk.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1135898-new-deskscapes-8-beta-for-windows-8/page__p__595550766#entry595550766

the "ad bot" was offensive but which other post was trolling, guess I don't get it?

curious question: what's the difference between trolling and posting a different/opposing/disagreeable opinion?

From my experience you can always challenge them to start modding their own.  Too often the young majority treats the mod scene as a free arcade and troll about the finished product.  This is despite all the tiring, non profit effort put into it by individuals who only want to create something.  They need a taste of their own medicine to grow up.  Thick skin is a requirement.

Do niche markets have higher troll ratios or less?  I haven't met that many trolls on Civfanatics.com for example.

Trolls tend to be like viruses and go where the most people are. The most I encounter are on youtube comments, and yes, usually about politics. I don't use, but I hear facebook and twitter are real bad as well. Trolls may not be as retarded as some think, they can actually quite often make people stop posting there views on a subject of importance which only leaves a one sided view.

I have yet to see any trolls in the Sins m0d scene, the worst I had was asking for stuff we will not put in or the constant "when is the nest release coming".

Do you mean Authored thread [op] or comment...because since march 1 I've probably done a hundred myself....

It looks like your Forum is even tighter than here....though we do have a 'wipe-out-people-totally' button that removes EVERYTHING ....but we're all too chicken to use it.  [don't tell anyone but I tidied up after a spammer with it once - but I think I got away with it]...

As you know with 'moderation' the phrase is....'moderation in all things' [and that includes moderation]...

My view is this: I don't tollerate people like this in my personal life, they are not tollerated in my workplace, so why should I tollerate them on the internet? Just because someone is attached to a computer doesn't mean they have to forget about politeness and good manners. If a site is over-run by trolls, I just don't go there.

I restrict my internet access therefore to those sites where I feel most comfortable. I'm still here 11 years on

As a resident troll of the Sins forums (and a troll in real life), I'd like to offer some perspective on the issue...

I always see the same "logic" applied to trolling...trolls are losers, attention whores, people with no life...they just want to anger people, piss them off, get a rise out of people they never could in real life...trolls can be starved if you simply ignore them, because after all if you aren't giving them attention and aren't getting angry then obviously their trolling has failed...

But that's not really how all trolls are...some are, yes, but not all...

First off, sometimes there is a "misdiagnosis" of trolling...

A great example would be a lot of the anti-Starclad posts/threads/comments made during and since the Rebellion beta/release (I will stress that I am merely using this as an example)...

Some people were "true trolls"...they would post comments or start threads with the intent of getting a rise out of the developers...the key thing here is their intent...they genuinely wanted to piss off the devs or just throw shit around because it made them feel better about themselves...

There was another group of people though that genuinely had criticism against Starclad and certain decisions it made in regards to Rebellion...were they sometimes nasty?  YES.  Were they sometimes inappropriate?  YES...

But the key is that their intention was not to just piss people off...they had gripes about the game, and wanted to discuss them...they were genuine gripes, not genuine in that they were "correct" but genuine in that they really felt Starclad could have done things better...some of it was vented frustration due to perceived problems in a game they otherwise loved, and anyone when frustrated can of course be prone to ranting, nastiness, and the like...

The bottom line is that there is a huge difference between someone saying nasty things and someone being a troll...that is why I have a problem with defining a troll as someone who is rude, nasty, or angers other people...sure, someone may say something that is nasty and does anger you, but it doesn't make them a troll...they may just have a very different perspective, very different opinion, and aren't exactly "confined" to social norms like courtesy, tact, and respect....

Second, not all trolls want to anger or piss off people...some trolls just want to entertain, either entertain themselves or entertain others...of course, that means there are also trolls that want to both anger and entertain other people...

Not going to mention any names, but there are quite a few people on these forums that get positive feedback and/or karma for "funny" trolling...now, their trolling may be nasty or mean...it may even anger someone...but it also may be funny, maybe not to the devs or moderators, but to someone out there...in many of these cases, the troll really could care less about angering someone or getting a rise...all they really want is to say something funny and have other people think it is funny...that it may be mean, nasty, or inappropriate is either a coincidence or simply a "mean to an end"...

It's easy to say "well we aren't really talking about those trolls, the ones that are just clowns"...but the problem is that a "clown troll" may genuinely believe their insult or nastiness is obvious trolling, obviously sarcastic, obviously just for shits and giggles....and when the other person does get mad, the troll doesn't think "YES I pissed them off" but rather "don't they know I'm just trolling them????"...

Sometimes, trolls (especially those that live and interact every day with other trolls) just assume other people think like they do...it's not a matter of "thick skin", but a matter of simply understanding that "it's just trolling"...

Third, not all trolls are losers with no life....some trolls like to write and be witty...some trolls come on to these forums for "productive" or "legit" reasons but occasionally come across an opportunity to troll that's just too hard to pass up...

It's usually obvious to me which trolls really have no life and which trolls do have a life but also just enjoy trolling...I've learned though that most people do not readily distinguish between the two...

Sometimes it is easy to look at a troll post and immediately think "that person has no life, they must just spend all their time getting on the net and doing nothing but trolling"...but if someone spends an hour everyday posting "legit" and "productive" posts on a forum (like certain moderators obviously do), then magically they are just seen as normal....

The point is that it doesn't actually take that long to make a lot of troll posts...in fact, most trolls are probably spending far less time posting than the serious forum warriors are, so don't readily assume they "have no life" because odds are they spend less time off the forums than you do....

And if you think "but the trolls are just wasting time while the serious posters are being productive", then ask yourself this: how much time do you spend watching TV?  How much time do you spend playing games on your PC or phone?  Cause every minute you do is another minute of being just as unproductive as the troll writing his troll forum post...and as a troll, I can tell you that I troll in place of other time-wasting, unproductive sorts of entertainment that "normal people" do for hours every day....