A troll is an attempt to start a prolonged flame war, a fierce
	argument with rude, personal insults.  Usually, a troll is an
	article that is so outrageous, insulting and stupid that you
	feel you _have_ to reply.  You can often recognise it because
	it is crossposted to several groups (very few articles posted
	to more than three groups are worth reading).  If it is posted
	by someone you never saw posts from before (especially if they
	are using an anonymous account), that's a good sign of a troll.
	Often, it will flagrantly violate basic netiquette.

	If you see a troll, don't post an angry reply.	If you do, the
	troller will have succeeded.  It's better to ignore the troll.
	(A humorous putdown is another option, but one that might
	backfire.)  If you have a killfile facility in your newsreader
	(sometimes called a filter), you can set it to ignore future posts
	from this person.  A good newsreader can also be set to "kill"
	a subject (ignore future posts with that subject line).

There's also a FAQ about trolls
	(http://digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html).
	
	It's perhaps worth mentioning that not everything you
	personally find offensive is necessarily a troll.

© 2008 FAQS.ORG. All rights reserved.