Trolls (2008)

Also karma doesn't count for a lot here (that being one exception). Ultimately, a good karma system should simulate the what happens in the best real world environments....where there is a very complex feedback loop that reinforces the sort of behavior we want and suppresses that which we don't want. In my opinion Slashdot comes kind of close, but it has huge flaws itself.

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.

I say this in that reading the post, and then the comments from you all-- I see a bit of disparity between philosophies. I mean, for the most part I think from it's very root, trolls are trouble makers, and we can all sort of agree on that. But, there are people here who revel in that, see a symbiotic nature (good needs evil), people who think trolls are important, and that they keep things interesting--people who've even been trolls (full disclosure, when I was younger and immature I partook in such acts...nothing malicious, but acts none the less). When I read things like this I wonder where and at what time these people were introduced to the internet and forums and the like. A lot of younger people (at least the ones I know) are familiar with the trolling culture, and share many of the same previously mentioned opinions, however when I think of my Dad who was introduced to things much earlier when the internet was much more "pure", he loathes such things, "there's no place for that".

As a non-formal study, purely for my curiousity would anyone interested write down their age, the time when they were introduced (ballpark it) to the internet and forums, and their stance on trolls.

  Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want 
  to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally 
  making a mark on the world.

Let me propose, for what it's worth, that a "Banksy!" reply to a statement like the one above is the sort of accidental troll that invites the slow degradation into real trolls. Whether or not Banksy is graffiti or whether or not graffiti is art: these aren't the question of the submission. This isn't to say that tangents are always bad. It's rather that these sorts of discussions quickly turn in to "what color should we paint the dog house?"* That is: lots of firmly-held beliefs with little that can dissuade someone.

So: when posting why someone is wrong, first see if there's a small or trivial way in which you can 'fix' their point. If you can, their point wasn't really broken in the first place.

*I've long been trying to find the original 'why meetings go bad when you're talking about something everyone has an opinion on', but I can't. If anyone can help me out: much appreciated.