Subject: How to poison troll food?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 19:06:24 +0300 (EET DST)

The saying "Do not feed the trolls" is by now familiar in the mailing
lists culture.

Now I would like to explore the equivalent analogy of feeding trolls with
poisonous food.

Does anyone have war stories about successful attempts to feed trolls with
poisonous food i.e. respond to their troll E-mail messages to a mailing
list by a specially crafted E-mail message that got the troll to shut up,
feel shame, or close his Internet access account with his ISP?
                                             --- Omer
Finland - the LMN land (Linux, Mumins, Nokia)
My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

---

From: Lior Kesos <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 20:42:56 +0300

Maybe you're not trolling but this surely is flame-bait...
I'm not sure if hamakor.trolls[0]  is a member of hackers-il but I
don't think that trolls can be poisoned they excel in taking the most
superb argument you've ever written -
flawlessly reasoned -
amazingly balanced -
a short step before being included in the bagrut in literature and
note that you haven't capitalized a persons name or you've mispelled a
word and -
"that proves how stupid you and you're reasoning is"
and "when you learn to spell start giving me advice" etc... etc..
I think the don't feed the trolls (anything) is the collective
intelligent advice based on tons of flame-wars and troll-fests
The only chance I see it to chat until morning rises and they turn to stone -
it worked for bilbo...
Lior.

On 6/6/05, Omer Zak <[email-masked]> wrote:
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-- 
Peace Love and Penguins -
Lior Kesos

---

From: Adir Abraham <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 12:39:23 +0300 (IDT)

Omer,

Your "poisoned food" can be some sort of a winning arguement which you may 
or may not have. Define your "troll", please: 1) If a troll by your 
definition is someone who has sorts of "behavior" problems, such as 
getting down as low as hitting you personally, despite the fact that he 
gives relevant arguements (and he did, and I can see some members changed 
part of their thoughts because of that) - that is, expressing his thoughts 
while smashing you in the meanwhile - you have two choises: either give 
him back a winning arguement (he likes talking about coding and security. 
The truth is that I haven't seen someone answered him exactly about those 
things and tell him that he's wrong. IF he is wrong. I might have not seen 
it and if I haven't - please correct me), or define a policy that getting 
"personally" in such arguements is prohibitted and may lead to banning 
from the mailing list. It's up to the mailing list moderator and/or the 
policy of the "management" (the board, if we are talking about Hamakor now).

2) If your troll is some sort of a problematic person who doesn't say 
anything useful, doesn't know what he's talking about, and he's here to 
disturb and to interrupt (and I really doubt that whom you're talking 
about is defined that way because he does know what he's talking about 
and he does have winning or at least interesting arguements) - just ask 
the moderators to ban him as soon as possible. I can't define it better.

Anyway, if the Troll is definition #1, you just gave him NON-poisoned food 
so he will keep bashing you, me, and whomever in this list or any other 
list. "Don't feed the trolls" is exactly what we should do. Yes, he has 
expression problems (and I told him that by myself, that if every 2 
paragraphs he hits someone personally - his arguement is lost), so in his 
situation we can either answer him relevantly (if we have something to 
say) or to ignore him. Trying to "poison" him will cause unneeded flames. 
Bringing such a subject down (especially when the flames got down), is 
also some sort of trolling. It may cause unnecessary flames among the 
people here, is not relevant to the mailing list and intented to bash 
someone else. I don't protect him, but your email doesn't solve the 
situation either.

In his situation, I'm afraid - he's quite immuned. Just ignore him or ask 
someone to remove him (I'm afraid that for definition #1 it won't happen, 
but you can/may try), or give him a truly win arguement about coding and 
security, if you have.

All the best,

 	Adir.

--

Adir Abraham

[email-masked], [email-masked]