Internet forums, trolls, flames, sock puppets and spam

In doing some reading about spamming on forums, I came across these definitions of a troll and flaming.

Thought they might do some good here as THE DUMP is the appropriate place for this kind of activity.

Troll
Main article: Troll (Internet)

Forum trolls are users that repeatedly and deliberately breach the netiquette of an established online community, posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages to bait or excite users into responding or to test the forum rules and policies, and with that the patience of the forum staff. Their provocative behavior may potentially start flame wars (see below) or other disturbances. Responding to a troll's provocations is commonly known as 'feeding the troll' and is generally discouraged, as it can encourage their disruptive behavior.

Flame wars
Main article: Flaming (Internet)

When a thread—or in some cases an entire forum—becomes unstable the result is usually uncontrolled spam in the form of one-line complaints, image macros or abuse of the report system. When the discussion becomes heated and sides do nothing more than complain and not accept each other's differences in point of view, the discussion degenerates into what is called a flame war. To flame someone means to go off-topic and attack the person rather than their opinion.



Edit: adding definition of sock puppet.
Sock puppet
 
Main article: Sockpuppet (Internet)
 
The term sock puppet refers to someone who is simultaneously registered under different pseudonyms on a particular message board or forum. The analogy of a sock puppet is of a puppeteer holding up both hands and supplying dialogue to both puppets simultaneously. A sock puppet will create multiple accounts over a period of time, using each user to debate or agree with each other on a forum. Sock puppets are usually found when an IP check is done on the accounts in forums.


Spam
Spam posts may contain anything from a single link, to dozens of links. Text content is minimal, usually innocuous and unrelated to the forum's topic, or in a very old thread that is revived by the spammer solely for the purpose of spamming links. Some text is included to prevent the post being caught by automated spam filters that prevent posts which consist solely of external links from being submitted. Full banner advertisements have also been reported

I've heard of trolls but never heard of the flaming thing though I do recognize what they are describing.

I think a more simplified version of a troll is someone who goes on a forum and literally talks like an idiot five year old or just says outrageious and controversial stuff to get other people worked up. If you ignore them they have no fun and go away, if people get worked up it fees the fire so to speak.

As for the flaming thing. Their description is kind of odd and confusing but basically people who attack others and go totally off topic. Here's a good example of one...

city-data.com/forum/chicago-suburbs/1269321-naperville-subdivisions-tall-grass-white-eagle-2.html

Basically someone asked a question about a neighborhood they were considering moving to. About two pages into the thread the discussion somehow turned into a discussion fo what's middle class and the last 2-3 pages are just back nad forth insults and arguments that have absolutely nothign to do with the intended thread.

I think it's good that threads take detours assuming they are offshoots of the intended topic nad not just random discussions that have nothing to do with it.

I don't think it's possible to change the name of a thread once it has started, but I should have included the words net etiquette in the title. That's what this thread is really about, and how trolls, flaming , sock puppets and spam can do damage in a number of ways to a forum.

Edit: added word SPAM.

Yeah I agree it can be funny, I guess nto the trolls so much as seeing how some people take them seriously and react and get all worked up. It gets old quick though.

The other thing as well, just the nature of this message baord doesn't really lend itself to trolls. There's a smaller number of posteres so anybody new would be rocognized right away if they started trolling as opposed to some of the boards like citydata where it appeals to diff subjects and has more people.

The other thing, the place I notice trolls really getting worked up are on sites like citydata where they have sections like great debates, immigration, politics, etc. A troll may come out saying some crazy racist stuff, knocking a religion, etc and that gets people worked up. On this board yeah I just don't see a troll having an opportunity to work people up as much its not really as much of an already laoded topic or subject matter.

rfr....

Please don't feed the troll.