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Objective Troll Criteria

03/21/2006
What defines a troll? That would seem to be an odd question to say the least - but sometime you meet trolls that for reasons unknown refuses to acknowledge that they are trolls, as if that somehow would affect their credibility or something. Obviously, these peoples credibility is already long lost. So, the idea is that you need a list of criteria for someone being a troll to just check for ever such person you come across, and to show them just how well they fit the criteria.
Note, however, that this isn't a definitive list of criteria and you can't really make any conclusion made solely on checking off this list. Someone matching just one item in the list isn't a troll, but someone matching most of them most likely is a troll.

What is a troll?

Well, I suppose it's handy to define just what we're trying to determine here first. A troll is, in usenet terms, someone who trolls. The word "trolling" comes not from the unsavory creature generally found living under bridges, but rather the act of trolling for fish.
So, the definition of a troll is easily defined as someone who posts to get a specific type of reply, but that's way too loose a critera to apply generally. Especially when you're dealing with someone that will try to obfuscate the matters by stating simply that "don't we all post to get specific replies?" whilst trying to ignore the distinction between the two types of replies on is after. So, we need that list - and here is is. The example troll in this article is a "he", and will be referred to as "he" or "him".

Why this criteria?

A poster in a newsgroup asked if there was such a thing as an Objective Troll Criteria and asked me to provide it for him, so I did.