Communities, Trolls, and Blogs, oh my!

So... You might not be aware, but blogging has become quite popular. Books have been written, people have contemplated how to make money doing it, software was developed to make it easier, and it continues to grow.

Recently, Dawn wrote that the blogosphere was controlled by a group of elitist men and she wants to change that (I paraphrased that). People posted comments, someone else posted a response, a troll appeared and vomited on her site, and then she responded. It was a typical web transaction.

Let me describe typical. There's this kid. He's not very bright, and he has some technical skills. I won't link him because he's a tool, but if you look hard enough you'll find him. He created a page, wrote some trash about Mozilla (a web browser that is open source and worked on by a combination of Netscape engineers and volunteers). Most of what he wrote was untrue. When the Mozilla developers found out, they refuted his claims point by point. He threw a tantrum, called them names, and preached about how great Internet Explorer is, again repeating his false claims about Mozilla.

Dawn's situation is similar. She posts about elitist men, an elitist man reads her blog, trolls around trying to piss people off, she gets angry, falls into the trap, and volleys back. I like Dawn a lot; I enjoy her writing, her sense of humor, and her use of profanity. However, I feel strong in my belief that to respond to a troll is a waste of one's time. Having small minds, they are eager to continue their behavior, as soon as they realize it's gotten the response they were after. Consider a small dog. It barks, you pay attention. You turn away, it barks, you pay attention again. Suddenly you've reinforced the behavior: barking gets attention. Your average troll has the same intellectual capacity.

Stupid trolls.

By the way, I'm working on a response to the actual post she made. It's taking longer than I expected, so I'll publish it tomorrow. I want to make sure I do my $80,000 degree justice.