Serendipity35

A troll, in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room. Why? Their intent is to provoke other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion. Wikipedia has information on trolls and Wikipedia itself has problems with trolls who "edit" information just to gain attention.

If you're a teacher, you know that classrooms often have trolls too - students who "contribute" only to get attention or disrupt the lesson or discussion. If you teach online or use online discussions, you have also encountered these trolls.

Etymology: earliest known example of the term's use is from 1991. Thought to be a truncation of the phrase "trolling for suckers" from the pre-existing term for the fishing technique (trolling) of slowly dragging a bait through water. Of course, many of us will also think of the trolls of folklore and children's stories who are also creatures with a penchant for mischief.

What do you do when a live or online discussion goes awry because of a troll?

I recently joined yet another online community. This one is at NPR (National Public Radio) which launched last September. They hit the 50,000 users mark early this month.

They also introduced a new community rule: Do not "feed" the trolls.

Not only do they encourage community members to report abuse by trolls, but also also ask that you not engage with trolls in the comment threads.

It's something teachers quickly learn - reacting to their provocations is exactly what they want. At NPR, if you feed a troll by responding, they remove both the troll's comments and your responses.

They also have had user questions about how they define a troll. One community member said:

"I think of it," he wrote in an e-mail, "as someone who doesn't engage others in a discussion, who posts irrelevant comments, or who goes off on the same rant no matter the topic."

In some ways, a troll is like the person at the party who's a little too drunk and picks a fight with everyone. He (or she) is the one who makes things so hostile that everyone avoids a gathering as soon as they see him on the guest list.

Our oft-stated principle is that we want the NPR.org community to be home to a civil conversation that avoids insults, vulgarities and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. We ask for first and last names during the registration process because we want users to remember that behind our funny avatars and strong views are real human beings.

Trolls tend to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet to make community interactions less human. So, from now on, let's ignore them.   http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/

How effective is not feeding the trolls that pop up in your classroom face-to-face or virtually?
What techniques do you find effective in keeping them in check, or (not always possible) getting rid of them?
Do effective techniques from the live classroom transfer to the virtual classroom?