What are Trolls & Squids?

[neil_r]

I have been using this forum since Jan 03. It is the only forum that I visit regularly and the only one that I post to. I have been looking at a few others recently and have come across a couple of terms that I do not understand. Within the context of an Internet Forum, what are Trolls and Squids?



Cheers

[tommykjensen]

Trolls are users that post negative or provocative posts with the sole purpose of annoy, flame, offend or cause trouble in any which way they can. They are best left alone. If nobody feed the trolls they eventually get tired and leave. I don't beleive there are many trolls around here.

I have not heard about the term squids.

[Moppie]

Iv been involved in forums for 5 years now, and I have never heard the term squid.

Troll however is a term I am unforunatly very familar with.
They are not a problem here at POTN, either its not big enough to attrack them, or photography is not a subject matter they know about, but they are a problem on automotive forums, gaming forums and other subjects that appeal to younger users.

Trolls are annoying, usualy immature members of a forum who have no actual interest in the forums primary subject. Instead they are interested in themselves, and getting as much attention as they possibly can.
From my own experiance the average profile would be:
White American.
Aged 13-21.
Living at home.
From a wealthy family.
Limited real life social interaction.

They will often start as a quite normaly but very niave member, asking very simple, but common questions.
They often over exagerate, claiming to own things they don't etc.
These exagerations and lies are always spotted by regular forum members, or members become sick of the repeated questioning and apprently simple minded approach to the forums subject.
At this point the members behaviour changes.
They often become aggresive, or start posting offensive remarks.
Some become openly depressed, making claims that nobody likes them and making threads about everything that is wrong with thier lives, all of which is just normal teenage angst.
Its at this point that thier future is determined.
Forums with more mature memberships will general ignore them. They might get a simple warning from the admin, but they soon leave realising they are not going to get much of a reaction.
Forums with younger, and larger memberships however become breeding grounds.
The Troll will soon get some form of response from the membership, and often less experianced mods will handle them in a less than subtle manner.

The Trolls response is then varyed, but is always either passive, or agresive.

The Passive trolls are often the hardest to deal with, and may haunt a forum riding the edge of the forums rules and guidelines. When they over step them, or get to close to them they will aplogise profusely, make a fuss about improving, but rapidly sink back into old behaviour patterns.
They will usual inhabbit off topic and general chat forums, and may use instant messages, emails and private mesages to befriend long standing members and prehaps moderators with a soft heart.
They can literaly spend years expressing thier social inadequcies and teen angst in endless threads about thier life, and in meaningless replies to others posts.
They can cause rifts between moderating staff, as some simply want to get rid of them, while others seem them as simple forum pets, or someone who deserves thier pity.
I personaly have very little time for them, and have my own special ways of dealing with them.

The easiest to deal with, ironicly, are the Trolls who take on an agressive approach.
These are the ones who do thier attention seeking by breaking every forum rule they can find.
They will start threads asking not to be banned, then abuse moderators, they will post offensive material and go out of thier way to get removed.
They soon get banned, and thier handy work gets deleted and hidden from view.

Of course its never that easy, and there are now people out there who treat being a troll like a hobby, and of course there are those who have a personal vendetta against a forum, or prehaps some of its moderatoing staff.
I know of members, who after becoming aggresive have re-registered, not just once, or twice, but over a hundred times. Often having several usernames in reserve, making whole threads where they were the only person replying, useing 3 or more differnt usernames.
And all of this over the course of a year or more, and all because they were banned for abusing another member over the type of car they drove.
These are what you might call mega-trolls.

5 years ago these guys were hard to deal with, but you found them and banned them again eventualy.
Now days, with the modern versions of forum software, its very easy to hunt them down.
Tracing and searching for I.Ps is very easy for example, as are a whole lot of other methods that I don't want to reveal on an open forum :)
Often once a member is spotted as being a troll, and banned, several other pre-registered usernames are also removed before they can get them, and once alerted to a problem, it becomes easy to ban usernames as they are registered, before the troll even has a chance to use them.
It becomes a game of cat and mouse, only the cat can never lose, and the mouse lost before he started.


I have also seen members of the passive type exhibiting the same behaviour patterns accross more than one forum, or even being passive on one forum, and agressive on another.
I think the worst Iv seen is members who behave niave and ignorant on one forum, asking annoying questions, while moderating another forum based around the same subject where they are regarded as knowledgable and well respected (says alot about that forum).


Basicly trolls are an anoyance at best, and a tempory hinderance at worst.

[tommykjensen]

Iv been involved in forums for 5 years now, and I have never heard the term squid.

Troll however is a term I am unforunatly very familar with.
They are not a problem here at POTN, either its not big enough to attrack them, or photography is not a subject matter they know about, but they are a problem on automotive forums, gaming forums and other subjects that appeal to younger users.


On DPR trolls are a huge problem so I don't think it is the subject that keep them away from here. I like to think it is because of the general nicer atmosphere here and swift action from moderators :D

[cjm]

Squid? Never heard that term before. I can't even imagine what a squid would be. where did you hear that term?

[Moppie]

I like to think it is because of the general nicer atmosphere here and swift action from moderators :D


I agree, thier an efficant little bunch!
I actualy think each one is infact several differnt people, possibly clones, all useing the same username ;)

[Moppie]

This is useful:

Troll: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/troll.html

Its proof that some people have way to much time on thier hands: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html but has no mention of squids.

[PhotosGuy]

One use of "Squid" is used by members of the armed forces for any member in the navy.

[pcasciola]

Neil, I think you may have heard squid on some motorcycle forums. It's a term we use to describe beginner track riders who think they know what they are doing, but just cause problems and get in everyone's way.

[CyberDyneSystems]

I've not heard "Squid" used in "forum lingo" either.. The Navy reference is of course historic,. and like the Motocross reference,. I've heard it used in the real world (not on the internet) to describe "newbies" .. long before the term "newbie" or the internet existed...

"....Only squids have dry hair..."
Jack Death, -Trancers-

[Steve Parr]

One use of "Squid" is used by members of the armed forces for any member in the navy.

Yep. I've used it in that context here. I retired from the Navy four years ago...

Steve

[pcasciola]

Some motorcycle forums actually use Squid as the lowest rating for it's members, like where we use the term Junior Member. That's the most common use of the term Squid I've seen in the context of Internet forums.

[neil_r]

Some motorcycle forums actually use Squid as the lowest rating for it's members, like where we use the term Junior Member. That's the most common use of the term Squid I've seen in the context of Internet forums.

Bang on, It was a motorcycle forum, a friend of mine posts regularly on a Honda RC51 site and it was on there that I saw people refereed to as Squids. The strnge thing is I have riden a sports bike for years and done many track days and never heard the term used. Perhaps I was too busy being one and every one was too polite to tell me :D :D

Many thanks for your replies and insights, and 1st prize to mopie, that was nothing short of definitive.

Cheers

N

[roanjohn]

Moppie - WOW!!! It seems that you have done your research!!!

Ro1

[Moppie]

Moppie - WOW!!!


All from my own experiance Im afraid :)
Now if I could just get paid for that sort of advice.......... :cool:

[PacAce]

Don't know what "squid" means used in the internet context but I have heard of "calamari" used in the food context and they make very good appetizers. Yum-yum. :mrgreen:

[cjm]

Moppie,

I once met a troll and her name was April. She was with out a doubt the most effective troll I have ever seen. She played a moppie roll, crying about this, complaining her life sucked and posting post to get sympathy. She carried this on for 2 weeks straight. Then some posters got annoyed with her always complaining on a public form so she started a "Im leaving thread" and would keep returning to complain, then the same day she started a second "Ok Im gone thread" and continued to return with more then one ID. She did such a good job that half the board spoke out against what she was doing and asked her to leave the board alone. She would also Happy Face Bump threads.

This was on the weeked and the Mods didn't work weekends, by the time monday rolled around, the (idiot) mods banned everyone who had enough of her board disruption and said something about it to her. Everyone was civilized but upset at what she was doing.

Her trolling was the most effective trolling I have ever seen. Even to this day that board is nowhere close to what it once was. And here is the truth we all learned from it.

Guy Trolls are Shock & Awe like, Girl Trolls are sneaking and fly under the radar making them more effective. I just hope I never see anything like that again.

(Here I am sure I wont since the mods here seem to be nice people, responsible and smart :))