Members kef and einar have written about some recent research:
"A new study from the University of Manitoba has claimed that internet trolls might not be so nice or mentally stable in real life. While previous studies have shown that people with negative character traits are using the internet more frequently for their own amusement, not to socialize, the results seem to link trolling to sadism. Two surveys among amazon's mechanical turk users were conducted which allowed creating a character profile of the participants. Based on the profile, internet behavior could be correlated with different character traits. Trolling appears to be correlated to sadism.
From the study:
... correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What's more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet. ... To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed "trolling." By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were "non-commenters," meaning they didn't like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @12:16AM
You trolled nobody, and the moderation imposed on your post was absolutely correct. Trolling, at least the definition the TFA uses, is purposefully making people on a forum angry or upset for your own pleasure. It probably upset the moderator who gave you an Offtopic mod about as much as spam from a Nigerian prince.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @12:57AM
I'm the one who moderated you offtopic (posting AC so I won't undo it). I take moderating seriously. It's kinda' like jury duty.
My first thought was that your post could have been an attempt to troll in a discussion about trolling so I almost modded it funny. But it wasn't directed at anyone, and it just seemed random. It didn't make sense to moderate it troll, and it was definitely offtopic so that's what I gave it.
Sometimes I wish I could add a note to the moderation for these types of situations. I mod up instead of down about 20 to 1. I'm sorry you were the one.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:21AM
I rather enjoy that I get moderated zero or -1 about as much as I get moderated to five.
I was puzzled by my Soylent News message regarding a "relationship change". WTF?
It turned out that two Soylentils changed their relationship to me at about the same time, one to friend one to foe.
Go look at what people say about Repeatible Hairstyle at Kuro5hin. That's my nick there. Many of them hate me with a furious passion, but I am quite seriously mentally ill, so from time to time I check into a nuthouse or even get arrested.
If I don't post at k5 for a few days, they all go bananas trying to find me. If they can't find me, they lose all will to live.
I honestly do try to contribute in a positive way to k5, soylent, slashdot, advogato and facebook. Really I do. I have mod points here and at Slashdot. I too take them very seriously; for example I only moderate posts that no one else has moderated yet, as I long ago noticed that many moderators are rather lazy, in that once a post is moderated to 2 or 3, it very quickly makes it to five, whereas many well-deserving 0 or 1 comments never get moderated at all.
I generally bump up an otherwise moderated comment by just one, so as to draw attention to it by those lazy moderators.
I also work hard to find deserving comments.
Go have a look at my technical articles [warplife.com], and you will see I really do work hard to do right by others.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]