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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.19.128.157 (talk) at 03:47, 3 April 2005 (→Roland Piquepaille). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article was listed on Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion and the consensus was keep: see Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Slashdot trolling phenomena

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Signal 11

Signal 11 is an old Slashdot user. He was a very active poster and commented on almost every story there. He was considered a "Slashdot icon" and the editors liked him but some users stated openly that they hate him.

There were a number of incidents where a user would mod down one of signal 11's comments and when the editors knew about it, they would modbomb the last few dozens of that user's comments to -1 thus burning his karma and making his comments default to -1.

One day he posted a comment explaining what he was doing, he said that he was trying to accumulate karma by posting comments that agree with what most of slashdotters think. He said also that he doesn't believe all of what he posted and only posted things that he figured would please moderators. He was getting very good at guessing what kind of comments would get moded up and he had no trouble getting most of his comments a very high rating.

He then explained that he did this to discover how moderation works and to "prove" that it doesn't really work as intended. And IIRC he also suggested things to fix it and improve it.

The Slashdot editors weren't very happy about this. There were a lot of email and IRC flame fests between him and the editors. Then they introduced the karma cap (+50) and then made karma invisible for other users and finally they recently made it "verbal". All of these changes made quite a stir within slashdotters.

Signal 11 finally said he was leaving or at least he wouldn't be posting there anymore. He "migrated" to K5. Check his stories and comments and you may find more info there. He seems to have left K5 now or he is using a different account.

For more info:

   * An IRC log between Signal 11 and CmdrTaco, rusty is there too.
   * Karma whore.
   * Signal 11's farewell speech.
   * Here and here for bitchslapping. 

some body please edit/reformat this.

This is very interesting, but I don't think it belongs here. Perhaps a separate slashdot history page or else a history section on either sub-culture or the main slashdot page, or else drop the topic. Votes? --ZeLonewolf 01:12, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think a Slashdot Personalities section would be appropriate, in the Slashdot subculture page. We could have a section for Ogg the caveman, signal 11, JonKatz, CowboyNeal, WillWheaton, etc... Anyone up for the challenge?

Outside links

It's a Misplaced Pages tradition that links to outside the Misplaced Pages should only be in the separate section "External Links". This is to make a clear distinction between Misplaced Pages content, for which we are responsible, and non-Misplaced Pages content. This same distinction is found in quality print encyclopedias. This article goes entirely against that tradition, and really must be revised to keep external links out of the body. Kricxjo 20:24, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think this is fixed now?212.42.97.111 11:29, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I noticed that browsing at -1 and searching the page doesn't reveal the `Possibly the original story' posting. If somebody can find it, please update the link...

Webhat 05:36, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)

Meta trolling

Does anyone think that the fact that this entry is one of the largest and most elaborate on the Misplaced Pages is, in fact, a kind of a Troll?

Or at least, a kind of museum of trolling?

I would say that it is explanation to many inside jokes that would require many hours of reading Slashdot in order to find funny (if, of course, you do find such things funny.) I appreciate that this article is on the Misplaced Pages. --Two Halves not on a pogo stick

Good-good, I think it's great too ;) What do you think of the reorganization I did?

Yes, I do. I created the article in the first place and the main thought I had in creating it was "How long will it be before this gets deleted?" Interestingly enough, it never was, but has instead (as I hoped) grown into an unruly behemoth strangely like its Slashdot counterparts. -- 212.229.115.84

I'm glad, and happy to have helped it to be the strange and excentric creature it is.

Legion of Trolls

That is just about enough bad things said about heroic m:trolls. <-- please read this to see the true meaning of trolling. Also consider joining the m:Legion of trolls. Thank you for your time neh neh neh...

Slashdot links

How long do Slashdot links remain? Is there a danger that some of the older ones will disapear in the end? How do we deal with that?

I think they're as permament as Slashdot is. CGS 10:12, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC).

John Ritter

"One Anonymous Coward used it on the day of John Ritter's death, saying 'I just heard on the radio that John Ritter died'."

Actually, it was Slashdot user orthogonal, not posting as an Anonymous Coward, and it began, "I just heard some sad news on talk radio", and followed the troll format. orthogonal 08:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Stephen King is Dead

Re: 212.229.115.84 (Slight changes under "Stephen King is Dead".) You added 'similar to' to the Stephen King examples. My feeling is there is one canonical form of this troll. Or at least, it suffers if it departs from that form. While I'm not a troller myself (except for some uses of the "Stephen King" form myself for real celebrity deaths, mostly to see what the reaction would be), I think the humor in this troll comes from the intentional vagueness of the statement "I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon." The boiler-plate use of this vague generalization gives it the feel of a pompous but rather uniformed -- and itself boiler-plate -- TV-news style obituary by managing to say nothing in a verbose way. When real details or a real appraisal of the subject is offered, this aspect is lost. orthogonal 20:52, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree that there's a canonical form of the Stephen King troll, but the impression I gained from your text about it was that all Stephen King trolls followed your quoted form verbatim, when some, though similar, are not necessarily exactly the same. I'm sorry for misinterpreting this way, and will change the text to underline the fact that the text given is 'canonical' and not a totally strict format. -- 212.229.115.84 (20:38 12 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Ah, my lack of clarity, I'm sorry. No, of course, there's individual variance. In fact, I recall posting to Slashdot the canonical form, and dressing down an Anonymous Coward who departed from it by adding far too much real detail. orthogonal 21:38, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC) PS: Nice edit; it's better without the hedging.

I am humbled by the depth of scholarship and learned discussion on this topic. You are both gentlemen and scholars.2toise 21:41, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hot Grits, OGG the CAVEMAN, Open Source Man

I have spent many, many hours reading slashdot at -1, so I know a bit about slashdot trolling. What you have so far is very comprehensive, but has some holes, from the older days.

EG. Hot Grits was originally NOT associated with Natalie Portman. It was a single poster making humorous posts with some reference to pouring hot grits down his pants. Most of the time he was modded up. Then one day someone said, "I am not as stupid as the hot grits guy", the hot grits guy responded that he does something impressively techy(I forget what), and then he never posted a hot grits troll again! Then the crap flooders and taggers on adopted the hot grits joke, but unlike the original, they were rarely funny, or modded up. Natalie Portman was not originally associated with hot grits, but I think in time, it was logical they would merge. I mean, what red blooded American _wouldn't_ pour "hot grits" down their pants for Natalie Portman (she is a babe!).

OGG made a short apperance, he would post some humourous comment (again, he was generally modded up), in all caps and relevant to the story. Ending with something like OGG WILL BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH AN OPEN SOURCE CD. (I think... it was a _long_ time ago, and he only posted a handful of times.)

• I added a small reference to OOG (not OGG) a while back, but it looks someone removed it... don't know why. Motor 10:36, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Open Source Man would write (relatively poor) fiction involving himself, Natalie Portman, and various other open source figures. He was probably a big force behind imortalizing Natalie Portman as a slashdot idol. Indeed, after he left, the Natalie Portman related trolls have dropped significantly, if not completely. He was also the star of a very successful meta-troll. He set up a troll and a big associated story that there was some dispute between the slashdot editors and himself. And that his account was deleted and his IP was blocked etc. All the followers of his stories all banded together, trying to see if they could help. Bombarding the editors with a deluge of email on the subject. Eventually the truth came out that it was all a huge troll, and many of his fans, (including myself), who had been sucked in, were, to put it mildly, not happy with him!

Another example of OSM's power was, he declared Natalie Portman's birthday a troll day! He succedeed wildly. About 80-90% of the comments posted that day were trolls related to NP.

While I am at it, I might also add that the more sophisticated trolls had a hidden sid where they would post links to their works, so others could comment and congratulate each other, and organize their trolling efforts. This periodically had to shift sids as it became too popular (at which point hangers on would scour the post history of known trolls looking for cases where they accidentally posted comments to the new sid non-anonymously, so they could find the new sid -- it worked well. Someone invariably would forget to press the post anon button.) Eventually, the trolls wanted to share more personal details with their fellow trolls and didn't want Joe Blow (ie the hangers on) in on the details, so they formed a mailing list, invitation only. Entry fee was several high quality trolls, and a request to one of the trolls.

• The stuff about a mailing list sounds like one of the many lies and general rubbish that were spread around (see also: Troll High Council). IIRC, there was quite a history of troll sids before slashdot updated its software and prevented the creation of a new sid just by using any name for it (k22320inchfan, inchfan, 10gramspoppylatex, trolltalk). After the update, the slashdot editors added a User Created Discussion page, and sllort created TrollTalk. Motor 10:36, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• • I am 98% sure the mailing list existed. Just ask Spiralx about it. He could also add quite a bit to this discussion, being one of the original trolls (not a crap flooder or spammer). See here for example: http://spiralx.dyndns.org/howto.html

Note these trolls I here refer to, are not crapflooders, they are more subtle, writing stuff that looks ok at first glance, but at closer inspection contains many errors and mistruths designed to get maximum number of replies.

Whew. I think there might be a few minor details wrong, but on the whole I think I have it right. So, that is my addition to Slashdot Trolling history.

• • • This is basically what the miscreants used to do on usenet, they'd take over a newsgroup slowly, posting on topic and slowly start posting contrary posts then some new guys would subscribe and post contrary posts until the only posts left where replies to the discussions posted by the miscreants. The trick was to get a really long chain going without having to feed the fire by posting to your own thread. You could usually tell they were miscreants because they'd have lame X-headers. I think alt.misc and uk.misc posters had X-Meow, anyway in my intensive USENET posting days I would follow some of these newsgroup takeovers, it was just so funny to watch the people fall into the trap. *evil-grinz* Webhat 05:53, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)

Featured articles

In order to get this page on to Misplaced Pages:Featured articles (it's currently on Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates with an objection that there's too much original research and not enough citations) this page will need to be worked on. I think it deserves to be a featured article. Here's a suggestion for the kind of thing that could be done in most sections (though I'm sure a slashdotter could find a better example than I did):

Homosexuality is one of the most versatile and so common trolling devices utilised. In its simplest form it may be used on its own in the form of a homophobic insult or as a feature of a pornographic troll featuring common Slashdot topics and celebrities. Goatse.cx (see above "shock site" section) also takes advantage of homophobia.

-- What do you think? Fabiform 02:21, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That looks great. Perhaps you can create the same layout using the simplified table syntax.—Eloquence 11:48, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)

Ha, perhaps I can. I'll have to practice with it first though.  :) I don't think I'll be able to do this article justice though since I'm not a slashdot user, I'm sure slashdotters will find better quotes than I could, and there's no point in having all these quotes added if they don't actually illustrate the points. Perhaps the original creators if the article can help? Fabiform 16:12, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Great work - the current format is getting unwieldy, with the slashdot refs at the bottom of the page - it probably needs reintegrating, so that people who want to see an example of the troll can do it easily - any ideas? 209.102.125.56

Ideas for reformatting

I think we need the examples reintegrated into the text - I know this is not Misplaced Pages format, but it is so difficult to find the example from the troll description. Ideas?209.102.125.56

• Maybe one external link to an example in each section wouldn't be too bad... and perhaps losing a few of the external links at the end. We don't really need 8 links to 'In Soviet Russia' posts, do we? Motor 02:56, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

no, but man do i love those mnemonic 06:50, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

Stealth vandalism

From 06:30, 12 Dec 2003 to 21:24, 17 Jan 2004, article "Slashdot trolling phenomena" was the victim of what I think was stealth vandalism, but might possibly be an anonymous editor with very poor English skills.

The vandalism appears never to have been recognized as such, with individual problem phrases being corrected in an ad hoc manner as each was noticed by later editors.

In addition to changing phrases, expansions of abbreviations where removed, and some sub-sections were removed entirely. Some disputable or incorrect factual claims are also made ("Steal underpants" for "Collect underpants", added text under the sycophant troll). I noticed the changes when I went to copy the text of the "Stephen King is Dead" troll to commemorate Captain Kangaroo on Slashdot, only to find the canonical text removed.

I definitely think that the canonical text should be there (which is why I originally added it), but I'm a little reluctant to restore the text for two reasons: a number of other changes have acreted in the meantime, and the original text makes reference to a Slashdot user who shares my Misplaced Pages username, an addition I originally made only to correct what had been an incorrect attribution (of using the Stephen King troll to announce real deaths) to "Anonymous Coward".

Some of the changed phrases, with the change highlighted:

"This is a list of some of the trolls which may be come across when browsing Slashdot comments."

"Homosexuality is one of the most versatile and so common trolling devices utilised."

The rest can be see in the diff, at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Slashdot_trolling_phenomena&diff=1939119&oldid=1938692

PS: Minesweeper found a similar stealth vandalism in Slashdot on 20:27, 19 Dec 2003. My guess is that it's a Slashdot troll trying for some self-referential "humor".

Forgot to sign! orthogonal 14:50, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

the phenomena is escaping slashdot...

ZeLonewolf just added this to the soviet russia section:

Other Appearances:

In a Family Guy episode, Peter plays around with his car's navigation system, and turns it to Russian. The navigation system says: "In Soviet Russia, car drives You!". Another joke in that episode: Navigation system: "Turn right at fork in road. In Soviet Russia, road forks you!"

There was also an episode of King of the Hill in which they go to Branson for a bluegrass festival and Bobby sells a Soviet Russia joke to Yakov. In this episode, Bobby makes a number of bad Soviet Russia jokes, far closer in nature to the Slashdot Soviet Russia jokes than to the original Smirnoff ones.

There are also instances of this joke appearing on the television shows The Simpsons and Futurama.

This is all excellent.... but should it be moved into a section of its own to highlight these trolls and injokes bleeding out into other media? The jump from internet forum to internationally broadcast television cartoons seems an important feature to me. fabiform | talk 23:06, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You mean alleged jump. I consider it highly unlikely that Slashdot is the source; Smirnoff himself is a much more likely source. --Delirium 04:28, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

And... moved! (to Yakov Smirnoff). --Delirium 04:30, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

Slashdot Culture vs. Trolling

Done. See Slashdot subculture

Stephen King

Um, since when does the Stephen King troll end with "God bless :(" ???? I've never seen this. I'll wait a bit if someone wants to cite this, but my opinion is that this is not canonical. orthogonal 01:36, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't. -- 212.229.115.84 (19:01, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC))

The "Is it good or is it whack" troll

This is a relatively new troll (and one of he few I actually find funny). Anyone up to documenting it? orthogonal 01:36, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I haven't seen it - perhaps you could reference it for someone to document? Mark Richards 03:15, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• • Klerck says it all the time. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102875&cid=8763769

Is it just me...? or Did someone else...? troll

Containing almost none or no content, this troll reels an answer from insinuating a question. Sometimes rated funny for the cheap shot, may pull a long string of offtopic responses.

Not very frequent.

Missing?

We seem to be missing a number of the traditional trolls. I'll be honest, when I was curious about how the Natalie Portman/grits thing originated, I can here to Misplaced Pages (via Google) to learn about it, and I can't think of an alternative resource that would have explained it. Can we please make it a priority to get this information back in? orthogonal 01:36, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Oh,m it's under Slashdot subculture. Not sure If I like that organization. orthogonal 01:38, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps a better organization is called for? It used to be in one GIANT article titled slashdot trolling phenomena, but there turned out the be a lot of slashdot cultural references that weren't really a "trolling phenomenon", so I've been working on breaking it up and/or organizing it better (in addition to, as a /. reader, adding content). By all means, hack away --ZeLonewolf 04:20, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

GNAA

• Gay Nigger Association of America, and subsequent locations GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA and Gay Niggers Association of America protected as redirs to Slashdot trolling phenomena. -Mkweise 20:49, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • GNAA is itself the troll. 164 google hits. 0 hits on its own page on Slashdot (See the link to slashdot at the foot of the slashdot_trolling page to which GNAA forwards. GNAA is an association of juvenile trolls who are doubtless wetting themselves that GNAA has a Wiki defintion. Protection is absolutely not the right course of action here. --Tagishsimon 16:33, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • Umm, Tagishsimon...I protected it as a redirect, after the article had been repeatedly deleted and recreated. I expect that would continue ad infinitum if we unprotect and delete again. Mkweise
    • Umm, okay. yes. You're right; in that light, good policy & I stand corrected. Sadly I think you'll also need to protect GNAA (Slashdot), the latest addition from our troll friend. Possibly the Slashdot Troll page should be edited & then locked ... maybe they'll eventually go away? --Tagishsimon
      • I'm not sure that's the best response. Conventional wisdom has it that the one and only way to get trolls to go away is to ignore them completely. Mkweise 20:45, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • Give us our fucking wiki back. We didn't do anything against you guys. WE WERE FAIR. We decided that the disambiguation for the other GNAA was fine. If anything, our wiki should be protected as I made it, so people would stop fucking with us.
        • Uh-oh, now we've gone and angered a great and mighty troll. Let us tremble in fear, for surely we are doomed. Mkweise 01:29, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • These redirects should point to Trolltalk, not Slashdot trolling phenomena --ZeLonewolf 16:16, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

• GNAA protected after about a dozen reverts each by user:JRR Trollkien and user:82.39.115.87. -Mkweise 00:01, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Timing out protection. Martin 12:40, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. User:AnGelaIs a Troll|Anlaoll 19:56, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Some content lost

Is it just me, or has a lot of the content in this article been lost in the botched splitting up into ...trolling_phenomena and Slashdot_subculture?

"My freelance gig on a mac"

"The My freelance gig in front of a Mac trolls appear in virtually every discussion about Apple Computers. The troll claims to have witnessed <the latest Apple hardware> taking 20 minutes to copy a 17 MB file from one folder to another and proceeds to question all Apple users as to their platform choice."

The troll mentioned is quite often used in non-Mac discussions. I can't find an example right now, but I'm sure others can vouch for their existence. James C. 23:04, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

Reintegrate LoST

Someone split us up the article a while back, to take the external links into a new article List of Slashdot trolls. If it is deleted, I suggest reintegrating the links here. Anyone willing to help? I have copied to Talk:Slashdot trolling phenomena/temp. Trigger 04:27, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Trolling?

Juust wondering.. is "trolling" really an appropriate term? Most of time "in Korea, only old people" and other "troll comments" like that are meant to be jokes, actually, always. I don't think they are ever intended to be offensive. So why exactly do we call it trolling?

You know, I agree entirely. They should be in the Slashdot subculture section. I'd ask for discussion, but with the easy editing, it's easier to make the changes and see who squeals Fuzzy 07:25, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Pink Syntax

I've been reading Slashdot for five years and have been an active participant for about four years, and I haven't seen a single reference to The Pink Syntax. Moreover, Googling for this name or for their supposed catchphrases only brings back this Misplaced Pages page. Does anyone have any references for The Pink Syntax? Or is it, as I'm guessing, fake? - Coop 03:02, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A google search for "mingus site:slashdot.org" turns up nothing relevant either. - 03:11, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Seconding this. I've never seen a single Pink Syntax troll, but I've seen almost every other kind listed on the page. --Jacj 18:18, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Worse than Goatse

User Michael Hunt (#585391) has his signature set as

Better than Goatse

And it links to, well, I looked at the top half, but it's terrible. Here's the link:

Don't click on this link unless you've read the above.

I'm not sure if it's a new phenomena, but maybe someone can track it. JamesHoadley 10:59, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Roland Piquepaille

I removed the following;

Long time Slashdot maven Saeed al-Sahaf coined the phrase “What does Roland Piquepaille think about this?” after seeing many article submissions from Internet gadfly Roland Piquepaille pass muster with the Slashdot editors, despite allegations that Mr. Piquepaille and the Slashdot editors, Timothy in particular, have an alleged undisclosed financial relationship.

These allegations have never been proven. Besides, Tim and Roland sucked me dry to do it.

Saeed al-Sahaf might indeed have coined a phrase, but it's a long way from the 'meme' level a real troll has. In addition, a slashdot user ID of 665390 does not qualify Saeed for the title 'Long time maven'.

• Misplaced Pages featured article candidates (contested)