[WikiEN-l] Re: Driven_off_by_trolls

Tue May 11 18:34:40 UTC 2004

On Mon, 10 May 2004 19:01:58 UTC, Mark Richards 
<marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  As far as I can see,
> this is an attempt by an advocacy group to get their
> point of view to dominate certain articles - my
> understanding was that we were using the term 'troll'
> to mean users who post to deliberately stir up
> controversy.
[for its own sake. -- my addition]

We were; and that was  the meaning when it was first used in newsgroups. 

>http://develop.consumerium.org/wiki/index.php/Driven_off_by_trolls

In applying the term to Larry Flynt's disreputable political move (I take 
no stance on whether it was a _bad_ political move) is helping to take 
away the meaning of a useful word; cf. hacker.

-- 
Dan Drake
dd at dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
 --George Orwell