Wikipedia defines as a troll as: "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages... with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response..."
This definition can likewise be found at dictionary.reference.com (though you have to search for it). So, on this criteria, I have to wonder, was Jonathan Swift a troll?
If you've never read it, Swift's A Modest Proposal (full text there) simply states that the Irish should eat their own children, rather than starve. Swift obviously meant this as satire, but it caused (and continues to cause) a lot of trouble among those people who just don't get that it's satire. And therein lies the problem.
Swift's satirical essay is as dead on the page as any forum post (meaning you can't figure out from the tone of voice/speaker's face what the emotional context is); and was likewise just as anonymous. Now, certainly, you can't quite call it "off-topic" and whether it's "extraneous" is debatable. But it's definitely "inflammatory" and has the primary intention of provoking of an emotional response.
To give a more modern example, Stephen Colbert mocked conservative congressman Bill Posey who introduced a bill requiring candidates for president to provide their birth certificates by claiming there were rumors that Posey's grandmother had had sex with an alligator, and thus Posey was part alligator. Posey thus responded, saying such comments were hurtful and there was no need to claim such things. But Posey failed to get that it was satire. He just understood that Colbert was attacking him. Colbert's "alligator rumors" were inflammatory, extraneous, and off-topic to central debate of whether Obama was Kenyan-born, and they certainly got a rise out of Posey.
I write this as someone who's written somewhat satirical posts before and I haven't been reported to the mods (as far as I'm aware of).
So the question is, where's the line between satire and trolling? Is it no longer trolling if you do it at a national level (i.e. the context matters)? Or is it when it devolves into baiting that it's trolling? Or is there something else that constitutes trolling?
