Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Mind, we should not confuse the verb with the noun. It is possible to troll, even quite often, without actually being a troll. "Please stop trolling" is very different from "you are a troll". We should be much more careful with the latter, whereas the former is arguably identifiable reasonably objectively.
For the people who cause trouble on Wikipedia, we have many better terms. Tendentious editing is in my view a useful term, describing a real and quantifiable problem with edits to content.
Quite so, and that is an important distinction. We should not let the conversation be dominated by children whose psyches have been damaged with bedtime stories of Norwegian monsters under the bridge. Those who are fearful of this kind of troll can become apprehensive about crossing both literal and metaphorical bridges.
The troll fishery is considerably more benign. One puts out a line to see if the fish will bite, or even just to see if they take notice. It's a perfectly respectable debating technique. Of course, this doesn't make the fish very happy, but with a sound catch-and-release policy the damage is not permanent.
Ec