a stupid question

I have been reading some old threads both here and on SciFi, and the term "troll" keeps coming up. I'm not exactly sure what that means. Is it another term for clone? Please help! :confused:

[jewels]

I was told that trolls are the folks that post not to discuss stuff but to be destructive to good discussion/discussers. They insult, P.O., and pick personal fights with those that come to a board to have good discussions. Clones are people that post with similar handles to those of longstanding posters to try to imply (to those not noting details like added underscores) that the longstanding poster is either a troll, went off the deep end or as a way to lure other posters into reading their posts, which are generally pretty nasty.

Languatron was an infamous (notorious?) troll on the SciFi bbd. Usually his raves were directed only at Universal, but they were nothing great to read.

Did I get it right?

When TPTB were reading the SciFi bbd, especially in Jan-Mar. this year, trolls were a huge problem. If any show up here, they do not last long.

Thanks for the info! I couldn't help but notice that's there's been more than a little poo-flinging going on on the scifi bb. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I did a bit of it myself in a reply to a pretty inflamatory post there. Anyway, good to know, and thanks again for the reply!

[cobrastrikelead]

OK. So there is poop being flung over there. Geesh.