Metrollica's Journal: Trolling Tips

Credit goes to the AC who first posted this during the blackout.

This FAQ is designed to give tips on trolling on Slashdot, created in celebration of Blackout Week. It is dedicated to all hard-working trolls and crapflooders.

What are some good trolling tips?
Trolling is all about making people think you care, and so winding up those who care for real. Think of it like shooting a deer in front of an anti-hunt protester, or eating a Big Mac in front of a vegan. Here are some ideas for making your troll work:

1. To start off, make sure your post gets noticed -- log in, post early (after 50 +1 comments have been posted to an article, forget it), and make sure to use your +1 bonus.
2. Ensure your posting history doesn't show a history of dubious posts. Some advise (incorrectly) to stagger your trolls, but this is in fact time wasting and only helps Slashdot in the long run. If you have a doubt, just create a new account, or even post anonymous -- an effective troll, posted early enough, will gain a +1 quickly.
3. Learn from the marketing droids -- a mixture of truth and lies leaves the potential client without a clue as to which is which. Geeks smell pure bullshit, because it reminds them of their bedroom smell (see also "karma whoring" below).
4. Follow up. Keep a window open on your troll, and reload to see if people bite. Perhaps post an AC reply agreeing or disagreeing with your own post. Reply to later posts referring to your earlier post to back up your point.
5. If you get a dreaded (-1, Troll), don't be ashamed to post the well-known, "Mods on Crack!" rant. Explain, rationally, and not as yourself why you agree with the original post, and why it's a fair point.

How do I crapflood?
A crapflood is an (intentionally) content-free post. Here are some suggestions for the source of your crapflood -- remember to take care with repetition, odd characters, or repetition, to get past the lameness filter:

1. your local dictionary file, e.g. /usr/share/dict/words on BSDs
2. your local real names file, e.g. /usr/share/dict/propernames on BSDs
3. a copy-paste part of a web page (for extra amusement, copy-paste from Slashdot itself)
4. a UU-encoded newsgroup file
5. some output from a lorem ipsum generator
6. examples of your latest spams, particularly those in Korean
7. allowing your cat to walk across the keyboard for a few minutes.

How do I widen pages?
A method is known and delivered to us by the beautiful ;Klerck which currently works in Internet Explorer alone. This will therefore ruin the browsing experience of by far the majority of Slashdot readers. Start with the text:

http://www.eveeieyhfgfcdoosammgwsnboivvbsczxlzgabc /

then repeat /ooieiabdcdjsvbkeldfogjhiyeeejkagclmieooionoepdk /

several times, remembering to avoid the compression filter trap by using different random characters.

How do I karma whore?
"Karma whoring" is the practice of gaining moderation points for their own sake. It is particularly useful in techniques for defeating the moderation system. Some tips for karma whoring are:

1. If the site containing the actual article is not on a fast server (i.e. is not a "big site"), re-post the article with subject, "the article -- in case the site gets slashdotted". Make sure this comes as early as possible in the list of comments, to avoid the dreaded (-1, Redundant).
2. If any article pops up on Microsoft, write a stock two paragraphs explaining why Microsoft is immoral, and why the event described cannot happen with Free Software. I shall not supply text, because tests have shown that moderators are not completely stupid, and can identify duplicate posts (this is actually helpful in defeating the moderation system, see below).
3. For any article discussing a particular company, state that you worked there, and offer your "inside knowledge". Note that geeks do visit Slashdot, so do not fall into the trap of being too obvious a fraud -- a mistake made by such amateur trolls as PhysicsGenius, who must now suffer a life of instant down-modding.

The moderation system is far from flawless. Here are some ways to devalue it:

1. If you have moderator points, for goodness sake abuse them! How about moderating up a First Post, a crapflood, or best of all, this very FAQ? It would be a crime to allow such an easily abused system to work.
2. Copy the text of another person's post, and paste it as a reply to an earlier post. Most people read oldest messages first, so they will consider yours to be the first message, and the later message to be "redundant". This is great for annoying karma whores.
3. Vote Troll posts as "underrated", thus increasing their exposure without running the risk of having your moderation rights revoked.

How do I defeat authentication?
Don't. The FBI will arrest you for being a terrorist. Instead, make an authoritative nick like CmdrTaco (editor). The majority of people are easily fooled, and will be likely to take notice of and respond to your post, and even moderate it up. Think of it like Lunix Turvalds walking into the room -- people listen to what he has to say, and don't dare disagree.

How do I defeat the goatse link early warning system?
Simple -- use one of the many foolishly implemented redirector URLs hosted on well-known sites. Here's an innocuous recent example which pretends to link to the highly informative about.com, but in fact links to a site of the popular 90's lesbian band The Spice Girls: Informative link which will get me karma [about.com]

What are some excellent sites to sneakily link to?
Mostly, you should link to gay porn. If you are reading this FAQ, you already know the URLs, so I don't need to supply them, except to say that it's almost an initiation ceremony in Slashdot trolling to link to goatse [goatse.cx].

Administrativa

How do I justify the existence of this FAQ?
Slashdot is full of people who support unlicensed weapons ownership and dissemination of bomb creation documents -- in short, they support freedom, even when that freedom could cause harm. This document should be considered as that very freedom in action. Indeed, to disparage or moderate down this document would be un-American, and the FBI are likely to arrest you for being a terrorist.

How do I add to or change this FAQ?
Simply re-post the FAQ on Slashdot, adding an appropriate question, and incrementing the version number by 1. Before doing so, please try to ensure you have the latest version, and remember to keep this post W3C compliant!