[techtalk] Stupid Question: Troll?

[coldfire]

well, actually :) ... one of the many definitions of 'trawl' is "to
troll."  as 'troll,' when used as slang, is to search for someone or
something.  hell, 'troll' can also mean to sing as 'trawl' can mean to
fish with an actual trawl.

however, i do believe that "trawling through the bug reports" would be
more correct than would "trolling."  simply because that usage of 'troll'
is the slang derivative.  ok .. not just for that reason.  also because a
'troll' on usenet for example, has a very different meaning :)

abe

On Sun, 13 May 2001, Telsa Gwynne wrote:

> On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:10:22PM -0400 or thereabouts, wny-tc at juno.com wrote:
> > OK.  I never claimed to be a computer "expert", but "trolls" live under
> > bridges in my vocabulary (in childrens books mostly) or I "troll" from
> > the back of the boat with suitable tackle and bait...
> > 
> > "Troll" in this recent thread is apparently GeekSpeek of some sort, but
> > for what?
> 
> For geek speak, the canonical reference is the Jargon File: 
> 
> http://tuxedo.org/jargon/
> http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/troll.html
> 
> I first met it in the sense of old-timers making deliberately wrong
> comments and new people falling for it. These days, it's used to mean
> "causing trouble". 
> 
> What -really- irritates me is people calling about "trolling Usenet",
> "trolling the channel" (on IRC) when in fact they mean "trawl" and
> mean they're going through a large batch of stuff looking for something
> useful. It's not the same, but people apparently think that troll and
> trawl mean the same thing. Trawling through bug reports, for example. 
> Trolling through bug reports would mean something quite different.. :) 
> (And I've seen a few trolling bug reports, yes.)
> 
> Telsa
> 
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