Trolltalk (also known as 20721, sid 20721 or sid=20721) is a hidden story ID on the online news discussion forum Slashdot, where Slashdot trollers used to converse amongst themselves, sometimes demonstrating new trolling techniques, bragging about successful trolling and insulting each other. Trolltalk is the oldest active SID on Slashdot, and has received more posts over its lifetime than any other SID, but due to Slashcode's purge feature, only the most recent two weeks of posts remain at any given time. Although the two-week post count is usually in the thousands, at least 95% of the posts are intentionally content-free "crapfloods" generated by automated posting scripts, with the remaining handful being written by the various people who visit the forum. Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website/Forum updated many times daily, with articles that are often short summaries of stories on other websites, links to those stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. ... This article is a timeline of the most important major events in Slashdot history. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Reflecting the speed of contemporary pop culture in general and Internet phenomena in particular, many of Slashdots recurring jokes enjoy brief shelf-lives. ... Anonymous Coward is a term applied within some online communities to describe users who post without a handle; it is a dummy name attributed to anonymous posts used by some weblogs that allow posting by people without registering for accounts. ... Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ... CowboyNeal is the online nickname (handle) on Slashdot and other websites of Slashdot editor Jon Pater. ... Jonathan Katz (born 1947) is a U.S. journalist and writer. ... The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ... Slashdot trolling phenomena make up a large subset of the bizarre and complex subculture found on the popular technology website Slashdot. ... Geeks in Space (often abbreviated to GiS) ... Slashdot Radio was a nearly-weekly audio show hosted by Rob Malda, Jeff Hemos Bates, Jon CowboyNeal Potter and Nate Mix Master Oostendorp of the popular news site Slashdot about News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters // The Show Drawing from the stories and... Sid may refer to: // People Sid Caesar, actor and comedian Sid Eudy, a professional wrestler. ... Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website/Forum updated many times daily, with articles that are often short summaries of stories on other websites, links to those stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. ... Slashdot trolling phenomena make up a large subset of the bizarre and complex subculture found on the popular technology website Slashdot. ... A Do not feed the troll image (dont encourage trolls by reacting to them) Internet Troll In Internet terminology, a troll is someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy and antagonize... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ...

The current trolltalk was predated by an earlier thread with the textual SID "trolltalk". It was created in 2000, when, due to a bug, SlashCode allowed arbitrary alphanumeric SIDs. There were several other custom SIDs created during this time as well, such as "sid=2dollarcrackho", "sid=k223320inchfan" and "sid=10gramspoppylatex". When Slashdot was upgraded to SlashCode 2.0 the bug was fixed but there was a short-lived new feature called "user-created discussions" which featured numeric SIDs. Soon thereafter new trolltalks were created such as 20721, 31337 and 20384. With the exception of 20721 they have all been deleted or disabled over the years. 31337 was closed due to abuse, and the others were automatically deleted by Slashcode's purge feature after not receiving any posts for two weeks. This article is about the year 2000. ... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ... Generally speaking, the term alphanumeric refers to anything that consists of only letters and numbers. ...

Following the changes in Slashcode intended to make trolling harder by banning users for as little as one negative moderation, the discussion became highly variable. In the past, during non-crapflood periods when regular discussions took place on the sid, most of the conversations centered around dating tips, racist jokes and racism in general, discussions of Dance Dance Revolution and Alternate Reality Gaming, admissions and discussions of "cutting", various fanboy arguments, flaming of other past and present trolltalk users, and occasional attacks on various forums outside of Slashdot. The trolltalk community once claimed to exert significant pressure on Slashdot by creating huge threads where people would argue irrelevant and deliberately incorrect points. Although trolling on Slashdot is still an occasional pastime, much of the activity concerns easier targets, usually with a more naive userbase and less sophisticated (or absent) comment moderation system. The goal is often total destruction of a target forum/community via automated crapflooding, exploitation of security flaws and harassment of the site operators. The main gameplay screen of Dance Dance Revolution. ... An alternate reality game (ARG) is a cross media game that deliberately blurs the line between in-game experiences and the real world. ... Self-harm (SH) is deliberate injury to ones own body. ... Fans of Janet Jackson, at Much Music in Toronto The word fan refers to someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking of a person, group of persons, work of art, idea, or trend. ... Flaming is the act of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting, usually in the social context of a discussion board (usually on the Internet). ... Crapflooding is a form of trolling online media such as discussion websites or Usenet newsgroups with nonsensical, inane, and/or repetitive postings in order to make it difficult for other users to read other postings. ...

Slashdot's moderation system is little used on trolltalk, since the community is relatively small and obscure, and its users rarely receive mod points. Due to this and the fact that few "normal" Slashdot users visit the SID it is essentially a zone without rules. In the past, the anonymous nature of trolltalk has led users to post nude photographs of themselves or to admit personal details about themselves that they would not otherwise admit, such as homosexuality, "cutting", or Ephebophilia. In the past, members of the community who are angry at having been insulted or losing an argument (or were simply bored) have used automated scripts to flood trolltalk with random messages for days or weeks, making any discussion nearly impossible. Crapfloods are a regular occurrence and are considered a part of trolltalk culture, although they frequently annoy users who wish to chat. During crapfloods, normal posting to trolltalk is typically reduced or eliminated until the crapflood ends, as has been the case during the current extended crapflooding of trolltalk that began around May 2005. The word homosexuality has acquired multiple meanings over time. ... Self-harm (SH) is deliberate injury to ones own body. ... This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... Crapflooding is a form of trolling online media such as discussion websites or Usenet newsgroups with nonsensical, inane, and/or repetitive postings in order to make it difficult for other users to read other postings. ...

Before discussion on trolltalk was mostly halted by the start of the current ongoing crapfloods, most of the discussion over the past year had been about two women, Cracky-chan and Mercatur. Although neither woman was a user of trolltalk, both had a number of fans there, and a bitter rivalry developed with fans of each waging violent flame-wars against fans of the other. Unknown parties registered the domain names cracky-chan.com and mercatur.org and turned them into redirects to trolltalk.

Mercatur

According to one legend, Mercatur may or may not be a certain "Alice Ridley" who may or may not be living in the state of California. Her website may be http://www.mercatur.net/; then again, it might also not.

Crapflood

As mentioned earlier, the current trolltalk is now under attack from a sophisticated crapflood, rendering trolltalk all but unusable except for the most avid readers. This was believed to have started to punish other trolltalkers who insulted the crapflooder.

During the first weeks of the deluge, attempts were made to establish "crapflood bunkers"; because the crapflood was confined to the top level of the discussion, discussion was able to continue as normal in the replies to "bunker" comments. This effort failed when the crapflooder modified his script to counteract this.

In December 2005 and January 2006, as an attempted anti-crapflood measure, a trolltalk user created and used software whose goal was to generate and publish a web page containing links to non-crapflood posts on trolltalk. The project was briefly successful at filtering out crapfloods until the crapflooder modified the crapflooding script. After a period of downtime, the digest has resumed but fails to filter out much of the crapflood.

Defunct trolltalk spinoffs

Trolltalk Archive - Since Slashdot removes the oldest comments from user-created SIDs, a now-defunct Trolltalk Archive was created. Originally posts were manually imported from saved trolltalk pages sent by an anonymous contributor and subsequently by writing an automated script to extract the contents of trolltalk. The archive was database-driven and had advanced search capabilities. The archive ceased operation in mid-2005.

Trollback Journal - The Slashdot "TrollBack" (the name is an allusion to "Slashback") once compiled and published in his journal a list and of featured trolls over the past time period (usually a calendar month)with reviews and commentary. TrollBack has been defunct since October 2004.

7r0117a1K - This was an alternate trolltalk, sid 31337, that rivaled sid 20721 in popularity for a time. Some users participated in both sids, while some were loyal to only one and engaged in wars against the "enemy" sid, often "moving" undesirable messages from one's own sid to the other sid. The closure of 31337 occurred on September 15, 2004 as a result of an automated trojan horse that was advertising compromised IP addresses via the SID. The name "7r0117a1K" and its sid "31337" are references to Leet_speak. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 19th century etching of the Trojan Horse The Trojan Horse is part of the myth of the Trojan War, as told in Virgils Latin epic poem The Aeneid. ... An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique* number that devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP). ... An example of a Leet web browser (Text instead of GUI) in Leet language on a Leet language version of Google Leet (often also leetspeak, leetspeek, or l33t) from the phonetic form of the word elite, is a cipher, or novel form of English spelling. ...

Trolltalks on other sites - At various times, trolltalk sids were created on other web forums. Although they are no longer actively used, some may still be viewed. The most well known of these is Kuro5hin's version of trolltalk. Kuro5hin (K5) (pronounced corrosion) is a community discussion website (sometimes known as a Commons-Based Peer Production) focused on technology and culture. ...

Adequacy.org - This website was started by a number of trolltalk users attempting to reach a wider audience with their trolling. It ceased operation in September 2002 but its archives may still be viewed. Adequacy. ...

Trolltalk.net - A user of trolltalk set up a spinoff website using Scoop software at this address. It did not become popular and died a year later. The site no longer exists.

Geekizoid.com - Another user of trolltalk set up a spinoff website using Slash software at this address. Despite its creator being disliked by most of trolltalk and considered an enemy, the site lasted several years. The site no longer exists, although its founder runs an alternate site, Sporks-R-Us, which was once considered a trolltalk spinoff but is now only tangentially so.

External links

• Trolltalk
• Cracky-Chan.com and Mercatur.org, alternate links to reach trolltalk
  • whois says Cracky-Chan.com expired 7-May-2006 and is in a redemption period; Mercatur.org doesn't seem to be in DNS
• Trolltalk Digest
• TrollBack's Journal
• Crackypedia, information about Cracky-Chan
• Mercatur.net, home page of Mercatur
• 7r0117a1K, now disabled
• Kuro5hin's version of trolltalk
• Adequacy, well-known trolltalk spinoff
• Sporks-R-Us, trolltalk spinoff board