No, it's not a Robert Ludlum novel; it's a problem we face everyday on the internet.
First, let's define "troll": a troll is someone making purposefully inflammatory statements in order to provoke a response to that statement, thereby setting the terms of the debate, or exerting a heavy time cost on people seeking to set the record straight or establish what the proper problem field should be.
Now, the troll quandry, which is a double bind: 1) ignore them and they control the discourse; 2) engage them and you acknowledge them as a worthy interlocutor rather than as, well, a troll.
The recommended solution, DNFTT, assumes that the cost of strategy 1 is less than that of strategy 2. What do readers think?
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