There are people who rate questions and answers down for no good reason other than they are being jerks.

people who rate things down just because it helps them or because they disagree with what the persons view is even though its a valid answer and isnt offensive or nonsense

Here is a detailed answer: http://tinyurl.com/yyab85

A troll is a person who regularly downrates answers for no justifiable reason or conducts a vendetta of downrating against a particular person or group of people. Not everybody is as nice as you and me.

A Troll is a person with a nasty attitude who chooses to run a muck plopping negative points (down rating) on people because: They are just pissed at the world. They are pissed at you, and you and you...because they either do not agree with YOU (and the others they down rate) or you didn't happen to agree with them (not that you down rated them but that you didn't agree!) Because they may be prejudice against an answer, so they down rate it. Some times too a Troll may be down rated and so decide that playing tit for tat...is the name of the game. Personally, if I am going to down rate someone, I leave a message (which might cause me to get "trolled" but I think that it's better to be fair and explain WHY I would down rate, rather than just smack down, with no reasonable offering as to why I did it. Usually, if it's a simple matter of not agreeing with someone, it's just as easy to do NOTHING. Sometimes too you might disagree, say why, but still GIVE A POINT OR TWO UP, because while you don't agree (and can say so in a comment) there might be things you do agree with, or the answer might be so well stated that you are slightly swayed to seeing THEIR point of view!

Too many who troll means there are too many people wantonly downrating peoples answers for no good reason.. The answer may be a limit on how many negative points you can give out in a day, for example maybe a maximum of three questions. Ive never downgraded more than one in a day anyway, and only about four in a year or more on Answerbag.

Thanks Redhawk. I think people like you and neverts are an asset to AB. I'm definetly going to learn a lot here.