Well, trolling is when someone downrates or comments just to get someone angry. It doesn't really mean that the troll has to downrate a bunch of your answers. Trolling on this site usually consists of people downrating an answer because of personal reasons.

I thought the game was answering questions? Points are pointless...

I haven't heard anyone screaming. Did AB add audio? Anyway, I think many assume it is a troll when the answer is correct, but it gets downrated. Being trolled is not the same thing as having someone downrate a perfectly valid answer. A troll may skip around to several different profiles and not sweep just one.

I know how you feel! That frustrates me, too. I asked the following question on April 19, 2007, after someone kept moaning, groaning, and blindly accused everyone and his/her brother of trolling his stuff every time anyone DR'd his answers. The melodrama got a bit much after he implied that I was the culprit du jour. "Along with all the other Answerbag clubs, why doesn't someone start a "Accept Downrating with Grace and Stop Calling it Trolling" club?" http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/272107

I only become annoyed when I am downrated on multiple answers, which has been happening ALOT lately... the user uses up his/her (I am not saying) points on me. I get tag-teamed sometimes on some questions... a -1 and -2. I call them "Beavis and Butthead". I can usually tell who it is by the times they are answering. I usually do not mention anything about it. I really wish the silliness on all parties parts would end.

There are a few that, while I don't think they SEARCH for people, when they see a post by a certain person, (different for the ones that do it, and each person has their own) they downrate them regardless of whether it is a good question/answer or not. Since downrating does nothing for total points, it is silly to do it. Those of us that get them, usually know who it is. It becomes obvious, when the points only get taken away as certain people show up on the board. I downrate bad answers, period. And I say why, when I do. The 'drive-by' or 'multiple-hit' ones that don't bother commenting are just silly. They need to grow up a bit.

I call those the driveby downratings. It's irritating, but not nearly as much so as someone downrating ALL of your answers just because they are a butthole. That's what I'd consider trolling, downrating all of your answers just to be loserish, or calling you names and being derogatory towards you in comments just to get you all worked up.

usually one can make up that loss of points by just getting active and asking a bunch of questions. instead the whine about "poor me" and members pile on the points as gifts...usually over a hundred points extra just because they are crying in their soup.

one would have to get down rated over a hundred points for anyone to get damaged. maybe that is too small. a thousand points of down rating, maybe then they would have a reason to cry and moan. jeez louise if someone loses fifteen points they think the sky is falling. it is such a big joke for me. i dont participate. it makes this site totally worthless when people upgrade a whiner for whining about losing a few points to trollers.

This grinds my gears as well. Someone gets downrated, usually for saying something stupid, and then makes a post about how they're getting down-rated and everyone rallies around them and gives them points. I learned early on here that negative points don't go for incorrect answers, or statements that I deem inappropriate. Oh no, I thought that was the case but I got quickly ridiculed. If there's an incorrect answer, or something that is inappropriate, what you do is uprate everyone else. That way the person doesn't notice and throw a tantrum. Another thing that confused me at first is that the AB community seems to confuse trolls with annoying bullies. On other boards, a troll is someone who makes an outlandish statement and thrives on the people responding to it. AB has some trolls, Spaceballs Evil Clone is a troll - he has tons of questions like "I'm 40 and living with my mom, she sent me to my room without dinner! Can she do this!?" or "I'm 80 and my gf is 14, thoughts?" Or just irrelevant gibberish intended to annoy people, or evoke some sort of controversial response, like "Do you know why they call it an Xbox 360? Because when you see it, you turn 360 degrees and walk away!" A bully is just someone who follows you around and gives you down-rates. Just semantics, but annoying semantics nonetheless.