Trolling?

Posted Jan 28, 2013 13:23 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784)
In reply to: Poettering: The Biggest Myths by apoelstra
Parent article: Poettering: The Biggest Myths

You mean trawling, surely, although I imagine that trolling is a way of getting answers from mailing lists, too.

Sorry for the pedantry, but I keep reading "trolling" used in this sense and assume that it must be either incorrect or American English. At least if it is the latter, the same cannot be said for the epidemic of "loose" (instead of "lose") and the unbearably irritating "choosen" (instead of "chosen").

Trolling?

Posted Jan 28, 2013 13:51 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (3 responses)

Funny thing: I hadn't even noticed the existence of "choosen", and can't imagine it being more irritating than the loose/lose confusion. (Of course, this is what we get for using an orthography invented by non-native speakers 900 years ago, barely upgraded since, and at this point prohibitively expensive to reform.)

Trolling?

Posted Jan 28, 2013 14:35 UTC (Mon) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] (2 responses)

Ask Lennard for a new implementation.

Trolling?

Posted Jan 28, 2013 16:27 UTC (Mon) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (1 responses)

> Lennard
Speaking of spelling...

Trolling?

Posted Feb 9, 2013 22:50 UTC (Sat) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link]

it's the new and greatly improved way of spelling Lennart and if he doesn't like it, he's free to fork and go his own way.

Trolling?

Posted Jan 28, 2013 15:50 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

I've lost context, but both trawling and trolling are means of fishing.

A trawler goes trawling with a trawl-net.

Dunno what the proper name of a troller is, but they go trolling with a troll-line. Most tuna, for example, is caught by trolling.

I've been trolling for mackerel ...

Cheers,
Wol

Trolling?

Posted Jan 29, 2013 14:23 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

I suppose I have learned something from this, never having been very interested in fishing at all. And I imagine that the Internet era meaning of the word is derived from this practice of using a baited line:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/troll--2

The interesting thing here is that the example given on the above page is rather similar to the one used earlier, but unless one attracts the catch using bait - putting something out to attract the catch - the trawling metaphor is actually more appropriate, since one is just seeing what gets dragged up. But anyway...