Message #7061

[jim-ratliff]

Lynn:

As a matter of fact, and a bit to my surprise, I CAN find the definition of thread hijacking in Wikipedia.  And of Trolling, also to my surprise.

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.... not pertinent to this discusssion

Internet Forums
Thread hijacking in internet forum communication is the act of steering a discussion off-topic by discussing a subject entirely unrelated to the subject at hand.

While this can be an intentional act of trolling, it is often accidental - caused by participants in the discussion responding to a throwaway remark, thus taking the thread off at a tangent to the original subject matter. The results often provoke a feeling of resentment from the author of the original post.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_hijacking"

An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]