Duncan Riley does a great job of explaining what a comment troll is: “[those] who make it their business to criticize anything written and the people who wrote it, in some sort of sad attempt at self validation by being nasty towards others for the sake of it.”

But to be honest, there was no need to discuss the scientific psychology behind comment trolling. As anyone who’s been online for quite some time knows, the formula Anonymity + An Audience = Total F*%&tard could be a postulate of sorts.

What online publishers do need to know is that a website’s content defines its community. As Gina Trapani once commented on Lifehacker:

Also, netiquette in public forums has a lot to do with the content around which the community is centered. Lifehacker’s posts set out to help folks, so in kind, our readers want to help us and each other back. Digg is a popularity contest of oneupmanship. Gawker is all about making fun of things, so its readers mock each other and it right back in the comments. Karma’s a boomerang.

Is it any wonder that my snarky posts on Malu Fernandez inspired an endless stream of mean comments? Figuring out the cause of comment trolls is less important than coming up with ways to minimize them. Granted, there’s a little jerk in all of us, and we can’t expect every comment to be civil and genuinely add the conversation. But as many a blogger has learned the hard way, keeping comment trolls at bay has a lot to do with what you write, and the realization that feeding trolls gets you nowhere.