For those of you not active in the blogging world of web 2.0, heres a little insight into the darker side of it all... Kathy is the respectable author of a few programming books, an A list blogger and a well known public speaker. Her blog is high traffic and high visibility. It seems in the past few weeks or so shes attracted some "trolls" as they used to be called in usenet. Except that these have gone beyond the usual white line of acceptability and trespassed into threats of violence and assault...the link is Kathy explaining all about what happened and what eefect its had on her.
An interesting set of feedback to this from the the slashdot crowd is here.
In some ways I go with the general consenus at Slashdot, trolls are part of life on the internet if you stick your head above the crowd and say "oi come and read this" or voice any kind of opinion, but I also think they went too far in this case with the pictures and with the extremity of the comments and content of those comments.
What do you think? If you have a blog should you expect trouble from the trolls????
