Trolling

[Kaghuros]

Let me just make a bit of a description for what I consider to be a more subtle troll, but one that I see quite often around here.

The Red Herring:

The Red Herring is not necessarily a troll in and of itself. Some people are genuinely interested on things that are off topic, and have very little self-control. However, in forum communities such as this one, there are often issues that come up in post threads that one or more parties do not wish to be discussed, or persons that one or more parties wish to discredit. An easy tactic to do so is simply to derail their threads with a "red herring," a statement that is intentionally designed to throw the thread off its tracks and cause the moderators to lock it or move it to an off-topic forum, or simply to engage the discussion on another point in an attempt to bury the original point with something new.

This is trolling, at least to some degree. The "herring" poster is fishing for a response from other parties and the moderators in order to shut down a particular mode of discussion with a malicious (or at least poor-mannered) intent.