Edited sentence: By the late 1990s, alt.Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone that only a new user would respond to them earnestly.For example, a veteran of the group might make a post on the common misconception that glass flows over time.In such contexts, the noun troll usually referred to an act of trolling, rather than to the author.Long-time readers would both recognize the poster's name and know that the topic had been done to death already, but new subscribers to the group would not realize, and would thus respond.One of the most notorious AFU trollers, Snopes, went on to create his eponymous urban folklore website.Others expanded the term to include the practice of playing a seriously misinformed or deluded user, even in newsgroups where one was not a regular; these were often attempts at humor rather than provocation.The most likely derivation of the word troll can be found in the phrase "trolling for newbies," popularized in the early 1990s in the Usenet group, alt.These types of trolls served as a Shibboleth to identify group insiders.This definition of trolling, considerably narrower than the modern understanding of the term, was considered a positive contribution.urban (AFU).urban had such heavy traffic and participation that trolling of this sort was frowned upon