Some commentary from someone who spends
WAY too much time with the trolls of Slashdot.
There's really two different types, at this point, as least split based on technology.
The former group are more "old-school" and eschew the use of scripts. The uses of scripting languages from Perl to PHP to simple shell scripts is something that this troll looks down on, and within the troll groups, you can see flame wars erupt between those who do, and those who don't use scripting.
By and large, those who don't use technology tend to be lower in quantity, and those are somewhat easier to find, and if so desire, neutralize their noise addition to the signal to noise ratio.
The other group, the script users are a pestilence. I cannot begin to count the number of hours of my life that have been consumed by those rodents. Essentially, seemingly, the reason that these people exist is to spend their entire lives trying to break the system. Obviously, of the two, I prefer the former.