While I think the downvoting keeps trolling low, I actually believe that the short lifespan of most articles/conversations does more to prevent trolling. Troll

While I think the downvoting keeps trolling low, I actually believe that the short lifespan of most articles/conversations does more to prevent trolling. Trolling is most prevalent in forums, since you can carry on sophisticated conversations and see a long, linear conversation thread. It is a lot easier to bait and troll serious posters. On HN, discussions are often dead within two days, and you can typically only follow conversations that you are directly involved in. Any time an article pushes past 100 comments it becomes basically impossible to keep long-running conversations alive.