Trolling is an art form. Just as a hastily scribbled drawing has little art value, a blatant "E2 SUX" troll will have little troll value. Much like the difference between hacking and cracking, a true troll is not a crapflooder nor a flamer. A genuine troll will be able to incite massive flamewars at the click of a mouse, and quickly engage the reader's emotions.
A troll can be about anything relevant to the subject at hand. RISC CPUs vs CISC, gun control, religion, vi vs emacs are just some of the subjects ripe for a potential troll. Using the subjects above, here is a helpful trolling HOWTO.
Determine how to attract attention to your troll
Getting people to read your troll is a critical step. If no one reads it, no one replies to it, and a potential masterpiece sinks into obscurity. It can be very frustrating to write an essay that just begs for replies only to have nobody read it.
- Slashdot is a tried and true trolling ground. The moderation system has proven wildly successful in groupthink - if one person mods up your troll, 50/50 chance that another moderator will mod up your troll as well. You will want to register an account to get the +1 bonus for logging in. Once you get the +2 bonus, even more attention is directed at your troll - if you post at +2, you obviously have something important to say!
Fast typing is critical here, unless you have a prewritten troll. "Oldest first" is the default setting for displaying comments so either post early or post a reply to an early comment. Even then, chances of people reading your troll depend on how sensationalistic the headline on the story is.
Kuro5hin requires you to register in order to post - no ACs allowed. Once you register though, you can take your time and write up a troll with ease because of the way comments are displayed. Again, more people will read your troll if the story has a sensationalistic headline.
Proper formatting is also a major factor in determining the quality of a troll. Bullet lists, proper grammar, good punctuation, and good wording easily impress people; you are more likely to be taken seriously too. Keep your troll short, but just long enough so that people don't skim over it. Break it up and make it easy to read.
Determining how to best troll your audience.
The most obvious choice would be the Right Wing Maniac. The RWM is a die-hard conservative - since the rest of the Internet is liberal, the RWM model is perfect for trolling. People will become enraged when they read a carefully crafted RWM troll and will quickly waste brainpower typing an inflammatory reply.
Another model is the Left Wing Maniac. Should the two ever meet, it would be the Armageddon of flame wars. The LWM is somewhat less popular than the RWM since he's ultra-liberal; people will tend to agree with his ideas - legalising marijuana, support of anarchy, etc. etc. You don't want people to agree with you; that defeats the whole purpose of the troll! But, as evidenced by our beloved gun control nodes, the LWM can be a valuable trolling asset as well.
The ignorance troll is another good choice. The ignorance troll will post something so utterly ignorant, people will actually take him seriously and reply to him with corrections. A good example of an ignorance troll is this:
RISC CPUs emphasize on software. Since they emphasize on software, this means that there will be CPUs dependent upon Windows to function! RISC CPUs are therefore a bad design.
Pick your target.
Trolling initiates should try Trollo5hin. The site's ultra-liberal sway makes it all too easy to gain 50+ replies if you post like an ultra-conservative; expected to be moderated down accordingly. Your troll can never disappear unless it's rated 0 or deleted.
Slashdot, of course, is all too easy to troll, so no further detail is necessary
E2 is the hardest to troll. Not only does E2 have angry noders who will systematically downvote you, there are also angry gods who regularly delete low-quality trolls.E2's non-BBS format makes it hard for people to rebut your troll - again, take a look at gun control.
Feeding your troll
So you've crafted a master troll. Moderators can't decide whether it should be shown or not. People are replying to you in disgust. How do you keep drawing them out?
Take a look at Logical Fallacies. It's always a good idea to base your troll around one of these logical fallacies; that way people will spend more time pointing out the fallacy itself than rebutting your troll, which gives you the opportunity to countertroll for going offtopic.
By knowing of logical fallacies, you have won half the battle. You can utilize these logical fallacies to make your troll seem all the more outrageous.
Finally,
Troll For The Ages