Actually I'm not sure it’s fair to talk about trolls in this context. Just because someone may seem a pain doesn’t merit the term. Unless my half-suspicion is right, and that there is a genuine attempt on their part to stir things up and start a slanging match in a way that gets a thread closed down, because that would indeed count as trolling.

But either way, even if someone is being deliberately and even insincerely provocative the principle "don't feed the trolls" applies, most especially when it comes to trading personal insults.

I think it is pretty well always a mistake to carry on an argument from one thread to another, or even to take into account in one thread what has been said in another. In starting this thread I had no intention of doing that or setting off that kind of thing. I wanted to raise an issue that I have noticed happening in many threads over the years.