It was said, "Don't feed the trolls" on forums, meaning to not respond or lend attention to them, or give them material.  However, what I see on N4G on here, and other places is writers of news articles feeding trolls, by giving them fodder to get all excited over it, and then post it as reports how people are responding to it.  And I am foolish enough to go into some articles and get a WTF? from the articles, like the article is some fanboy fiction made up to make them think pandering to one console or another is going to make a difference in a franchise war, and so on.  If it isn't troll food, it is a troll given a platform to draw attention to themselves.

Example?

http://n4g.com/news/837308/5-reasons-why-battlefield-3-will-eventually-topple-modern-warfare-3-this-fall

N4G apparently find an editorial piece from a site called "Genius Anime" was worthy of reposting, and having it leak over here onto this site.

Yes i've noticed this. It gets ridiculous, there are more articles flaming MW3 or Xbox or whatever than actually giving information about upcoming games and developments. Stupid really.

A bit true but what can be done about it? It's not like they wouldn't find these articles without N4G pointing it out in the front page.

I recall a member that posted something negative about Sony every.single.time it showed up in any site, in any language.

I've noticed that news articles that can spark fights between people on the internet usually get more replies than "normal" news articles. Also, changing words from a quotation or taking things out of context to make it seem as if someone said something negative about a company/developer/game/etc seems to make the news article get more hits and more responses/comments.

I guess it helps the sites get more hits, garner more attention and have more activity... it also may help them get new users.

Kinda true though I dont see that on vgchartz much.

As I was writing that, and after I finished, it did occur to me that websites make money off of traffic getting attention, being relevant and so on.  And it is akin to what trolls do.  It is being an attention hound, eager to get people to read and respond, and the more you can aggitate people to go and get excited about this or that, and repost it, the more your site gets traffic.  So, it is like the videogame news business makes its money by hiring people who troll, or know how trolls think.  I believe this would be the death of real journalism and insightful commentary.  One can be controversial in their opinions, but it seems like feeding controversy is what seems to get circled about.  So here's the formula:

* Find popular game or genre with competing titles.

* Post something to drive people to get upset and post all over about it.

* Follow the flaming and report it.

* Use this to drive people to your site.

While I would say that videogames tend to be more fanboy focused, I would say I have seen even professional sports writers during a slow news week end up creating at least 5 news items between several papers based on false rumors and refuting them, which is like the above.  On the political front, you get huge partisan spin, where everything that comes up gets spun one way or the other, and made out to be news, and the partisans (political fanboys) get all over it and post any little bit on this forum and that.  One could say religion is similar, but it doesn't seem to generate enough news often enough to keep the spin cycle going.

N4G stuff there is the prime culprit of it at this point.  Some editorial stuff had a bit of a troll overtone to it, begging people to respond and so on, but the N4G stuff is getting to be particularly bad now.  The forums here don't get too bad, because moderators tend to be all over it and will crack down if people get too way out there.

Yea the moderators here are pretty much on top of things. And the N4g articles are usually pretty interesting though I can think of a few that had the problems you have described.