Wow hold on there. Entering a thread with "negativity" is not even close to trolling or being a trouble maker. Shattering the illusion that a lot of people may hold is just giving some people a much needed reality check. The issue there is that a group of people may have bonded together under some equally held misbelief. Look at the Dreamcast crew back in the day who warped it in "best console evar".

In fact I encourage people to cause debate if there is room for it otherwise you are mollycoddling incorrectly held beliefs that will just help to produce socially akward people who do not know how to deal with being wrong. 

Trolling has definitely increased lately. I can't say how much with respect to each console maker but with regards to Nintendo specifically, it has increased greatly. All one has to do is look at their post habits. Many of them rarely ever post outside of the Nintendo boards themselves. That means their intent is not to inform or engage in spirited debate but to elicit an emotional response and incite anger.

It's not about having a thicker skin, it's about changing the quality and direction of discussion. It takes posters from intelligent debate or discussion and puts them into a defensive mode which alters the intention of the thread. Or worse, the thread was created by the troll merely for personal amusement.

As for moderator queue's, they are a partial solution that ultimately don't work. We don't need active mods, we need pro-active mods. The difference is an active mod will react to a reported post. This by itself is good. But a pro-active mod will read a forum as much as possible and will take action before the post is ever reported.

And we do have some pro-active mods...just not enough of them. And again, I'm only speaking on behalf of the Nintendo boards. I'm sure the others need it just as much.

Please accept my apology if my next comment offends but if our moderators are shrugging off the fact we have a troll problem, then it's obvious we also have a moderator problem. Moderators in denial of a problem will never solve the problem. When enough of your members are telling you that a problem exists, it is part of your moderator duty to listen and take action. Denying the existence of their plight and telling them to have a thicker skin is a good way to lose quality members.

I hope you realize though that there is a difference in proactivity between a person who bashes another user and a person who gives constructive criticism.

You get the feeling that some people just go into threads to shit on other people, and nobody learns how to deal with being wrong that way imho. Also, it diverts away from the constructive nature of exchanging ideas.

Well shitting on other people is clearly trolling as it shouldn't have any truth to it. But what happens when it does have truth to it? Ban someone because the truth hurts? It's a very thin line to tread between trolling and pandering to the community as a whole. I've seen it first hand on IGN where people on mass argue utter bullshit and the mods ban people for arguing back. Sure, I know this isn't IGN, but the value of a post should be determined by if it is a legitimate, relevant point and if it is polite. If it is, then it should stay. 

Nononononono! Im not saying negativity is bad. Im saying constant negativity is bad. Its alright to debate on things and its alright to have different opinions.

When people are constantly entering say, Nintendo threads and always trying to put a negative spin on things. Its bad. Its annoying. Its obvious baiting.

I wouldn't go that far to say it's obvious baiting - see above.

I agree with this.

At that point, it's not about content but tone and intention.   You can provide negative information and remain tactful and respectful of others.  But too many prefer to combine their 'truthful information' with assertive or even aggressive tones which change the dynamics of the debate from constrctuve to desctructive.

You have to imagine a real spoken conversation.  Would that person talk to someone else in that same tone and expect to actually have a meaningful dialog with them?  No.  It's at that point that we need to realize it's gone beyond simply providing truthful information.

Ah the issue with that though is what is assertive or aggressive is entirely subjective. As long as the person remains polite and on topic, then there should not be an issue. When I state an argument, I cut the crap and get straight to the point, which can be misinterpreted by a lot of people as being rude, when in fact I'm just being concise. 
More often then not, the people who become aggressive are the ones whose point is being contended, and yet they are the ones rarely punished as they can be in the majority. This is just a general rule of forums then a specific one to do with this one, but it seems that a lot of moderation is done with the intention of keeping the masses happy rather then letting valid & polite points be made if they go against the general gist of a thread. 

Here's an example and the reason I was banned from IGN. A thread had been made about the Wii U hardware and how what it was alledged to be didn't make sense when some tests were done. I then said that we may never know the actual specs of the Wii U as it may be that to release such specs may be detrimental for Nintendo, hence the silence. Well that kicked off a shit storm of "specs never sell" which is a point that no one could actuallly back-up with any sort of viable proof but were just speculating on why people bought consoles. Reminding these people that treating speculation as fact is a fallacy apparently constitues baiting and trolling. Go figure. The real reason is that everyone disagreed with me in the thread yet not a single one could actually back their claims up, so to appease the masses, I was given the boot. This is why I strongly advocate freedom of speech in forums otherwise it will cause social issues for these guys whose poorly constructed points are given the all clear and anyone who disagrees is thrown out. 

Most moderating is subjective anyway.  That's why you need moderators that are keenly aware of the dynamics of dialog.  What is intended to be factual and add to the dialog and what is posted solely for personal amusement.

With regards to your situation, I can't speak on it because I didn't see it.   If you are known for having a tone that lacks tact, it's easy to see why many would quickly pounce on your for the negative statement rather than debate you on the merits of the statement itself.   I always tell people that it is OK to be contrarian so long as you do so with tact.  Otherwise you will not engage in the dialog you are actually seeking.   It's the fault of both parties (I hope you don't find it offense that I say as such) but that's the unfrotunate nature of dialog...especially in a fourm.

With my own anecdotal experience, I run a forum of 30,000 members and I haven't had to ban an active member in almost 2 years.  This is because I and the mod team have worked hard to get our members to understand how to engage in debate with each other with civility and respect.   I oversaw the merger of our original Nintendo based forum with a large Sony based forum.   It's one thing to start off with a multiplatform forum but it's another to merge 2 platforms together.   It took a while but eventually they learned to enjoy good debate more than the ugly negativity that usually accompanies dialog between fans of different platforms.  

As for a complete freedom of speech, that doesn't work either.   You eventually run off the minority and the site becomes dominant in one fan base and then gets infested with trolls as they find an open target with no rules to prevent them from running amok.