the meaning of "troll" seems to be changing, mrs.c. It used to mean the sort of sociopathic 14-year-old who'd go onto forums at 2am and hurl obscene abuse at people; now it seems to mean anyone who repeatedly causes trouble. You'd have to put Ron's moaning in the second category, unfortunately. He just wouldn't stop even when the Ed invited him to. A pity, as I rather liked him, but there you are.
None the less if this is ' trouble causing' then some people ahve led a very sheltered life. I appreciate that Ron can moan a bit to say the least, and he does focus somewhat on issues that niggle away at the editor, but I didn't see a breach of Site Rules or anything really offensive and I would imagine the kinder thing to do would have been to ignore him,as Mrs C said he has made a pretty respectable contribution for the last 7 years.
As has been said when contributing in general Ron was OK, when he ventured into Editor's Blog or Suggestions he went down too many nit-picking rabbit holes....
"dissing the Ed" is always going to count as potential trouble-causing on a website, Nox, maybe not to you and me but to the Ed himself. Ignoring him didn't seem to make any difference. So it's his call whether or not Ron was worth the time spent answering him, and he made it.
Thanks for the definition, my opinion is still the same though, Ron didn't deliberately try to incite trouble. To me, it came across as one of Ron's personality traits, not done with any malicious intent.