Looking at the "trolls" I can't see any trolling. I see people criticising the conference for fair reasons that they care about, and trying to be helpful after initial snarky tweets.
This is not trolling. And I absolutely agree with their criticisms.
What were the original tweets that caused so much trouble? I've tried to gather what I can but I don't see much 'trolling', just criticism, some polite and constructive, some less.
And there's a few tweets by @britruby that have been deleted.
This checklist seems very centred on the UK hackday format (which I very much enjoy). I've noticed US hackdays have a somewhat different culture, with different expectations, as do gamejams, etc
I noticed Leeds Hack solve this by the judges going around all the teams in the morning and having a friendly chat about the hacks being made. Gives them a chance to better understand the hacks as hackers aren't always good presenters and they get to directly ask "Which bits of this did you write today?".
Can't say I've had this problem at any of the UK hackdays I frequently attend, only the US ones I've been to.
I think one of the differences is having an overnight. The networkers and loiterers bugger off after a few hours leaving just the developers and designers overnight who want to actually make interesting things.