Okay gang, this isn't about anything recent, but I'd like to pose a hypothetical situation:

If there's reasonable doubt/suspicion that a person's committing identity fraud here, do you feel we should address it? And if so, should we do so up front and request a public response (denial/explaination/admission/whatever) from the person(s) in doubt, or would it be better to contact them privately and ask for same?

I'm a bit unsure about this one... I mean, IF we've got people trying to worm their way into the community for nefarious purposes and we can catch them at it, I'm inclined to think that we should not say what gave them away, in case they learn from their mistakes.

However, if there's only reasonable doubt, then there's only a choice between ignoring it completely or being paranoid in private if we don't actually adress it publicly. And if there isn't strong evidence but only (paraniod) hunches, I don't see as we have grounds to make it public...

The way we used to do things in the past was to just voice our suspicions as soon as we had them. This would usually scare off the suspected fraudulent identity, but many other identities would spring up to call us paranoid or accuse us of being tyrants... The fact that THOSE identities would often turn out to be fraudulent didn't matter much.

The real damage that was caused by all of this is that with all the accusations (most of them founded, i think), genuine newbies were getting scared off.

So, how do we handle this?

If we've got proof/strong evidence, do we go public? If so, what do we do if this encourages worse behavior from the guilty parties? How do we deal with them without scaring off innocents who don't want to walk into a flamewar?

And most importantly, when do we apologize to Garner for calling him paranoid or over reacting when it turns out he was right?

"If I wanted to read Wuthering Heights, I'd shoot my self."