Not sure which 't' word you mean...

You raise a valid point about recepition, however, and this is something we've often debated. Is it better for a problem poster to be singled out publicly, bombarded privately, ganged up in in public, or singled out in public and privately... it all breaks down because of one simple thing:

People don't like being told they did wrong, even if they KNOWINGLY they did wrong. Hell, ESPECIALLY if they knowingly did wrong.

Now, if we've got proof, such as a signed confession or video tape evidence or something, there's no reason to go to them in private and say "Oy, is this really you? Did you really do this bad thing that it looks like you did", because the answer is clearly yes.

If we haven't got proof, but just serriously strong evidence, then there's wiggle room. "It looks, quite clearly, like you did this. We can argue our case very very well. What do you have to say for yourself?" is about the best you could do in private. And even there, I think it's probably better to go public.

If we just have a hunch, or a suspicion... in the past we've been quite forthright about that. "This person sounds exactly like another person we had problems with. I bet it's them come back for more." Now, there's problems with that... for one thing it's paranoid reasoning, for another there's no clear way to prove it, and even if there is enough circumstancial evidence to convince anyone who's been paying attention, the people who HAVEN'T been paying attention will probably not get a fair presentation of the facts (assumed or otherwise).

That's what's been our biggest risk in the past. We've had people plauging us under multiple identities for years. We've had the occasional confession and the occasional admission, but they usually only fall into our hands by accident. Most often, we've recognized patterns in problem posters and we suspect them of being old troublemakers in disguise... We've usually singled these people out to warn others, and in response, a host of further 'sleeper' identities have sprung up to object to the paranoia.

Because we can't tell who's really who behind names on a screen, it's not possible to proove that a half dozen screen names all belong to one person. I believe this accounts for 90% of our troll problem on the old board, though it's not all attributable to the same person(s).

Anyway...

I'm starting to think that there's no real reason to change our methods, and only to just be more careful and wait until we have a strong enough case before pressing charges.

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