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I wasn't suggesting Pudlo be banned because he posted a negative review and you know it. I was wondering how many years he has to troll this place before you finally ban his sorry ass. Spam isn't half as damaging as a troll who feels he can do whatever he wants because moderators aren't prepared to do anything about him.

You have a point.

Aw common guys, I'd never shit in my own nest. Ask Adam Thornton or Dan Shiovitz or Graham Holden or Hanon Ondricek or anyone who's tested for me and they'll tell you I'm the perfect gentleman with my testers.

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When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

I think the implicit point was ban him for what?

I'm curious why people get so worked up. If you don't like someone's posts, and you see they posted something --- don't read it! Don't respond to that thread! If you see they jump in to a thread that you are already reading -- skip over their post! Empower yourself to not get worked up over it by not even reading it in the first place. Practice selective viewing and simply ignore that which you don't want to see. This is good practice for some aspects of life.

The funny thing is, when I read this thread, I see other people acting worse than Jacek. I personally choose to see his responses as a bit of a "counter-cultural shot across the bow", a bit tongue-in-cheek, and a bit of -- as I said -- a gadfly. Let's say I even grant that this is all mean-spirited. Okay, but, if I don't take all this too seriously, I actually see a lot of it as amusing and a good break from reading about other things on the forum.

So, ask yourself this: you chose to read a thread posted by a person you don't like and wish would go away. Why did you start reading the thread in the first place?

Banning his account would only inconvenience the people who have added him to their foes list. I expect he is savvy enough that an IP ban would not pose much of a challenge.

The only way to keep him out would be to create a closed forum where new members had to be approved by moderators. That's not the forum we have, though.

Then ban him again when he registers under a different name and then again and again and again. Are you really saying you haven't banned him yet because he'll probably be able to fake an IP address and sidestep the ban? That's a bit like a bank manager saying they might as well leave the safe open because some bank robbers are smart enough to pick locks.

If you have objections concerning my behaviour, why don't you simply take them up with me?

If I've insulted anyone and that someone demands satisfaction, I'm more than willing to accommodate. Select your online wargame of choice and we'll battle it out like two honorable geeks.

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When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

No, I haven't banned him because he's not a spammer and he posts topical reviews of critically-acclaimed IF games.

The thing about spammers is that they move on to greener pastures once banned. Pudlo isn't going anywhere. I'm not so hard-pressed for leisure activities that I want to engage in a pointless moderation war with a determined adversary.

The path of least resistance for you and least effort for me is to add him to your foes list. You may have to expand the net a bit to catch anyone who quotes Pudlo in reply. If you're very unlucky, that might take more of your time over the next ten years than I spend dealing with forum spam in a single afternoon.

Well, nice to know that's been cleared up anyway. Trolls are free to do as they please because it requires effort to ban them.

But, look at it this way: you are free to do as you please and ignore them entirely. You can immediately skip over their posts or avoid threads they start. On the other hand, you are also free to do as you please and keep worrying about it. At least you have options. Now just think if you had something serious to worry about like unemployment, losing your house, living out of your car, being unable to afford gifts for your kids, etc.