From my point of view, it doesn't matter whatsoever. Who cares if there is one nut pretending to be five nuts, or two nuts with three imitators, or five genuine nuts?

<I'm afraid the result will be the proliferation of sockpuppets. If tolengoy's posting with one account is limited, he'll simply register another and go on trolling.> There's not a doubt in my mind that he'll try that, but I don't think it will work out very good for him.

Part of the proprietary PITA formula is a clause inversely proportional to how old your account is, so very new accounts really have to walk on egg shells. When you're dividing by the number of years old your account is, you don't want to divide by 0.05. The new account might actually have worse brakes applied to it than the older account after just one or two ignores.

A fear is that a troll might make a bunch of accounts and put them into cold storage, so they could always pop up under an "old account" and start trolling from that. I'm not going to spell the math out, but let's just say that I've thought about that and it doesn't bother me.

Maybe what he/they'll end up doing is creating an army of accounts, so they aren't limited to a few posts a day. They'll sign in under one name and make a post, then another name and make a post, all the way down the list.

So basically a determined group of users could just keep anyone out of cg.com if they tried hard enough?

Not seeing copy pasted dreck or any posts at all from the most imbecilic troll ever, would be the ideal.

The ideas that have been mentioned by <chessgames.com> would do a whole lot of good.

I hope that it does not stop there, but rather, that other solutions can be proposed by some of the bright lights here and if possible that those can be carried out as well.

A troll like Glenn Salem wants posters to react to his every nonsense, but if his posts are slowed down, the disturbance he brings to any thread would be reduced to a minimum, and the people who want to discuss and learn from each other can do so in relative peace.

This is supposed to be a community after all.

While that might be the case, I don't see it as anything nearing the foregone conclusion you seem to see.

Besides, it would be a function of both ignore and oldness/newness of accounts, so people who have annoyed a nice number of other people in the span of five years wouldn't be treated in this way.

<My Dear the Good Anarchist>

<And I don't even know who everyone is talking about, ruining pages. Is it <petrosianic>? He's not that bad.>

OUCH! lol

I agree he's not that bad, although he's had me on ignore for at least six years.

Does this mean my "coefficient" will go up and I will have limited kibbutzing privileges? I hope not.

<petrosianic> is certainly not a "troll" by any definition. He is FIDE Master Graeme Cree, and his posting mainly analyzes games or discusses chess history.

I couldn't possibly disagree more with his approach to chess history, but me disagreeing with someone doesn't make him a troll.

But I think there are, and have been, some who *do* equate disagreement with trolling.

Notably the "Fractious Floridian."

<Benzol> I don't know, but my information is wrong. Mr. Cree is a USCF <National Master>:

User: petrosianic

All this works perfectly. Is it censorship? Sure! But it's managed in a very appropriate and fair way, primarily against people who aren't capable of conducting appropriate behavior or use the site to shill their watches for sale. "Appropriate behavior" allows, of course, blunt discussions and vivid disagreements, but there is a difference in attacking arguments with counter-arguments and attacking persons with insulting words. No-one gets wiser by being called an idiot, neither the person in question, nor the others in the discussion.

All this clearly requieres significantly more moderation from Chessgames. But if they don't want Kinghunt and other good people to leave the site, I recommend stronger action and not leaving it to the good members to make the cleaning on individual basis. I don't think post counts or any maths helps here. Simply reading the threads will quickly identify the trolls, and then it's merely a technical matter to delete their access to the forums. If you want to be kind: After one warning.

Personally, I have just recently made use of the ignore list, and only the trolls in question are on it. There are some others, with whom I strongly disagree, but I'd never ever put them on that list, as long as they attack my viewpoints and not me as a person. But even if they do, I have always used the motto: It takes a person of great calibre to insult me.

how can you come to this conclusion when you have not read my posts. You said so yourself - i.e." Personally, I have just recently made use of the ignore list, and only the trolls in question are on it"

If you want to file a complaint, please do so in the proper manner as follows:

Sec. 6. Sufficiency of complaint or information. – A complaint or information is sufficient if:

1. it states the name of the accused;

2. the designation of the offense given by the statute; the acts or omissions complained of as constituting the offense;

3. the name of the offended party;

4. the approximate date of the commission of the offense;

5.and the place where the offense was committed.

6. When an offense is committed by more than one person, all of them shall be included in the complaint or information.

Within ten (10) days from receipt of the the complaint and supporting affidavits and documents, the respondent shall submit his counter-affidavit and that of his witnesses and other supporting documents relied upon

Within ten (10) days after the investigation, the investigating officer shall determine whether or not there is sufficient ground to hold the respondent for trial.

There was no formal and sufficient complaint, no preliminary investigation and no trial yet you have already come into a decision.

i.e. <trolls, however are beyond that. they are just tiresome fanatics with an agenda to occupy pages with nonsense>

This ought to be your first candidate move, and the whole anti troll campaign/action plan that you suggest may not be needed in its entirety, if at all. Ignore should do the trick, initially, but if the whistle is blown you do need to take swift Action, if appropriate and possible.

I do agree in that regard with both Sokrates as well as PhilFeeley.

Unfortunately, this would also provide a simple means of silencing someone on the <Kenneth Rogoff> page who hasn't done anything wrong, but whose posts annoy his adversaries simply by being there.

This invites de facto, user-based censorship races that will end when the political minority has been banned into oblivion.

I'm trying to respond to a post that includes an ad hominem attack toward me on the Rogoff forum, but for some reason my posts won't "take".