I can’t call out returnees even if I wanted too as I don’t know any of the Banned members well enough to catch on. But I fairly often report guests that appear to only be posting for Trolling purposes. They can severly derail many threads.
Jim
Sh/e had had paid he/r fee. Made 2k posts. Aparently had fit right in. No mess. Posted something familiar to something posted before.
Boom. Gone.
Does that mean that any new joiner had better check and see what had been posted before? Lest they become a mess?
Eh. Listen, I don’t tend towards being an apologist for the Man. But when you pay your dues here, you’re signing yourself up for a board that has a very specific set of rules. Mods are asking you to help them enforce said rules by clicking the “report this post” button for a post that you think might indicate that someone is breaking those rules. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Nobody’s threatening you with any sanction or, in fact, anything worse than maybe getting a drive-by insult by a mod. I’ve worn a tinfoil hat or two in my day, and I’m not trying to insult your intelligence here, but I personally think that you might be wearing your skin a little too thin today.
Quite right. The difference between how it works here and how it worked elsewhere is that TPTB require a noticable pattern of behavior before they take action. They only put people on the train without just cause when it’s an obvious spammer.
Nobody is allowed to have more than one screen name. Doesn’t matter if the subsequent identites fit in or not. If they had a previous identity, and TPTB can verify that previous identity, the new identity ends up like Jimmy Hoffa.
This guy had over 1800 posts and would likely have accumulated more had he decided to pay and not out himself. All vanilla/Good Egg had to do was lay low but, unlike SqrlCub/dorkusmalorkusmafia, she’s not capable of laying low enough to avoid detection.
vanilla was banned, if I recall correctly, for dragging real-life stuff onto this messageboard, and I gather she had a history of it: if she wanted back badly enough, she should have done it legitimately and asked real nice. The fact that she sneaked back in is fundamentally dishonest, and a problem - “a mess”, if you like - in its own right.
That’s why we’re restricted to one membership here and socks are banned - so I know that the lonesome loser I’m talking to now isn’t the same person as the handsome loser I argued with last week, or the winsome loser who was kicked out last month. There has to be a certain degree of trust between member here to maintain any kind of stable community, and by trying to beat the system Good Egg just shows that she doesn’t deserve that trust. That’s the mess.
Nobody’s going to be banned {at least permanently - I’m aware there have been mistakes in the past} for making similar posts to a bad egg: if someone’s suspicions are raised that they may be dealing with a sock and they report it, all that’s going to happen is that the staff are going to look a little closer, consult the entrails of a chicken, check ISP’s and what-not, and see if the suspicions are warranted. A banning will only happen if someone is determined - and the staff have said repeatedly that they err on the side of caution here - to be breaking the rules.
And saying “they take your money and run” is just silly: I doubt the time and trouble the mods occasionally go to to track down and ban offenders is going to fund many Caribbean holidays. No-one’s getting banned just so their $15 is going into the vacation pot.
Goats. Somehow, we wind up with an awful lot of leftover goats here in the Super Secret Mod Headquarters of Doom.
They’re just enforcing the rules you agreed to when you joined. They’re holding up their end of the social contract we entered into when we registered.
No. This is not the case at all. Most people I have a gripe with are not trolls or returning trolls or anything similar. Thus, I do not report them. I ignore them instead.
There is manifestly a mess when the rules are broken. I expect the rules to be upheld, I have paid to see the rules upheld, and I will do my part to ensure the rules will be upheld.
Nope. Wrong. She’s a sponge. A user. She paid nothing. Someone paid it for her.
I understand. Insult her. That works. You really know whether or not she borrowed and paid back?
Give me a break.
I imagine he does, yeah. That “Mod” after his name means he’s privy to Secrets. Dark and terrible Secrets. Secrets that could drive a lesser mind to gibbering insanity. Secrets best left unearthed by mortal men. Either that, or he used the “Search” function. lonesome loser, can I ask what your stake in all of this is?
I just don’t like that the spy on your neighbor is thrown out there like it’s a good thing.
It has been done before and never to a good end.
I do agree that if the person is actually creating a mess, things should be done.
But, hmmm, that post looks familiar. I’ll report it!
That sucks.
It’s not mandatory, and it’s not spying, just housekeeping. If you don’t feel comfortable dropping the dime on someone, then fine, don’t. I’m fine with reporting the odd post because it keeps the place clean and worth visiting. Nobody’s suggesting that you join the Thought Police, but just as an example, if I see someone tossing out insults in Cafe Society, I let a mod know so that debates over whether or not a book is any good are kept at a civilised level and CS remains a forum for abuse-free exchanges of views, and a place I like to hang out at.
samclem worships Cthulul?
I am very surprised.
Jim
What if the sock’s goal is to return, wind themselves almost irretrievably into as many threads as possible, and then sit back and watch the chaos once their identity is uncovered and the membership has to deal with holes and gaps in threads, and the mods are suddenly afflicted with extra work as “revenge” to boot? Maybe I’m thinking too much in Sicilian double-reverse logic…
You’d make a lousy Pimp, Haven. I fired up the ol’ bit blender this morning, saw three pages of replies in this thread, and thought “Damn, it’s gonna be funny seeing everyone trying to tip-toe around invoking the name vanilla.” But you blew it. For shame. 
And next you’ll advise us to never get involved in a land war in Asia.
TubaDiva
Too late.
Maybe there are WMDs in Asia? Ever thought of that, Smartypants?
The scorched earth policy for returning socks sounds like a good idea. Not sure, though, whether it works as well in practice… could cause more trouble than it fixes. And the Tachy-Goes-To-Coventry Option is only a last resort.
It is one of the two classic blunders. As everyone knows.
Suspicion breeds confidence! Help the Ministry of Information help you!
Looks like we’ve found out what the real stake was.