I am curious on how the mods would rule on the following activity.
Suppose you strongly suspect poster X is a troll and whose entire existence seems devoted to spewing nonsense in Great Debates that no rational person could possibly believe, and in so doing largely derails the threads he participates in. Of course since its Great debates you can’t post that this person is being a troll and that the thread would be better served by ignoring him. This accusation is only valid in the pit. Now it’s a pain to have to write a new thread each and every time that you want to stop a thread from being derailed, and further that would clog up the pit. So instead you create a single thread with the title “Poster X is a Troll”, including a reasonable amount of evidence that this was the case, suggesting that readers shouldn’t feed him, and also possibly linking to this thread I am writing now.
From then on whenever you see the poster behaving like a troll in GD, you post an link to your BBQ thread, but no further comment. Now posting links to the pit is the standard way of dealing with annoying posters in GD. But on another level the act of linking to the BBQ thread is effectively declarative statement that I think this person is a troll. It’s no less blatant than posting the following link which I assume would get me a warning in GD.
On a more abstract level suppose I just created a BBQ pit thread that said “Do not Feed the Trolls” without mentioning any specific poster, and then linked to that thread whenever I thought anyone was being a troll and encouraged other posters to use the BBQ thread likewise.
Note: All of this is theoretical (although I do have a poster in mind), and I’m not in any way trying to flout the rules of the message board. I was just curious as to where this would fall.
I think if you did that often enough, you’d run afoul of our rule against harrassing other posters. Pittings are fine, but if you think someone is trolling, you should report it to the moderators.
IMO, for all intents and purposes you would simply be calling the poster a troll. I would regard it, as you say, as an attempt to “circumvent” the no troll calling rule, and hence something that wouldn’t be permitted.
What if each time the troll was trolling (in a regular poster’s opinion), a poster commented on the behavior in the Pit thread, and then posted a link in the GD thread?
I think that the answer to your hypothetical approach is found in what Marley said (that you quoted): continually opening Pit threads about a person can look very much like stalking. The mods have repeatedly said (both in this thread and others) that the best approach is to report your concerns and let the mods handle.
Same thing applies when someone insults you outside the Pit. Best approach is to report it to the mods. Replying in kind means that you both get in trouble.
I think Munch was asking about a single thread in the pit accusing the putative troll of trolling, and linking to new ‘‘evidence’’ in that single thread whenever they felt the need arose.
And the answer is we would prefer that he not try to “technically” circumvent the rule, and just stick to reporting suspected trolls to the moderators.
Thanks all for the response and clarification. The poster I had in mind has been pitted as being a troll before and presumably the moderators are aware of his/her existence, and have decided presumably to take an innocent until proven guilty stance. So I’ll just leave it alone. He was just continuing the same behavior that he was previously pitted over so I thought opening a new thread would have been redundant, and I was wondering if as an expedient I could just link to the old thread.
I’m amused at being called a sock for Oakminster given our politics are at about 180 degrees.