I don’t moderate the Pit, but we all know it’s a special place with relaxed rules. I feel it’s primary purpose is to serve as a safety valve - get those complaints OUT of otherwise productive threads, and do some healthy venting.
I also think that they’re useful for documenting when a poster has a long term pattern of specific harmful behaviors. It can be a help.
But I personally wouldn’t want posters to not be able to defend themselves, or even back-smack their critics, even if it’s a “neener-neener” level of “I’m not touching you.”
Would I do it? No. But I think it’s a fair tactic.
Now, I am NOT @miller, but I will point out that he laid out his feelings about how the Pit should be managed a while back when we had other accusations of Trolling in the Pit.
I don’t want to quote snippets and leave out context, but Miller does a great job of pointing out the difference between posting to piss-off people in the pit while otherwise participating, and solely posting in the pit to piss people off. And I agree with his POV for what it’s worth.