Because the mods are not in the same threads. Some of the threads have been going on for a year. If someone comes in and takes the same stance on multiple threads at the same time, that’s pretty unlikely. And since I’m the one on the other side of the argument, the same arguments by one person becomes obvious.
I know at least that they don’t just use IP addresses. There was on poster I no longer remember who I reported as a possible sock–in a “keep a lookout” way, as they seemed overly familiar with the board. I got a reply back fairly quickly that they didn’t have the same IP address. But, within a day or two after my report, they were indeed banned for socking.
I also seem to remember them mentioning at one point that they intentionally don’t reveal all their methods for sock detection, so that people won’t know to try and thwart them.
Did CarnalK show any particular technical adeptness, @Heffalump_and_Roo & @DMC? I personally only remember him being a bit of a contrarian on political things.
Six warnings, wow, I can’t believe someone is allowed to get that many warnings and still be allowed to stay around.
I can’t tell if you’re jokingly referring to someone else in this thread, but I can see six warnings over a 15 or 20 year stint being OK. I think FN only showed up last year.
That guy’s voice is so great.
I mean, I don’t want to promote this topic, but what the holy fuck is wrong with people so they ask questions like this?
If you divide your age in half, and both the legal age limit and your girlfriend are within rounding errors of that number, stop being a fucking pedo and date older women. And don’t make arguments for these people.
“I don’t see the money put in Gaetz’ hand and it passing to the girls.”
Ah cool. So this guy thinks that if you just put the money on the dresser, and the underage girl picks it up, they Hey, you’re in the clear because you did not actually directly give it to her.
This gives off a really smelly vibe.
“Officer, I swear. I left a C-note on the drivers side and this damned guy grabs it and leaves me this bag of cocaine. Damndest thing I ever saw!”
I’m not sure if this thread informs the other one linked here:
Just leaving it for information.
This is a good example of “Enlightened Centrism.”
Excellent reference, thank you (and to @Heffalump_and_Roo for providing the cite).
The poster under discussion here (@cincinnatus) seems to be in search of a discussion forum that promotes conservative values but is not insane. This would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for a few decades ago, but as long as Republicans are now the presumed standard-bearers of “conservative values”, any such discussion is by definition going to be insanity vs. reality: Trump, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Mitch McConnell, and dozens of others of their ilk who would be more at home in a lunatic asylum instead of the US Congress, versus what remains of fact-grounded sanity in American politics.
So the discussion forum that this poster fantasizes about is not going to exist. It might exist in a purely academic discussion of conservative vs liberal principles in general, but not in any discussion of contemporary American politics.
I mean, I can’t say. I can say that I have many reasonable conservative friends and I’d love listening to them debate among themselves all day. So I hope such a place exists. Maybe a libertarian community? I know a lot of folks alienated by Republicans who have turned to libertarianism.
Not in my view. I consider conservatism and progressive liberalism to both be principled and well-established political philosophies, and while I generally tend to side more with liberalism these days, both are philosophically defensible. The problem with contemporary Republicanism, especially in the Trump era, is that it no longer reflects conservative values except as a pretext for its real values, the promulgation of an oligarchy and corporatocracy along with a hefty dose of bigotry tinged with white supremacy. Republicanism, IOW, is a bat-shit crazy corruption of conservatism. Whereas libertarianism, in my view, is bat-shit crazy at its core (cite: Ron Paul & son).
There are apparently reasonable people who have claimed to be libertarian. One example that comes to mind is Dave Barry, a bright and insightful humourist who has written a lot of funny articles about government waste and incompetence. He’s remained politically neutral in the public eye for most of his career, but eventually acknowledged that he was more or less a libertarian. I think many of these people are just carelessly using the term as a euphemism for their belief that less government is usually a good thing. As I’ve said before, there has never been a true libertarian society in history (for good reason), but the closest contemporary example we have is Somalia prior to the transitional governments that followed the civil war. I don’t think any reasonable person would want to have lived there.
I’m not clear why this discussion (the previous three posts, at a minimum) is taking place in this thread about trolls. Unless someone is suggesting that the OP of that centrist thread is using it for trolling purposes, this (completely worthwhile) discussion seems like it should be a separate thread in another forum. Just my opinion.
OK, I tried. New thread on centrists is here.
Thanks, good forking of the topic. 
1st cousin of Friendly Curmudgeon?
And a 2nd cousin of Undergraduate Libertarian … lasts as long as you can stay in your dorm.
Leave, and the real world smacks it out of you.
.
(Why, yes, I suppose you could interpret that as autobiographical…)