See what happens when there’s not enough trolls? We starting eating our own. 
Back to our regularly scheduled troll hunting:
We have in IMHO, a new poster with a name like l e m o n has started a totally innocent thread about racists insults directed at a white child.
Being watched but thus far seems legit.
Yep, that’s the final clue:
They’ve already managed to draw two posters into making ill-considered replies. You’re doing all that you can as a mod. Still, I’m 99% sure this is a troll, likely returning.
#3 in particular usually requires familiarity with board culture and moderation practices, since even here the rules are more nuanced than their bare words.
Unfortunate that some cannot resist that shiny lure and get themselves with a set hook in their mouths (or worse). The ultimate tragedy is a good poster being provoked into a warning because the trock is good at their job.
A third of the plies are from people ignore, and you add in mod or modded comments, that rounds out to half the posts in the thread so far.
A troll by deed, if not more.
By the way, I think putting spaces between every letter of a name makes it unsearchable. I recommend we make this the custom in this thread when referring to trolls on the downlow.
Seconded.
Signed,
J o h n T
I just tested this and it, unfortunately, isn’t correct.
We could leet the names, ala J0hnT. But that poses its own issues…
Wait, what did you test? A search for “l e m o n” without the spaces does not hit this thread. I think @Pleonast’s idea was excellent.
It looks like Discourse’s built-in search cannot find spaced-out names, but the browser search can.
Edited to add: and Google search cannot. I think the browser search only works if the post is actually on the screen. @JohnT, trying scrolling to post 1 and search from there.
My search query was a bit specific:
@Johnt “J o h n T”
Found my post above. And it was in the Discourse search, not Google:
While not in the thread I did my search explained above and it did not find this thread which is good news.
But if searching for “l e m o n” I would expect it to be found. And it timed out. .
Well, I don’t think we have to worry about a troll searching for their own posts with their own name in all spaces. 
Once you take out the specific user, the search doesn’t work.
No, but the poster in question, l e m o n can search on your name, and the spelling, which leads to this thread. Like I did.
That’s all. Yours is a good solution, but not 100%. Probably 99.44%, given the effort needed to do this. Good job, P l e o n a s t, truly. 
The goal isn’t to stop them from searching for the name with spaces, it’s to stop this thread from coming up in the results if they search for their name without spaces.
To be honest, I don’t see a big benefit. If someone is trolling and wants to see their name in lights, they’re coming to this thread anyway. It’s going to be the first stop for the kind of poster who would search for their name on the board.
Agreed. The danger is from @'ing someone who may or may not know the forum, not, I think, from just writing out the name of a troll. How many other forums even have a “trolls r us” or equivalent thread? Why would it occur to anyone—except someone who is familiar with this forum already—to search their name. In which case… they already know about this thread.
@'ing sends a notification to the subject, which then alerts them to what is going on in this thread without any effort on their part. So whether they really don’t know about this thread, or are just pretending not to know about this thread, it can draw them in. That’s the danger.
@discobot tell us whats up
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
@discobot tell us a story.
You guys are doing it wrong.