Replies

I'm not sure what it would solve.

In the early days, we never had a problem identifying the Stormfront/National Alliance folks and they were promptly banned. Though an interesting example of the problem here is that it was Stormfront who practically single-handedly kept the Bobby-Ann Williams/Bill Clinton love child story alive only because they had scanned in the photo from George Caprozi Jr's 1992 Clinton book. The picture was posted on FR and no one thought anything of it.

I even supported the eventual banning of Michael Rivero. Its fun to have a books and tapes guy on a web site but he really was selling too hard and FR was free advertising.

The real problem was the loss of some of the best skilled web researchers who could whip out a fully linked dissection of government speak within hours. That came with the arrival of an active number of pro-war posters who don't even claim to be that conservative or libertarian. They do so honestly and openly (see Chancellor Palpatine or Poohbah) so I have no issue with them, but they yelled loudly against dissent and brought little to the table in the way of research talents.

You see, the effort to demonize trolls, created a group think issue that effects the best right leaning news forum on the web. Group think is the enemy of 'original work;' original work being the stuff that came from bcspecht, Uncle Bill, Wallaby and all these people I never met but read religiously back in the early days.

...the best skilled web researchers...

Translation - the most prolific web cranks felt like they couldn't spew their self abusive bilge to like minded cranks for a bunch of "attaboys" anymore - they would actually be forced to justify their half-assed musings.