inverarity | (Reply)

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I'm the mod of a forum that is plagued by a troll, but am not allowed to discipline him in any manner (I wouldn't even have the permissions to ban him) because the forum is owned by a company that has set a policy of allowing anyone to post, as long as they are not posting pornography or anything really offensive. All of the longstanding forum members know to ignore him, but the sad thing is he always makes a very unpleasant "welcome" for any new posters, and it takes a very tough skin to get through it. So it's sometimes a tough situation, where on the one hand you want to allow freedom of speech, but it can end up being a matter of interpretation whether someone's posts are productive or not. I basically think he's an elderly guy, lonely, and sees his provoking as the only way he can get a reaction or someone to interact with him, and he's probably that way in real life too, which is why he has to resort to the internet for a "social life". I have to admit, we went a couple of weeks without any posts from him, and I was already feeling relieved that maybe he had died. But then he came back. >.