I get it, someone's gotta be the martyr, for the common good. Watched The Dark Knight too recently?

Since the moderation is too hands-off, we gotta do all this publicly to generate pressure on the mods! In a forum with around 5 threads per day, on a good day. That's the kind of content conducive to rationality discussions, identifying who may skirt a rule then create a public outcry for blood until the mods have to step in. You do understand he was banned for mass-downvoting, which is something his new account isn't suspected of? That he contributed a significant number of upvoted comments otherwise?

It's not easy, or pleasant, and it draws undue attention upon myself rather than the situation.

The hero we deserve. /s

So anyone who isn't willing to fight/engage a public accusation and step in the ring is implicitly guilty. That's the kind of community that's fun to be a part of.

Well, if I accused you of being a poopy head, and you didn't step in to defend yourself ... I guess that would mean, yea exactly: You're it!

Go tell that to a mod on any functional, actively moderated community. Or to a judge, for that matter. See how that would fly there.

It's how the world works, not how the world professes to work. There's a difference. The statement you so vehemently disagree with is mostly a corollary of taking "agents are goal-oriented" as an axiom. It's so close to a tautology as to be somewhat vacuous.

But we seem to live on different planets. I'm on the planet where corporations use every loophole they can to lower their tax burden. Where political donations use whatever route is just legal enough to achieve their goals. Where close to noone ever has refused, say, a severance package based on "I don't deserve this and just got it on a technicality". What are these phenomena like in Dahlen-land, and which xkcd strips are they based on? I apologize: I know I said planet, not land.

As counter-intuitive as it seems, meta-threads which (even inadvertently) fit the "drama bait" label generally increase overall drama, regardless of their actual intent. Drama bait such as this topic is click-bait and attention-bait, unfortunately. If you want to reduce drama, trolls need to be discussed/removed with the least amount of noise possible, not to thundering applause to wake up the mods. People applaud the loudest in the arena, with blood on the sand. That's not what I want this community to be. In forums I care less about, I'd upvote this topic, just to see shit go down.

(I'm being nice by phrasing this comment so antagonistically. Gives you the option to tap out on that basis. It's not like you'd want to feed the drama, selflessly promoting publicly identifying rule-breakers. Or rule-skirters, undesirables in any case!)