I think the moderation here should institute a stealth ban system.
What it would entail is that the user is "shadowed" in a way. Only the mods can see their posts and their name and everything appears normal to everyone. So they don't even know their banned. The only tip off would be that no one posts in or likes their threads. The beauty of this is that the mods would have plausible deniability if the person emailed them with something like "why doesn't anyone post in my threads" the mods could say something along the lines of "that subject has already been covered in threads xyz so no one bothered replying" or "maybe you should cool it with the thread spam and maybe people will start participating in your threads.
THis isn't something we would have used against established posters, but only against those virulent trolls who continuously reappear time and time again (rickywax/skipsteps). It would be a last ditch effort to shut these people out by just making them bored.
What it would entail is that the user is "shadowed" in a way. Only the mods can see their posts and their name and everything appears normal to everyone. So they don't even know their banned. The only tip off would be that no one posts in or likes their threads. The beauty of this is that the mods would have plausible deniability if the person emailed them with something like "why doesn't anyone post in my threads" the mods could say something along the lines of "that subject has already been covered in threads xyz so no one bothered replying" or "maybe you should cool it with the thread spam and maybe people will start participating in your threads.
THis isn't something we would have used against established posters, but only against those virulent trolls who continuously reappear time and time again (rickywax/skipsteps). It would be a last ditch effort to shut these people out by just making them bored.
I will be checking my PMs weekly, so you can catch me there. I will not be posting.