Quite. Fascism ftw.
Nah, in all seriousness, Precam is very easy to spot and gives himself away quite soon. I won't speculate openly, but I'm 95% sure he's got at least one active multi here already. When these guises become obvious it becomes a kick in our collective cobblers (and flies in the face of public opinion) when the mods do their "no proof, lalalalala, not listening" routines.
Incidentally, since this ignoring of popular opinion seems to suggest very strongly we aren't a democracy (not that there's any suggestion we should be), I would be keen for some kind of elucidation as to the excruciatingly exacting burden of proof the site demands for the banning of multis? In my mind (and not just mine, judging by the posts in this thread) the tolerance of these long after their real identity is obvious, causes more harm to forum atmosphere than anything else.
It's all very well some quarters saying "ignore them, it's what they want, etc", but as quoted posts from members one has on ignore are visible, this is literally impossible. &, tbh, it becomes increasingly insulting to our intelligence that we should have to, when their identity is known (and tacitly acknowledged by the mods, or some of their number) but, because of some Stalinist edict, officially maintain a policy of denial. It's like having a convicted ponce move in next door with a new name and a bad false moustache and having the police blame you for getting annoyed when he offers your nippers a sweet and a ride in his car with the blacked out windows.
Accounts like Blaze prove he is not easy to spot at all. He has a variety of personalities at his disposal, and I for one suspected Bun was someone else.
Basically, to charge someone with being a multi we just need the computer gizmo evidence stuff. I'm not going to go into what we look for, but basically we want hard proof, not subjective opinion. With repeat offenders it is flawed, but going down the route of banning on suspicion is a slippery slope.
With regards to Bun=Precam being popular opinion, I'd say it's more who has the loudest opinion. The multi accusations were flying from the same corners they always do, and like always they had no proof other than "he posts similar to Precam and we don't like this guy." When this happens ad nauseum, we're likely to stop wheeling around to look for the wolf after a while.
I don't really care how many people feel like it's an insult to be told to ignore trolls. Time and again across the internet it has been proven that if they get no bites, they either troll harder and remove the benefit of the doubt, or they move on to happier hunting grounds.
Bun was provided the perfect smokescreen by some members. At first he got warnings when he was the instigator and others reacted, but then others began actively seeking him out, and trolling from one end became the usual internet bickering. The ratio of reported posts regarding Bun vs those regarding a select group of members was at least 5/6:1 and it wasn't a bunch of Indian posters spamming us with those reports. When we have that kind of rubbish to sift through, most of it members laying the bait for Bun, I feel very little sympathy for those complaining to us that we had the gall to tell them to stop looking for fights.
There is no doubt in my mind the member reaction to Bun slowed us down.
As I said above, we're all ears when it comes to forum atmosphere if you can get enough people on board. When the staff came to us and presented their case (complete with a classic Burgey rant) we agreed and took action. All I've heard for the past few months is "Bun is Precam" not "Bun is a drag on forum atmosphere." There was a lot of talk about giving him the forum atmosphere ban amongst the moderators, but it's extremely difficult to justify when Bun is trolling less than certain other members.
I need to go to dinner now, so I'll be back later.
