Quote - Acadia's argument sounds like saying that if you can't get at the actual culprit, find a scapegoat instead: somebody has to pay, even if they obviously aren't responsible.

It's not "my" argument, it's a fact. Some years ago I used to post on a board that was ultimately closed down because of trouble makers. I was one of a few that the "bully crowd" targeted and stalked from thread to thread harassing on the forums and in PM. The moderators on that site were pretty good. They deleted posts and banned people, but eventually it got to be too much for them because the griefer crowd was out of control, so they decided that it just wasn't worth it and they closed the forums.

I stayed within the community but went to a different forum. The "bully crowd" migrated to anpther one. I thought that was the end of it. One day a few weeks later I got a message from a friend who read dozens of forums within the community and they pointed me to a link telling me that I might want to "read that thread"....those people picked up where they left off and I wasn't even a member of that forum. I also noticed several other threads that were essentially dedicated to maligning me and my name and people that I didn't even know or had never heard of (possibly with different user names than what I had known them by) were posting things about me claiming them to be true etc when in fact they weren't. Horribly vicious and malicious stuff.

Long story short....moderators didn't do anything because those that moved there from the closed one voted to have "no rules", and the moderators were part of the crowd that ended up getting the other forum closed. I was speaking to a friend of mine who is a lawyer and we got on the topic of internet griefing. He told me that a site owner who allows such acts on his site/server is culpable as they are providing the medium for the harassment/abuse to take place. Like it or not, it's a fact.
Message edited on: 03/08/2006 04:54

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi