should really be:

“Anonymous People are *always* going to be dicks on the internet.”

John Gabriel nailed it really…(NSFW maybe) http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

People are *always* going to be dicks on the internet. Banning them and taking away their accounts is just not a workable solution in the long run; the ultimate goal should be to allow the community to more-or-less self police, with a guiding hand from above.

Actually looking at Sanya’s list again I think it trends more towards my interpretation of this issue than not, which is encouraging.

In fact, admins are restricted to the same +1 or -1 every other moderator is. We’re just contributors too, etc.

If you get thrown out of a store, it’s hard to immediately sneak back. Online I can create a new account and be back to trolling in minutes. Furthermore, the point of a store is to sell people something, not to encourage open discussion. The entire point of a forum is to encourage discussion. If I throw the crazy guy going on about how I’m a huge conspiracy to silence him out of the store, it’s irrelevant to the general question of letting people shop. If I throw the crazy guy out of my discussion group, it’s easier to believe his claims that I don’t really want open discussion. Add in that many companies silently delete negative, but non-trolling threads from their forums and you have an audience more than ready to listen to the troll and not you. This is the strength of a system like Slashdots. First, generally speaking, the admins aren’t rating people; it’s your peers who decided you should be quieter. And second, no one is silenced, just made a hair easier to ignore. If you want to hear them, they’re easy enough to listen to. If there is any weakness, it’s that Slashdot does have and occasionally use tools for smack someone down to -1; referred to occasionally, and possibly incorrectly, as “bitchslap.pl”. Sure enough, this leads to trolls claiming they’ve been bitchslapped and people listening…

Michael, if you had a store and one of these trolls started acting up in it…what would you do? I’m saying that online community business should treat these types of customers the same way as any other business would, i.e. refuse their business.

It could also work for huge forums like WoW and (presumably) WAR, but could something so complex ever appeal to game developers? Even Slashdot is still trying to tune it (and that new, Ajax-y comment system is AWFUL, so even they clearly aren’t satisfied).