It would breach the non-outing bit in our Guidelines. This is important because if you can out somebody (as happens freely elsewhere) then many people will stop posting good stuff.
The one recent change in policy is: in the past, I used to tolerate a higher level of abuse against me than I would allow against others. The reason for this was that to do otherwise would appear self-serving. Now, the two are aligned.
This type of issue is very small here on EuroGA (compared to every other aviation forum I have ever seen) but when it pops up, it does take up a lot of my time and as a result I don’t want to see much of it.
Fair enough, though I do think that some people place themselves outside the protection of guidelines, by being antisocial and themselves ignoring the guidelines.
That would however be vindictive. It is a slippery slope… lots of forums have gone that way.
What we really need is a Paypal Donate button and then we can employ a paid mod who doesn’t care about flying and since nobody will know who he is, nobody will be able to sling mud at him whenever he does anything 
But, hang on, that’s another slippery slope and it’s also been done… very badly!
The reality is that there is a small % of people who just like doing weird things, and/or beat others up. And a mod who participates is a prime target for getting beaten up. Still, only 2 have been banned to date, in over 4.5 years.
Peter wrote:
The reality is that there is a small % of people who just like doing weird things, and/or beat others up
Reminds me that the (fortunately small) percentage of a***holes is suprisingly similar in all walks of life and across dramatically diferent groups of anything
;-)
Peter thank you for keeping this forum in such good order and for all the time and effort you must put in. Without that eventually it would go the way of all the others and then everyone ceases to be interested.
As an aside, was Flyer 59 this character?? Was the Mercedes Benz dealership etc, a load of rubbish, and a troll?
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Peter thank you for keeping this forum in such good order and for all the time and effort you must put in
I will whole heartedly second that. Thank you Peter and your helper(s).
Well, he is back already. Hopefully he won’t cause more problems.
BeechBaby wrote:
As an aside, was Flyer 59 this character?? Was the Mercedes Benz dealership etc, a load of rubbish, and a troll?
That’s very difficult to tell I would say. That flying Mercedes dealer and aviation writer / aviation magazine editor is real for sure and quite prominent on the internet (there is even a short entry in Wikipedia about him). But it would be very easy to hijack that kind of public identity and pose as this person on an anonymous forum like this one here. One of the many reasons why one should be very careful about the amount of private stuff disclosed on the web. And yet another reason why I will never sign up to facebook and similar data collection platforms.
I will add my thanks to those of Fuji and Fenland Flyer above. It’s a great forum and it must be a nightmare keeping on top of trolls/spam etc. We are grateful for your hard work behind the scenes.
