I'll throw out there for what it's worth that I stopped trying to contribute in a meaningful manner to a number of threads when I saw that SiliconWars started posting. This was likely not directly related to the specific content of any of the posts, per se, but rather that it became infinitely likely that any simple comment was going to get drowned out by his, demonstrable massive amount of free time, leading to him slamming any thread with multiple copies of extremely long posts, many of them quoting the same sources or images over and over. It made it hard to have a conversation, when it was likely that a whole page would be completely filled by the time that you finished typing a response to some other comment or thought.
This may well be more symptomatic of the general atmosphere of VC&G than of the particular poster, but I can't say with any 100% certainty. The atmosphere over there is definitely toxic, but there are ways to deal with that that are productive, and ways that are destructive. Usually, the destructive ones make people feel better about themselves, by tearing other people down.
In this case, rather than sighing and trying to work with people to reduce the overall level of vitriol, a forum goer went to extreme lengths over months to create alternate accounts, set verbal traps designed to be sprung months later, and admittedly spent time purposely insulting people, because he felt that some other people had gotten away with those sorts of insults before.
That is not a constructive, healthy, or peace making approach. Purposely escalating the level of verbal abuse in order to try and prove a point about how easy it is to get away with being verbally abusive is something that I don't feel is rewardable behavior. As someone that doesn't post often, due to having limited time, when I do, it's generally because I'm interested in having a real conversation about something interesting. When anything someone tries to say, and by extension, what some people that are just casual visitors to a forum might want to therefore read, gets drowned out in a protracted shouting match between two gangs of thugs.
When that happens, my purpose to interact with the forum has failed. I couldn't care less at that point which side or the other might be somewhat less accountable for their anti-social behavior. It takes two to tango, as they say.
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