... was your belief in the formidability of the threat reasonable?
As I think you may know, the prevailing criterion for prosecution of openly demonstrable perjury in American jurisprudence is a measure of egregious harm resulting from the perjury itself. In other words it is allowable to lie on the witness stand if the lie does not itself proximately cause injury. A "white lie" or even a black one that cannot be shown to cause a specifically identifiable "egregious harm" not attributable to other causes is no longer prosecutable as perjury.
I consider that an extremely formidable threat to justice and a commensurately formidable threat to liberty. Of course, this is just personal prejudice, some people think lying is rather inconsequential. So let's examine that.
We may agree that not knowing something to be true is not necessarily injurious in itself. But I think we will agree that believing true what is false is, in itself, damage, if for no other reason than that it provides an opportunity for some other injury to occur that knowing the truth would prevent ~ it removes a natural defense against that other injury, altering the posture of the deceived vis-a-vis that injury, to his detriment. Misperception of reality arising from whatever cause is itself damage.
So this begins with a false belief with no regard whatever to its origin. I'm sure I have one or two around here somewhere.
When you see that I believe what is false, this informs you about me.
You may or may not feel any obligation to rectify my error, and I think that circumstance would have to be more fully articulated to make any determination about whether you arguably had any duty to attempt to rectify my error. This, I think, is the neutral case. I'm fooled, you're not, I suffer the harm, you don't have anything to do with it. Whither to proceed because of this is completely undetermined.
Should you, being misled, mislead me, you inflict injury, but it is difficult to argue that it should be held to your account simply because your action missed its intention. After all, I followed you, which is a reinforcement for your false belief, and I am "guilty" of essentially the same thing ~ confirming your false belief as true when it is not. And again the balance is even, this is also neutral ~ culpability, if any, lies elsewhere.
But when you knowingly set out to lead me to believe something that you know is false, you injure me by producing a need for me to protect myself from you, and more injury should I fail and believe you. You inflict the injury of the intrinsic harm of the falsity itself. Should I, falsely believing, encounter resultant injury, that merely compounds it, the injury is already there. And you have fathered the lie, all of its progeny belong to you, however injurious they may become. You have raped me and I am pregnant with injury because I cannot prevent the children of the lie, which is all further injury.
Let's at least keep that clear. After that, we can examine whether this false belief led me to a greater good so as to negate or preclude the consequent injury and mitigate the injury of the falsity, the injury of the falsity itself is intrinsic first. Abortion is not a cure for rape.
So, no injury and no news. I see no reason for vigilantism in the face of the forum owner's apparent apathy as regards the matter.
Let us also be clear that when you are chopping a hole in the bottom of the boat, taking the axe from you is not vigilantism, it is self-preservation. I have invested of myself considerably in Liberty Forum on the basis of the integrity of the Forum as well as the integrity of the preponderance of speakers here. When I cannot preserve the integrity of the Forum against deception of any magnitude, that devalues my investment. To establish this preclusion as policy bankrupts me.
John Deere may see integrity as related to the matter in which it does or does not exist, and attribute importance according to the importance of the matter. I do not think that would properly be termed "apathy," I think it is judgment and how he judges is within his own discretion.
And I agree that eleven people pretending to be one troll was not particularly newsworthy, and in fact wasn't really news at all, it was pretty obvious and had been noted by quite a few people.
But there is injury.
You see no injury because you deny that deceiving someone injures them. You single out a quite narrow deception ...
... posts should be such that, were they identified as coming from different posters, they would have been less convincing ...
... as the only variety that has meaning for Liberty Forum ~ and quite frankly, I cannot envision a situation such as you describe, where a persuasive concatenation of arguments would be less persuasive if coming from multiple sources.
The underlying premise of your contention is that skepticism directed at several individuals is more likely to unravel error than skepticism directed at a single individual presenting all of their arguments. This in turn rests on neglecting to examine each argument, accepting all because credibility was established in that one individual rather than on each thing he says. This, of course, is unreasoned.
Do not listen to me because it is me speaking ~ examine each thing I say and correct me should I err. This is what we have been doing, although it is transparent that you find me credible. Diffusion of contentions among a crowd may in fact serve to focus attention more on what is said than on who says it, but this is merely correction of an error in the evaluative process in the first place.
The coin of belief is spent on conduct arising on the belief. Each coin needs to be genuine for the conduct to have value. The coinpurse is irrelevant.
Moreover, the contention itself is dubious apart from the very narrow error that it might tend to correct.
One of the main uses of a floor party is reinforcement of an argument by means of making it appear popularly held, heading for the principle of vox populii vox dei ~ "the voice of the people is the voice of God" from Republican Rome, I believe ... an invalid support for any argument, since everybody can be wrong in this world we share, but useful for advancing an agenda.
And this narrow construction of the "injury" consequent on the success of deception is focused on the deceived individuals, not on the social process.
Ask John Deere whether corrosion of public trust is an injury to his Gold Pennies project. Liberty Forum holds a moral high ground, this is part of its attraction. But excoriating the exposure of deception erodes trust in Liberty Forum, and when that excoriation is adopted as policy, that destroys it.
That deceivers should be welcomed is at least arguable. That expelling them is injustice is also arguable. But concealing their mendacity is unsupportable ~ it is complicity. An inability to expose falsity is not a crime ~ refusing to expose it most certainly is. Refusing as policy flies in the face of establishing an ambience of trust.
There is intrinsic injury in deception. Its victims are manifold. It is harm in itself.
It has a single origin in all of creation.
But at that point, of course, we move from commonly realizable human ethical conduct to religion. Reason proves ethic sufficiently for social cohesion, it is not necessary that everyone have faith in order to establish morality on reason.