> xeno syndicated wrote:

> "You do realize that if this was the case, you would have pretty much been voted out of the politics forum, right? "

Actually, Zarf, you have no way of knowing this, and you might actually be very surprised if in fact a vote had occurred.

I do have no way of "knowing" this, correct.  However, in just the same way, you have no way of "knowing" a good result will come from what you suggest.  At the very least, we can use the inferences and evidence we have to come to circumstantial conclusions based on that evidence.

The evidence I use is the fact that you had a good portion of the politics forum... which incidentally is probably the only people willing to read through the massive posts inherent in politics... who decided you were trolling and were refusing to answer your posts.  Were they right?  Were you trolling?  Damned if I know.  What I do know, however, is that people have a tendency to decide that people whom they disagree with are more evil than they are, i.e., that a right-wing politics poster will much more easily accuse a left-wing poster of trolling than he will a fellow right-wing poster.  Is that person trying to kill off opposition to advance his own viewpoint?  Not necessarily.  We generally see people in positive light who are similar to us, and people in negative light who are different.

So what's the problem with it?  The problem is that, within the context of your voting system, there is no check or balance on that.  If the politics forum had, for example, 7 right-wing posters and 4 left-wing posters, the right-wing posters will generally be more likely to accuse the left-wing posters of trolling, and you won't be enforcing against trolling.  You'll be enforcing against ideology.

A moderator is slightly different because although a moderator is just as easily able to abuse their power as a non-moderator, if I, for example, started rampantly abusing my power, someone could come to the moderators and ask that I be sacked.  That gives me a disincentive against abusing my power because I have something that can be taken away.  There's nothing to be taken away from power abusers here.  Unless you want to vote on whether people are abusing their power... but that's just being silly because the same people voting on whether people are trolling are voting on whether people are abusing their power.