DJP wrote: Seems to me the

Dave
 
I think you are mistaken.  Your comments remind me of something that Mark Twain was supposed to have said –  about “reports of my death being premature” or something like that.  I would say  that actually the WSM forum, in terms of the volume of posts and the numbers of contributors, is actually doing rather better than this one. Its not true that “no one really uses yahoo groups these days”.  I am on about 30 such groups and I can assure you that some of them , at any rate, have maintained a consistently high level of posting. Whether Yahoo is about to pull the plug on its groups I do not know. What makes you  think this?
 
In any event, the basic problem that I have talked about in previous posts still remains whatever the particular format or forum you adopt:  how to deal with disruptive individuals like Donut and Tetrapak.  We cant just ignore them – or rather we cant just ignore the ideas they put forward.  I reject the argument completely that in dealing with these ideas one is somehow “distracting attention away from the case for socialism”.  On the contrary., it is through dealing with their arguments that the case for socialism becomes manifest.  If you change the subject to something else all that will happen as that they will use the new  topic of conversation for their own purposes.
 
So you have a simple choice. Do you restrict membership of a forum to only sympathisers and party members or do you allow  hostile critics.  If you do allow the latter , how do you handle their hostile criticism?  Now I have suggested an approach which I think goes some way towards meeting Paul’s suggestion that we ignore the trolls completely – the oblique or indirect approach – but without ignoring the ideas they put forward . Ive started to apply this approach to Tet and Donut becuase I think they are both beyond ther pale. Ive not extended this approach to Bob Howes because I do not think he can be lumped with the former in any way .  He is confused on many points but his heart is often in the right place and he has declared his sympathy for socialism on numerous occasions.   I wish people here would not  jump on the guy in quite the way they do sometimes. It serves no useful purpose.  With Tet and Donut on the other hand we are into a quite different ball game
 
So what are you going to do then? There does not seem any sign of the WSM forum dying a death.  To contrary  it seems quite robust  and healthy  at present.  Would it not be a good idea then to make more use of it but to use it in a more appropriate fashion  along the lines I have suggested above? The nuisance effect of one or two posters would simply be drowned out if  more members actually participated in the forum rather than simply complained about how  those creating as nuisance have come to dominate it and then leave the forum allowing this dominance to increase.  A self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.