I've been on a couple of sites where some of the most frequent posters are obviously sociopaths. It's not so much their political outlook which is the problem, it's that they are so insistent (and persistent).

Several mature, thoughtful, posters have gone completely overboard when they found themselves engaged in repetitive discussions with these people. A good example (please don't comment on this topic) is that of the 9/11 conspiracy believers. I think Kos has a blanket prohibition on this topic, but on several other sites I've seen sane bloggers go berserk when confronted by these people. In one case the blogger was someone who was covered by debris on 9/11 and is thus already hyper-sensitized to the issue.

In cases like these the usual steps are ineffectual. These people are immune to logic, appeals to good behavior and feel a sense of their innate superiority which makes them insufferable to others. For these cases the only course of action is to limit their participation.

In the past I've suggested several ways to do this, but most blogging software doesn't seem to have this capability so banning ends up being the only option. For the record, options could be limiting the number of remarks made per day, or per thread and preventing them from starting topics of their own.

Fortunately the number of such individuals (on this site at least) seems extremely small. Unfortunately many of these sociopaths are now running the US government...

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape