There has been some debate in other threads regarding forum improvements, such as the use of real names instead in place of usernames. I thought it would be good to have a separate thread to talk about this.
I'm a bit ambivalent on usernames vs real names, I guess real names overall may slightly help things. But just go on twitter or facebook to see real people saying absolutely heinous, hateful things. Also, some of the most memorable jerks and thread-derailers on any of the *-user forums are people who use real names.
"Free speech" is a stupid argument. These aren't public forums run by the government. If any adult has spent any time on reddit, they can tell you that racism, misogyny, and other hate has spread like a cancer throughout that site in the name of "free speech."
In my opinion there are two things that can help:
1) Extremely strong moderation. Some of the meandering threads should have been nuked long ago or at least a temp ban-hammer brought down on some users. There are legitimate criticisms to air regarding Blackmagic Design but the mods here seem to be pretty tolerate despite any fool that sees "censorship." Also, if several legitimate posts stray from the original topic, they should be moved into separate threads. Easier said than done.
2) A $5 donation upon registration would deter a lot of trolls.