The question you ask yourself if the goal of a poster is to detract and hurt the community and the system the community is trying to promote is it not in their best interest to get rid of him? If people are going to hurt you do you not protect yourself? I'm not referring to people who say "bitcoin is flawed, should have this change that change this."
Uhm, this is a question for you? What community do you live in where they "get rid" or silence people who disagree with, or question the consensus?
And the Ponzi scheme argument was answered there is sticky about it. There is no need to repeat a question over and over again. Then the only purpose is subversion.
Just because YOU have answered it over and over, that does not mean that the person whom is asking has heard you answer those other people. It is "over and over" for you- but not for them. This may make the question annoying for you, but it does not make it less relevant for them- and you have the option of ignoring the thread.
The advantages of having an open forum with censorship limited to true spam, IMHO overrides the inconvenience of some posters having to scroll down the page a little bit.
Yes, people *should* read stickies, FAQ pages etc- this is a struggle for every forum. The issue was not people asking the same questions, it was stopping them from posting specific uncomfortable or inconvenient questions and statements. In order to do that, they simply dismissed all new questions and prospective users into an unproductive ghetto.
Rather than simply allow posters to decide for themselves to ignore a repetitive or negative threads they made the choice to make it unlikely they would see them at all- that kind of censorship is a mistake and it undermines the credibility of the Bitcoin. If Bitcoin can't survive a few people saying mean things about it, then it's not much of a currency.
Any community. If you walk into a house they are not obligated to let you stay and speak freely. The great thing about forums is there are so many and you can start your own. People don't understand forums on the internet are private not public. Just like how highways are public but home aren't. The means of getting you to a home is public but the house itself is not.
There is an FAQ about it. I mean comon...not everyone needs to ask what 1+1 is. If there is something that says Beginners Read This and it answers the questions your bring up. People aren't obligated to answer and especially if you have an answer for them that says READ THIS BEFORE CONTINUING.
If a forum is overrun with trolls an Open forum is no longer better than a Closed, one as has occurred, some limitations must be applied.
Also this is a Bitcoin forum. We are here talk about the development of Bitcoin. If you want to complain about forum etiquette I'm sure there is a forum out there for you to so do. If it detracts from what this forum's purpose is then we don't have to provide you the means to detract. That what troll prevention is. It's the same reason I don't let any person rob my house whenever they feel like it.