My point was that if they wanted to return under new identities, they could not.

The personal security risks to Satoshi would be far too high for him ever to act as “Satoshi Nakamoto” again, except perhaps on his deathbed.  For that reason, among others, I think that the probability of Satoshi returning as “Satoshi” is negligible.  If he were to use the forum again, it would need to be through an alt—but that incurs the risk of his new name being outed as Satoshi.

For this reason, I think that the probability of Satoshi ever again using this forum in any way is negligible.  (Assuming he is still alive—a proviso which also applies to the unobservable Schrödinger’s cat.)

Lauda intentionally burnt her bridges; Sandra, you are quite correct about that.  Lauda can never be Lauda again.  And I do NOT think that she would ever want to return to this forum under a new identity, and restart from scratch; it is just not a Lauda thing to do.  But there is an unwise, ill-considered meme in some quarters that she will be back under another name.  My point was that she could not do that, either—not even if she wanted to.  At least one of the persons spreading that meme is the type who enjoys hunting for the alt accounts or “main accounts” of people who have not done anything wrong.  Judging by their behaviour in other cases, he and many others would not respect Lauda’s privacy if they believed they had found a new Lauda alt.

For that reason, in addition to my knowledge of her character, I am sure that Lauda will never return to this forum under any name.

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Good question.  Abuse prevention is a perennial question in privacy and anonymity circles.  It is even a security issue, insofar as the intentional creation of abuse in privacy-oriented environment is a social attack on that environment.

For cleaning up a large part of the abuse on this forum, death_wish had an interesting idea:

Although for whatever reason, someone with a 4-digit uid sent 50 merits to that post, it is a generally unpopular idea.  I think that if that were ever done, a large proportion of all abuse would evaporate overnight.

As for the remaining abuse:  Contrary to what you say, this forum is not decentralized.  The forum is a fully centralized system.  Its administration has plenary authority over everyone here, and they delegate much of that authority to staff.  I think that some changes in forum policies would do much to stamp out abuse; but such changes are unlikely, so I will not raise an off-topic tangent about what I have in mind.

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You must be using a different forum.

I know that, for instance, some people in Politics & Society personally loathe you, franky1.  If they ever suspected that a new account was yours, do you suppose they would miss the opportunity to call putatively-you a “fake newbie”?

In my own case, I have sometimes seen new accounts which were not mine being accused of being me.  Of course, I did not deny it!  They were not pretending to be me, they were not claiming to be me—through no fault of their own, they simply got falsely accused of being me.  I thank them for improving my anonymity set.

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You did not read carefully.  I suggest rereading.  You do not thereby disagree with me at all.