You can't even see the Emma Bowyer stuff anymore.
I think it's unworkable in so many ways. I'm not allowed a Friday Night Topic because it might attract weirdos, but a troll topic where they can come in their brown trousers, complete with desperate leer and ejaculate all over their grubby laptops? And we sit around like voyeurs, promoting ourselves as BA (hons) Troll Hunters because look x did it in y thread and therefore z MUST also be a troll? Don't let that happen fgs.
And MNHQ rarely have the definitive proof that somebody is a classic troll. Who makes the decision about what goes into that topic? If you're giving them the attention of seeing their posts in glorious technicolour then the real vulnerable and needy ones are being fulfilled in a way that does them no favours. Of course they may just try again should we delete their lies but it is not MN's job to afford these people an audience. They need to be stopped in this particular form of attention and beyond MNHQ requesting we report suspicions and not giving more of ourselves that we can afford to lose, there is no better way.
Take the current childbirth troll. S/he might just be a bored American teen craving attention, but they might also be somebody who is struggling and there's no way and no onus upon MN to make those decisions or display the fruits of their labours with no real comprehension as to why they're posting in the first place. And Sassy, the great unknown. Highly likely that she trolled once upon a time, but who will ever know whether the more recent developments were true. Locking somebody fragile up in a thread does not help them or us.
It wouldn't help us understand or spot anything, quite frankly it's not our job anyway. That's not the point of MN. I bet you my last oatmeal and raisin cookie, you click on active convos right now, at least one thread on there will be troll led. They're not a species to be categorised, they have as many styles and methods as the rest of us. Lots of them you can spot at 100 paces with one eye closed but beyond reasonable suspicion, it's not our job to sit around gawking and speculating. It's like those misery porn books 'nooooooo daddy, not there' bollocks.
And as MNHQ could rarely say 'this IS a troll', how much bloody work would go into locking threads, explaining themselves, constant demands about WHY that thread was moved, other threads popping up. No, feck em, delete 'em and respect HQ enough to know that if there's anything to learn then they'll tell us.