This may sound controversial coming from me “the forum MVP,” but I am in the opinion that the concept of message boards/forums as a whole is an outdated concept in terms of online communication and behavior from whoever was responsible for last night’s ruckus is proof of that. I mean we could debate on end about forum tools, AI, and other features this or any other forum platform needs to function better, but is it worth the time and investment from Blizzard (or any other entertainment company, not just video games, for that matter)? Remember as AndyB pointed out recently, forums are only used by a very minor percentage of the overall community.
So let’s be clear that if something like that nonsense was going on, my advice to everyone is log off and spend your time doing something else. When you try to make a deal out of trolls and spammers you are only fueling the fire they are trying to start. They are trying to get attention, but only do so in a way that negatively hurts the community and does nothing to positively impact whatever IP they are participating in. Even if it was with any perception of “good intention,” such as the AriaRose forum raid incident.
Understand I am not saying this to simply dismiss the behavior of such users, but remind everyone that there are better things to do than to stress over a message board forum.