Hi list,I have a spec for "trollproofs" which might help with moderation.  Instead of the moderator having a binary choice between "block" or "pass", he/she can just choose a difficulty level for a particular topic which the community adheres to in order to encourage good faith.

Compare:"hi can u pleez package systemd with devuan thx"
To:
--- Begin Troll Proof Message ---So apparently, in order to convince people to read my message here about systemd's relationship to devuan, I have to run a program that takes as input the concatenation ofa) the header above,b) this message I'm writing,c) the "Begin Troll Proof" header,d) a hex value not to exceed (something) length,e) a timestamp in (something) format, andf) the two footers at the endThe program then tries different hex values until the sha256sum of the message has a minimum number of leading zeros in it.
Finally, when the interested members of this list do a sha256sum of everything from the first header to the last footer, the leading zeros will tell the community that my computer has wasted enough cpu cycles to hit the difficulty level chosen by the moderator.  So as long as the date below is within 30 minutes of the time I emailed this, _and_ the number of zeros are above or beyond the moderator's difficulty limit, please continue reading...Anyway, here's my issue with Devuan and systemd... blah blah blah--- Begin Troll Proof ---
d36ab9b3f532Time: September 2, whatever UTC
--- End Troll Proof ---
--- End Troll Proof Message---
Benefits:* if someone wants to discuss systemd on the devuan list, but they are unable to jump through the hoops above, they aren't competent to say anything useful about either of the topics.
* if someone wants to discuss systemd on the devuan list, but they are unwilling to jump through these hoops, they are probably just trolling due to zero cost of posting on a forum.* the moderator doesn't have to do anything other than choose a difficulty level for this particular topic. He/she can still moderate if it comes to that, though.* the burned cpu cycles stand in for the community's mindshare, saving it for more important tasks.
* technique is equally applicable when the tables are turned.  I.e., Debian can use this same technique for people criticizing systemd on their lists, if they wish.* any interested party willing to burn cycles can jump in at any time and use this.  The technique isn't tribalistic like restricting access would be.
* all of this happens in the open, so there's not the same chilling effect there is with simple moderation.
And possibly most important of all:* even if nobody implements this it can still succeed. Hell, I wrote the spec and I haven't implemented it. But notice how I didn't actually discuss systemd in this message? That's trollproof working, so you don't have to. :)

-Jonathan