Queen Cleocatra said:
You are correct; NO ONE here deserves to be harassed etc. Your opinion matters of course, and I admire your fortitude in how your feel about trolls, but before we give the trolls a soap box here, let's see what others have to say about it. The fact of the matter is quite simply this: if we allow the trolls to come here and torment others we are going to spook off many members who have a legitimate reason to be here AND it's going to make many lonely, depressed and otherwise sad individuals feel ever worse. People need to know genuine, decent and caring human beings, not trolls. That of course, is just my humble opinion.
Here's my opinion, stated with a clear head, on why admin activation sounds arbitrary to me.
There are a few different kinds of obnoxious people on the interwebs (besides me).
There are spammers. They will tirelessly flog links to their web sites. Ban them by all means. But do allow them at least one post, unless they are peddling something that the forum itself does not allow, like say, pornography. Some might actually benefit from following a link. You don't need admin activation for that. Spammers reveal themselves pretty quickly. Also, admin activation might actually generate false positives because it might ban a regular guy who is simply posting a link he found useful to himself.
There are the denial-of-service kind of trolls. They will spawn a hundred threads or clog discussion threads with a hundred identical posts. You cannot proactively deal with them thru admin activation. You can only clean up afterwards. Do ban them by all means though. And make sure the door does hit them on the ass.
Then there are the hopeless idjits like that LonelyFucker18 prick. The only reason these choice fools troll forums is because... is because... oh alright, I give up, I don't really know why these choice fools even bother to go near a keyboard.
In any case, these mental giants seem to have a immensely broad range of expression starting from "I M THE BADDEST MOFO" and going all the way upto "DO U WANNA SEE MY DCK". They seem to love starting conversations with the young female members; conversations that are entirely made up of their witty one-liners, usually signed off with a juicy picture.
It is of course pointless to engage them. You cannot engage someone whose waist size and IQ are identical. Ban them by all means. Admin activation might work with them unless a rare clever one starts off nice and drops the act afterwards. This is the only case where I see admin activation as being useful.
Where I really hesitate with admin activation though is when a new member starts off by telling us how pathetic we are and how we need to shape up and start marching to the band. Admin activation might promptly get rid of him because he is being hurtful and hateful to the members, after all.
Personally speaking, I don't want such people banned. We need to be told hard and seemingly cruel things. I find that replying to people who have a different view of the universe actually clarifies my own view, and sometimes changes my view. In a particular thread, someone called me a [perennial] loser. Replying to him/her/it actually crystallized a few things in my own mind. It made me more aware of myself.
Also, a harsh newcomer might actually offer useful advice after settling down a bit. Do we want to shut out that possibility? And even if he continues to be harsh without offering useful advice, then it is easy enough to ignore him or reply to him, depending on our own dispositions and mood. As I said before, everyone needs to be heard, even ********.
Personally, I don't want a cocoon, I want a forum.
That was my opinion, and my nay vote on admin activation.
Its a problem 
