I sort of hate to get involved in this, but there is the "restroom wall syndrome" at work in non-password protected public forums. There is an element that enjoys baiting other people, seeing them perhaps as pompous and self-absorbed, and these folks will go to whatever forums they can find and act as provacateurs.
These are usually young males, teenage or college age, who will post something and then savor the responses. There's been one poster (probably multiple screen names, but clearly the same individual) who enjoys exagerated ebonics posts, the better to bruise people's feelings.
Suggestions for Doug about how to avoid this sort of thing: Have the forum set up so that posts have to come through posters' email. the forum could email back and reject any and all posts originating from bogus email addresses. It may be that the technical aspects of doing this are too much for a small website.
I own a small company with a website and all email is automatically responded to with a canned message. The undeliverable replies will flag the emails coming from phony addresses and we block all of them from getting through in the future. I suppose a forum is different in many ways and the way we post is easy and convenient for exchanges of information, stories, opinions, photos, etc. The only other way around it is to actually read posts and delete enire threads when it's obvious they're going to hell.
Cheers....Adrian
