I recall seeing a fingerling under someone's name.

That's not quite what you call a flamer because he did more than that, but those posts were no better than flame posts I agree with that point. Troll sounds about right though. Or an ogre, or [w/e] doesn't particularly matter.

Being a member of a online christian gaming clan. And the game being a shoot 'em up it gets quite a few people wanting nothing more than to cause trouble or wanting to argue to the death over the clan even existing. Needless to say the list is rather lengthy of people banned from the forums/game servers and no doubt a pretty lengthy list of banned IP addresses. Some are probably just for swearing and being disrespectful but not all of them. Infact a time ago a hacker deleted everything and from what I heard left some dirty trash behind. It's pretty crazy what people are willing to do to get your attention and generally cause trouble.

No response, deleting their account posts etc, and banning the IP are what I'd recommend. But I'm not a forum admin and I wouldn't want to be one.

Being that this is a privately owned forum free speech generally does not apply. And IP's are public unless they're hidden by firewall or something so banning them is by no means illegal. And pinging isn't illegal. But hackers use pinging programs to find unsecure computers so they can gain control over them. In an online forum the admins pretty much have full reign to allow or block that only ends with the forums and its software.

J.P. Greeson, Bob, whoever,
kudos! Thank you for deleting. Its people like you that keep entire communities from joining the intraweb.

-Allch Chcar
Living the dream, 21 acres. No pond, yet.