Testing intolerance....

So as a social engineering experiment, I created an RPF screen name and registered using an IP anonymizing browser. No way AA could have traced it to any previously banned member. The user name was "weltschmertz".

I posted twice in the Technical Questions and Support sub-forum. Once to say that infraction points were, as I put it, "bee ess" and again to voice disagreement with the word filter. Neither post contained profanity or insulted anyone. Both posts decried treating people like children in a message forum community, and in a style markedly different from my own M.O.

I was banned within 15 minutes for "spamming". Again, there was no way the screen name could be traced to any banned member via IP checking or any other method of kiddie scripting at the disposal of the RPF.

So the upshot is that a putative new member with no known association to any banned member and no track record gets banned immediately for "spamming" because his first two posts are critical of the heavy-handed moderation of AA, the latest in a sorry line of martinets.

As experiments go, it's scary and enlightening stuff.