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I really don't know what good this can do, though. The disruptors, if malicious, won't stop based on any entreaty and most of them are gone within two weeks, so they won't see this anyway. I don't know what the solution is and I don't know how/whether JimRob wants to resolve it.

There are several ways I can think of offhand, but any would change the nature of FR:

Have ranks of membership, e.g.: probationary, junior, senior, that appears either with each article post or with each reply. For example with a colored dot next to the name.
Post member date along with each article posted.
Provide a probationary period for each member. (There are sleeper accounts, of course.)
Make a statistical graph (say posting rate/week or rate/month) available for each member.

Some of these would be impossible to do, some undesirable.

I think the biggest problem is that certain factions are unwilling to police their own. Right now, the Bush-bashers, of course, have the highest percentage of distruptors. But, the genuine posters in this group seem so happy to have the support that they are unwilling to out disruptors in their midst.

On the positive side, these things happen in waves. Not too many months ago, one could not help but see antiwar.com or lewrockwell.com articles everytime one was browsing. Now they're impossible to find. Those of us who have been around a while, I think, don't mind it so much because we've seen it before.

I really don't know what good this can do, though.

I think it helps to know there are people out there intentionally trying to torpedo us. Might cause one to stop and think before being pulled into an agrument.

I think the biggest problem is that certain factions are unwilling to police their own. Right now, the Bush-bashers, of course, have the highest percentage of distruptors. But, the genuine posters in this group seem so happy to have the support that they are unwilling to out disruptors in their midst.

How pot? How kettle.
Counterpoint.
There are plenty flying monkeys among the Bush Loyalists, who do little to "police their own."

I really don't know what good this can do, though. The disruptors, if malicious, won't stop based on any entreaty and most of them are gone within two weeks, so they won't see this anyway.

Seems to me that he's addressing the the non-disruptors here, who can do something about it: think twice, and don't take the bait.

IOW, I see him preaching to the congregation here, not the choir.

It's kind of sad that there are so many emotional buttons around here for the disruptors--the masterflame-debaters--to mash on. We're talking flame bandwidth here, and that's something that, at least in principle, we grownups could do something about.