One approach to countering sock-puppetry as a general problem is with increased transparency. Personally, I think lobste.rs' notion of a user tree is a step in the right direction: https://lobste.rs/u

Very interesting. I like that a lot. However I'm not sure it would ever work with an open forum.

Invite only is awesome, but open forums are important too.

What about the opposite approach - enforced anonymity so that arguments have to stand on their own merits?

An appearance of merit can be engineered/manufactured, which is one of the foundational concepts of classical trolling, not to mention thread-poisoning.

Do you have an account there? I would love to get an invite if so, that site looks really cool.

The introduction tree is a great idea. But lobsters community is junk. If you dare have an opinion against their hivemind you get donwvoted to oblivion. It's like a clique took over.

Reddit had a similar problem with truthers taking over discourse at the beginning, luckily it went away. Perhaps because there was a popular parody account mocking them all the time (something like 9_11_was_an_inside_job), and that account retired in time when it's job was done.

Dang, that's frustrating. That's exactly what I was hoping against, having any for of hivemind or clique.