here's the story folks: shortly before being alerted to the post, i learned of an option in the forum software that does something pretty cool, on the face of it: it's a 'global ignore'. i add the user to a special list, and his posts become invisible to everyone on the Garden......except for the poster himself! i kind of like that - the poor sod merrily posting away, thinking he's having a grand old time disrupting the place, when in fact he's amusing only himself.
that's what i did with mssr. faceseat. the problem was the ID photo faceseat had added to his profile - i hadn't considered that. so while his posts remain invisible to the world, his profile continued to be there, where the probing minds of the ForumGarden elite picked it up and mentioned it here. Since then, the account has been removed.
I will probably employ the 'global ignore' however for the random spammer that shows up. and a reminder: email
abuse@forumgarden.com, and we'll be paged - that way the losers who try to disrupt this place while have only the briefest of intervals with which to get away with it.