Over the years, we have developed "whipping boys" whose posts regularly receive very few, or no, recs, and are blocked by some altogether. The "whipped" poster usually finally disappears or tries to moderate his or her posts to become more accepted by the many.

I respectfully disagree with your characterization. First, not recommending a post can hardly be called 'whipping' someone; second, the idea of people becoming 'whipping boys' implies that their punishment is through no fault of their own. People who get tickets because they have driven through an interesection when the light was red are not whipping boys, they are being punished for dangerous or objectionable behaviour. If they change their behaviour as a result, so much the better, that is the purpose of the punishment.

I for one do not recommend hclv's posts because I have him on ignore, and good riddance. I haven't been particularly bothered by rayvt's posts, but looking at the last 20 on the Berkshire board, they almost all have practically nothing to do with Berkshire, so I may eventually ignore those, too. It is true that there is indeed a notion of a Berkshire community, and members of that community should not be expected to always talk only about Berkshire, but as far as I'm concerned, to be in that community, you should occasionally have SOMETHING to say about Berkshire. If the signal to noise ratio is zero, sor close to it, the ignore feature works for me. Life is too short to put up with needless distractions!

Regards, DTB