I am adamantly against that sort of thing, building traffic "Jerry Springer style". ART was formed to get away from that kind of place. I would rather have a post with a single reply containing useful information or at least friendly comments than a hundred replies of nonsense and ad hominem attacks. Even if the longer thread brings more traffic, I'd rather take the high road. That's what ART is all about.I have always been pretty lucky about not having problems with horseplay or unfriendly sockpuppets and shills on the π Speakers forum, but I have had one or two over the years. I just delete them on the rare occasion that they pop up. If someone has a legitimate complaint, we can usually resolve it and those kinds of posts aren't deleted. But if it's horseplay, like Magnetar saying something about your mother or Romy the Cat saying some unrecognizable nonsense with racial slurs and insults mixed in, that gets deleted.
Personally, I have no respect for a website owner that allows that kind of stuff just to build traffic. I know some folks like that, and I don't want to have anything to do with them. Public mesageboards aren't a local bar where you can hang out and cut up in relative privacy with a few of your friends. Internet discussion forums have very high traffic and comments made in them are permanent.