Thinking outside the box... and having some background in a self-help forum that often experienced nastiness and conflicts between "civilized" and "nasty" groups of posters over on eBay's Answer Center ... let me just toss out a couple ideas to be considered, discussed, dismissed, whatever, but that might serve to moderate things without the need for censorship....
One, in the eBay Answer Center, people needing help posted their problem, question, concern, or rant. There was a limit of ten responses and then the thread locked. Usually the first person to get to the thread would request additional information if the first post was not adequate to provide a definitive answer. Others would come on and provide help or suggestions as OP explained further, and nearly always, within the ten posts, the question would be answered with correct information based on eBay rules. Sometimes there were differences in posting style, and occasionally newbies who didn't know what they were talking about tried to answer with their best guess and would be promptly corrected by more experienced responders. It was also possible to send a message to the poster directly if the thread locked with questions unanswered.
Two, maybe instead of just "Mystery shopping discussion" and "mystery shopping company discussion" an additional rant-free forum called "Mystery Shop Forum Help Center" could be added -- and subject just that forum to a ten response limit rule. (Maybe 15, it just needs to be for the purpose of giving OP advice and help, not discussing what happened for three weeks.) Again, if someone wanted to say something after the thread locked, they could PM the OP. Rants posted there would be moved to.....:
Three, maybe a "Pardon my rant" forum could be added where the "Don't shop for this company" rants could be posted with only the MSC name and the date of the original post in the title, not the insults, character assassination, libelous comments that we see now. Each rant thread to have maybe two days to run, then lock it down.
the current "discussion" forums could remain to discuss methods, instructions, how to contact schedulers, discussing MSC quirks and policies -- not really solving specific problems, just places to gain greater understanding of the mystery shopping world.
As entertaining as our multiple personality troll has been lately, it is disrupting the operations and purpose of the forum because new members don't know that we're beating up a troll, they just think we're beating up a clueless newbie and they don't want that to happen to them. So I personally would like to see this particular troll's multiple IDs all deactivated and all their IP addresses blocked. But I know I can just toggle them if others want to play with them some more.
I would even support requiring some token payment to post -- if anyone were free to read here but had to pay a few bucks to activate an ID for posting privileges ... at least Jacob would gain something toward the upkeep of the forum if a troll wanted to create 10 IDs and pay $5 each to be able to post. After they paid for a few only to see them deactivated without refund they might just take their ball and go torment the V site instead.
Anyway, just some random ideas that may or may not fit in here. But I thought I'd bring them up. I don't even know if it's possible to do these things but it might be something to look into.
Time to build a bigger bridge.