Doesn't the same hold for good posts?
No, because upvoting isn't being baited. People downvote to discourage posts like the one being voted one, but trolls aspire to acquire those downvotes. So the downvotes are wasted (are, in fact, counterproductive). Upvotes do exactly what they're intended to do, so they're not wasted.
real trolls care about responses
As I said, I expect responses to be reduced when people know that the post has already been widely dismissed.
Just go to the sign-on page, enter an email address of 'troll@mailinator.org', collect your password, and you're off.
That gives the monks more information, so I see that as a benefit, not a tactic that completely negates my proposal. People notice new names and see that it's their first post or remember that they have a history of bad posts. That's why most trolls use Anonymous Monk.
Trolls are not the problem. Troll droppings are: the replies.[...] the damage will be done before enough downvotes have been collected
My proposal was all about reducing the response to trolls by giving people an indication that they don't need to reply or vote. You speak of "the damage" as if it's an all-at-once situation. The troll threads of the last week continued to fester for days. What I propose would start a process of containment within the first hour (based on my observations).
It did occur to me to make certain posts un-reply-able, but that would be too problematic. My proposal does not impinge on freedom (except, in my alternate proposal, the freedom to continue to downvote a trash post, and that's one reason it's not my primary proposal). The strongest criticism of my proposal is that it's not needed or wouldn't work. Nobody has given any reason to think it would do any kind of harm.
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