How to deal with conspirateurs?

Question

There's a particular kind of user that visits us from time to time: The one who makes a rather bold claim, fails to follow through with a proof and continues to engage in a passive-aggressive exchange with the brave few who attempt to answer his question or use the comments section.

This {adjective} vampire* is not unique to Crypto, but can be found on all SE sites of theoretical nature. What makes him unique in our corner of the Exchange is the occasional reference to some "lobby" which doesn't want the question in public, or allegations of "Internet attacks" and lost connection on his end. Other topics such as the all-seeing, always-meddling {3-letter-agency} or various cabals are also often mentioned.

When mistakes are pointed out, most users are courteous and polite in accepting the fact. It's almost as if the answer they were looking for was something other than "well done you!". Others are not, and they usually get a rain of downvotes and eventually get the message. The vampire however does not - it will instead fall back to the patterns mentioned above.

• Is this user more trouble than is worth?

  and if so

• Should there be special provisions for this case?

I have no idea what the provisions would be. Complete radio silence from the rest is an option, as is the user limbo Attwood has talked about (can't find the link) though both options compromise the character of Crypto.SE.

**Not sure what the correct adjective is*

recent examples: First claim -> this new account and question

Answer 1

My rather long experience on various usenet forums leads to a single useful conclusion:

Ignore such threads entirely.

For any feedback is ultimately a reinforcement.

Answer 2

Since I figure Meta is a bit 'free', I'll put this comment here for its own discussion:

Often, these occurrences seem to follow the structure of:

1. Ambiguous/gibberish claim with a "aren't I brilliant?" line to make it a question.
2. A hardworking user cleans it up (usually e-sushi!)
3. Someone answers the question by demonstrating why the "breakthrough" is incorrect.
4. Most of the community agrees with this answer, and is impressed that someone bothered to write it up. One or more of the following occurs:
   • The O.P. is just ignores the logic presented within.
   • The OP to start moving the target, claiming they see a flaw in the counter-example, and their actual scheme avoids this, but they can't post all the details because [select one or more from]…
     • they will be assassinated
     • someone will steal their idea.
     • don't want to share because we're against them personally and won't listen anyway.
     • we wouldn't understand the details.
5. Community gives up on the question and starts to close it.
6. O.P. claims the community is persecuting them.
7. Everyone gives up and the question sinks into the abyss.
8. Many moons pass.
9. The user posts almost exactly the same question again, and followers of this flowchart implement GOTO: 1 because we're too cool for structured loops.

Answer 3

There seems to be another form of conspiracy that hasn't been mentioned.

One user posts their question, is told their answer is plaigarism from a different SE site....and a different user posts the same question, which is then answered by the first user.

There are two issues I draw from this. The first is plagiarism, obviously the first OP stole an answer and then used it to answer his own question. When he was informed that he had been caught, his answer was deleted.

The second user posted an exact duplicate of the question, so someone plagiarized again here.

Other than the increase in players from one, to more than one, it really does follow figlesquidge's methods...it was just a really fast turn-around from 1 up to GOTO 1.

My concern is that if we ignore these types of threads altogether the plagiarism will go unchecked.