Long time reader, bothered to register to ask this one question. The pattern is fully consistent with a drive-by propaganda mouthpiece. Possibly a bot, possibly a paid schill, possibly a super bored individual.
His/her/it's stats, as of now:
16,717 posts, 489 comments. This means: started 16,717 new threads, only replied in 489. 16,717 drive-by threads, often with misleading header, vs. 489 attempts at conversation.
It's actually worse. Of those 489 comments, majority are his own follow-ups to his own thread titles. As in comment #2 in a thread. Number of legitimate responses to other forum members are either in low 3- or 2-digits. So forget about 489. tovarichpeter ratio is somewhere around 1 response for 100 drive-by copy/paste of propaganda junk. That's his/her/it's contribution to the forum thus far.
Open forum, yeah, yeah. If someone used my real estate, virtual or physical, for his/her/it's political banners, I'd be pissed.
Oh, and thanks for the site. Helped me to make right decision a decade ago, and then another right decision a bit later (although the second one went against site's theme back then, but I listened to both sides)
Edit: turned out, tovarichpeter is a real person and not a bot. Question withdrawn (and title edited, was: "Why does Patrick keep tovarichpeter on the board!?"). tovarichpeter, I promise to read you next 2 links as a penance. Please make them good, something about how USA should be more like Sweden.
Hi @"mostly reader" the answer is because I don't censor anything except the 5 forbidden categories:
Try the lovely "ignore" link on his page if you really don't want to see his posts: https://patrick.net/users/tovarichpeter
My principal principle (lol) in running the site is that everyone should be able to say whatever they want outside of those five categories. https://patrick.net/about
BTW, I've met Peter. He's a real person, and I'm certain he's not paid to post.