This.  Heck I remember when a few thought ZeldaRing and I were the same person, so I got called a few names. 

The problem with labels, most of the time they are inaccurate.  And labels usually get tossed around because someone is immature and can't handle a difference of opinion.

I don't know why people thought he was you but the funny thing about that is that he did turn out to be a troll, it was QuickRick

Kind of a shame.  He was a good person to chat with via messaging.  I thought he had pretty good tastes in games.  

Agree with JackHandy.

To add to it:
Th problem with REAL trolls, is thy waiting for you to call them one so they can go beat one off in the corner with satisfaction, so calling them out won't make them stop.

Well...

I'm not against calling out someone for trolling (although this would obviously be reviewed on a case-by-case and you are better off reporting them). I do have an issue with insults and name calling however.

That said, it doesn't always require a stern hand, so that too would be handled on a case-by-case basis. It also depends on the severity of the one trolling. So, much to the agreeance of folks who brought up online harassment, I would always advise looking at the totality of a situation before calling someone a troll.

Not trying to put you on the spot here, but wondering how you're able to gauge how often they get moderated?
Because the majority of moderations should not be noticable to anyone other than the person being moderated.

Most of the time it's in the form of an official warning, that goes into their Moderation History. Which can only be viewed by the person themselves, or moderators/staff. (They also get a copy automatically sent to their DM inbox)
Other times it's in the form of a verbal warning through DM.

The only times a moderation is visible to everyone is if someone gets banned, or if a moderator makes a public statement about it.
But those those are much less common than the other outcomes I mentioned.

That said, not every incident leads to an action. But if you believe to know how often it occurs in general, then there may be some missunderstanding.

I think members calling out others who misbehave in public can be a good thing. While some trolls do want more attention, they also commonly want to get away with it.

I imagine one issue with that is whether the person labeling someone a troll is sensible enough to do so in a reasonable manner. How many members here fall under that category? I'm sure some do. But not everyone.
Which can lead to people wrongfully being labeled as trolls when they were being genuine.

I don't know why exactly that rule was established in the first place. It would be interesting if we could hear what the reasoning was from the people who decided on it.
We don't like personal attacks in general. So that may have been part of why it became forbidden.

That said, members can spot things that staff miss, or be more informed about a potential troll in general.
I don't think calling them trolls in the comment would speed up the process to get them banned though. But it may discourage them from doing it to some extent, in the meantime.

Have any of the people posting here ever been consistent trolls or have posted in ways that may get them mistaken for trolls in the deep past?

I imagine the rule is there to prevent people being called a troll or even worse by someone else simply because that person doesn't like what they are reading.

Seems like you are mostly considering the very obvious cases, where reporting it to moderation can easily lead to actions being taken, where I believe the rule is there to prevent baseless slander just because someone else dislike or simply disagree with an opinion.

If the act is that obvious, I doubt moderation will ban you for simply calling it a troll anyway, I imagine that would happen if you escalated the insult quite a bit more than just that, but if you start calling people trolls and you are doing it unfairly so yeah, you may end up being moderated yourself.

I think as long as the site has a moderation team this kind of rule is more valid than not having it.

Why does it matter if we can call someone a troll? You think the troll’s gonna care? Lol. You literally just started a thread b/c you want to name-call w/o repercussion.

Just recently you got permabanned from political threads for trolling after I called you a troll. And evidently, you care a lot about that since you keep mentioning my name in your posts, including in this thread. And evidently, you care about this rule and the protection it can grant you.