i'm not saying that you shouldn't explore all the options. but "stealth moderation" is, by its nature, a secret discouragement system. it means that, in your list of rules & consequences, you must lie to your community and accept any negative consequences of this lie. i just can't seem to reconcile it with your statement that there should be a clear code of conduct. i believe that it takes a certain amount of hubris to assume that the people you want to exclude are, by their nature, not as smart as you. you may be right about the people you're trying to exclude; i defer to your judgement, i'm not a member of the communities you are; but where i come from, the best & the brightest are the ones being cast out. they're cast out from communities by the following chain of events: 1) secretive backhanded moderation tactic by the admins is discovered 2) someone alerts the community 3) the most technically apt in the community are able to reproduce the backhanded moderation tactic and verify its existence 4) these people call foul and are labelled "trolls" for doing so, leading to the institution of more of 1) (repeat). this is how i started down the road i'm on. i was one of the many people who discovered that the people at slashdot were secretly moderating the users' comments, and one day they moderated the same comment 800 times - and then they lied about it, and said anyone who told the truth about it was a "troll". hence i became what they called me.