You can confront the source all you want.
What do you mean with protect the thread? Posting?
Any measure to prevent or deter members from posting,which in many circumstances the rather baseless accusations have caused, is against the idea of a free forum.
Yes, this may lead that even shills be able to post. Either everyone can participate or you install mods.
If you measure both options, the risk that a few shills post is way better than the adminstration is filling their own pockets and you are not able to speak against it.
We obviously differ in our opinion of what a shill is. For example: Posting your opinion/experience on the gear even without any backup in my opinion is fine. The (hopefully adult) reader has to decide how much this mean to him.
In the hope that the mass of feedback, which freedom allows, will result in a as objectivly as possible picture of the source
This is my opinion how meso works and in the nature of this post you can of course disagree.