There's no rule, precedent, or consensus for banning a person simply for the choice to comment rather than to post. As I said, you could fit illogic or dilatoriness into the current rules, and I add there's a disclaimer against trolling, though that can be easily abused and needs formal definition. But selecting to comment only instead of posting is not trolling.

You're making a personal false equivalence by daring me to delete posts, which isn't a dare I see as useful. The record shows that I do have a habit of hiding some of my biggest contributions in comments rather than posts, because I personally limit posts to established categories with a few specialized one-off ideas; I still want posts to be high-effort and well-placed. So I already have a leaning toward declining to post that is different from your leaning in judging content. That shouldn't be an issue and I'm mystified why your response runs that direction. It may be that I'm disappointing you by not jumping straight to crackdown against what you clearly see as shillery; but that's the point of moderation, namely to find the moderate response to the whole of the community's views. If someone's being immoderate (and the extended illogic, dilation, or deliberate obfuscation might qualify), that gets moderated; but a self-imposed limit on one's contributions isn't immoderate, in fact it's moderate. You can't make someone post.

Looking forward to your thoughts on my swift report to Paleo and his swift use of the suspension tool. Now let's see how I would think about your questions.

How would you recognize a shill?

A shill is defined by insincerity of statement, evidenced by alignment with known movements against community interest. Here interest is defined very open-endedly in the sidebar as freedom, imagination, respect, openness, fairness, and transparency, so those being individualist there's not a lot there to encourage community, collaboration, deliberation, or cooperation.

Now I greatly appreciate and hereby bookmark your Stop Shills post. So let's see. I've already hinted to you that there is pretty obvious evidence (to me) of Forum Sliding toward a particular form of collectivism, and indicated that I tolerate this as part of the territory. Everyone has an equal right to direct the forum, and if the more powerful make it a successful slide toward some conspiracies rather than others then I can't argue against that on the grounds of the forum goals. It's "undue weight" but it doesn't have the effect of nullifying anything else being said. To prevent Forum Sliding there would need to be agreement on what constitutes undue weight among the many conspiracies possible, and I don't see that arising easily. Most free-speech fora here simply let everyone in and the squeaky wheels get, not grease, but bandwidth that ultimately does little for them. Perhaps there might be agreement that shilling for one or more established conspirator networks is straightforward, but I kinda thought the point is that all theories are kept theoretical until broad consensus can arise on them, and I would be hard-pressed to define consensus that has arisen (partly because I haven't read a lot of this forum). So there are many pattern recognitions by which I can suspect a person is shilling via sliding, but the boundary at which point a mod should pull the trigger (use the tool) must be more than on the suspicion level alone. [Add: yes, no-sliding is a rule, so we can work from that for a better definition; objective enforcement would still treat it more like managing spam than like an excuse to censor.]

Topic Dilution is very similarly handled, and if the goal is resource burn then the mod should simply favor quick solutions that answer that goal. (I often don't because I like explaining to myself and others, and I self-regulate how much time I take doing it.) Consensus Cracking relies on disinformation and there a shill need not even be called out (unless there is repetitive pattern) because we have good researchers.

So the mod team, while aware of many metrics of measuring shilling levels, should act when a situation crosses some objective line. Illogic is demonstrated by insincerity via alignment with censorship, disrespect, closed-mindedness, disinformation, etc. Dilation (dilution) usually follows straightforward spam rules. Trolling is ordinary disruption (platform misuse) and is marked by incongruity with social standards. That seems sufficient without a rush to judgment of every comment.

Is any confusing comment worthy to be here, just because you don't understand it?

Admin preaches inclusivism, namely defaulting to retention rather than to removal. The question is, does the confusion cross a line into the objective negative, not does it fail to reach a level I view as positive. Conspiracy discussion should permit confusing theories up to a point. Confusion is not a reason to remove, it's a reason to test for more data to see whether the user is onto something or is just incoherent by communal judgment. Deliberate intransigence about illogic is a reason to remove, but usually isn't judged based on a single confusing post.

If you're truly trying to help people understand something, why wouldn't you post ever?

That sounds like ideating that membership should be vetted on their attempts to help understanding. Free discussion isn't about attempting a coordinate goal. I suppose we could argue that obscurantism goes against the goal of increasing transparency, but most conspiracy theories don't start out with fully transparent explanations but are hunches, and it seems that freedom to work is still needed. Now, this user does make plain, when asked, that as an individual (a one) he has little concern for other individuals (as they are different expressions of a one), and specifically he doesn't suggest explanations but only interacts for himself (and whomever will). I don't do justice to his language, of course. So should we ban him because he was no interest in community? That doesn't seem the purpose here, but as I said that could be a community question (what are we here to jointly do, that if we go against we can be disciplined for).

And if you're too soft on shills, then why would anyone need you in a conspiracy forum?

I learned that conspiracy theories include "The conspiracy theorists are manipulating the world!" I question everything including the questioning principle. There are many interpretations here. If evidence indicates that there is, or has been, a strong consensus for certain conspiracy theories being well-established, then shilling against those might be better indicated. But a mod usually doesn't judge a shill based on a single report (unless the violation is very objective). If the community wants a crackdown, they can make that clear right now (but they haven't). But we started with the goal that they do want activity and communal access to appoint a moderator to use tools.

If you stay with your beliefs and allow mods like this, then there's no value in you being a mod, is there?

There's not a value in being soft on violations and getting mocked by the violators (disrespect, another violation). My beliefs are that violations should be (um) transparently codified and (um) fairly enforced. Your question seems to go to the idea that a harder-line interpretation than the existing objective rules would be called for. Well, if the community agrees then I would too. But (getting back to individual morality) we each have different ideas on what is good behavior and we are in the process of improving those ideas to better reflect God's. So if we two disagree on best practices that can be worked out in time. To me the evenness of enforcement is more important than the particular ruleset because the community can modify the ruleset (or the moderator independently at need) but uneven enforcement is forum-sliding against the rule of law.

if you can't think of ways to defend this community from them, then what is your real goal?

I didn't propose moderation with enemies or defense in mind primarily, but with collaboration and community-building (and ultimately witness to truth). The basic free-speech approach is well-summarized by respect, and telling everyone if you don't like another's speech that's tough. Only clear violations are deleted, not offenses against emotions. I haven't conceived this community as having a narrower goal than letting theories rise out of free speech. When I went to c/Christianity I had a goal in mind ("study and forum"), shared it with the community, got their approval, saw God's hand moving in it, and we've operated pretty smoothly since. Here I don't have a vision that we should force a goal. The closest idea I've had so far (not having reflected on it much) is that a mod could assist in crystalizing consensus by analyzing roundtables and posting summaries to establish settled paths of (improvable) conclusions. Much of that could be done by a mod who has an agenda; but I don't come to Conspiracies with an agenda beyond seeing what God wants of me. Perhaps you have an agenda (which is fine) about what constitutes a shill or an enemy. That can easily be elaborated on and vetted by others so as to gain traction for moderation.

As I implied, I write things out partly to clarify them for myself as well as the audience. I hope that helps you, because it certainly helps me to clarify position by handling hypotheticals. If we select a mod team I'm certainly going to direct certain views toward those forum goals like transparency and fairness because that's an established community agenda. It's possible we might not have a mod team that agrees with my direction and my Scored participation might regroup otherwise. But I have high hopes that we will get admin permission to move forward (assuming the community is ready to leave anarchy).