Assalamu Alaikum
Everyone has valid concerns here. I do urge people to just report the post or PM a mod. Instead of reporting it, many of you respond to the person and take the thread completely off topic, allowing it to thrive on that negativity. You basically take the bait. Now I understand that when someone says something outrageous and we have to clarify it because other people can be reading it and we don't want it to be associated with Islam, but you should still report the post.
Now when it comes to trolls. Usually we can tell right away or we have our suspicions, but with the suspicions there's no possible way to tell unless there's an obvious factor. Otherwise, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt until they actually break the rules or we find out some other way. When we were very vigilant about deleting threads and posts, we got chastised for it, and when we are more laxed, we are "not doing our jobs". It's a lose-lose with you guys

I can pull up several threads about members complaining about how "strict" we get. That's besides the PMs from members who feel extremely insulted, upset, and defensive about their posts and threads getting deleted, which is a whole other issue that we have to deal with on a constant basis.
It would be much easier if things were black and white, but they're not. This is a discussion group and we need to facilitate discussion without members feeling restricted or censored, within reason.
This does go without saying, but I do feel very appreciative of the members who do report posts and moderate without requiring the "moderator" status. Things can escalate very quickly in between the times that I check on the forum, and sometimes I'm not 100% attentive with what's going on, or I intend to do something but get caught up with life, so when I see a reported post I get to it more quickly than having to look through each and every thread or having to figure out what's going on.