I think the point of the article was not that he earned a bad reputation for griefing - it was more that people reverted to a rather medieval behaviour when confronted with such a situation. Earning a bad reputation and being denounced as a pedophile are two entirely different things.

If someone farts in your face repeatedly and you go on to punch them or harass them in any way that is considered inappropriate by society, would you say that your actions were 'justified?' To me, that would seem rather biblical, in the negative sense: eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

So the point is: we're still in the biblical era of social behaviour: if someone harasses us, we harass back. Though I wouldn't know how to respond 'properly' and in a 'civilized' fashion to such a situation, even though I'm an online gamer myself. In WoW, there's the anti-social practice of 'corpse-camping' someone, and thus killing them repeatedly. In such cases I just log off and play an alt, and let the camper waste his time.