No reference to that particular way of ending hostilities short of terminating one or both parties is made in the TOU. It's what you might call cyber-common law -- really it's just a civilized arbitration arrangement SI came up with. It has worked well for a long time to resolve apparently insoluble situations between posters who can't get along, and only one person has sued over it.
The TOU say you can't
* Use Silicon Investor for illegal purposes or for the transmission of material that is unlawful, harassing, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, tortuous, improper or otherwise objectionable. *
It is unrealistic to expect SI to excavate dozens of contentious posts in many contentious situations in which dueling parties are, perhaps, as one example, invading (or threatening to) each other's privacy, for example; and after gathering a perhaps lengthy history, to analyze the posts to determine which of the two members has abused or threatened or harmed or been "otherwise objectionable" toward the other... or which did it first...or which did it more.
Anyone who has administered a large program knows there are methods and strategies for bringing about harmony that aren't spelled out in the manual, but are more sensible than getting to the very bottom of every incident of friction.
So...
SI came up with "You two posters can keep your memberships and keep on contributing to our community, but stay strictly away from each other, as the combination of you two is making one (or both) of you very unhappy, and is creating administrative problems."
It works great.
Except of course if someone threatens to sue for the right to keep engaging with a fellow member who has begged him not to. In that case, the contention goes on forever, unless the beleaguer poster leaves SI or finds a haven someplace moderated. |
