LindyBill, respectfully,
“And when you guys go over there, you are acting as trolls.” So, separate but equal?
There are message board services, such as Yahoo, that offer closed membership groups. In my opinion, one of the things that always made SI interesting was that it was relatively open. There were trolls, of course, but they were trolls because of their behavior -- disruptive and personally disrespectful posting -- not because of where they turned up, because they were “liberals”, “conservatives”, “Republicans”, “Democrats”, “wingnuts”, etc., who were caught crossing ideological borders on SI. And, there is always the ignore feature. And peer pressure is also available to keep the discourse constructive. And, then, finally, there is banning, presumably as a last resort. (Why ban someone whom you can simply ignore?)
Prometheus1976 is clearly not a troll, in action or demeanor. The posts he made on the board he was banned from were on-topic and contributory. The action of the moderator on that board was not, in my opinion, anything that was necessary to maintain the constructive, civil flow of interaction on that board between members in good standing in the SI community. To the contrary, I think it was narrow minded, rude, diminishing to the SI community, and not something that deserves a pat on the back.
But, that's just my opinion. (Did I mention that there’s an ignore feature?) |
