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Earlier today I did something unusual. I banned a new user. And I screwed up. Usually, I ban a user when they're spamming us, and when you do that, you want everything they posted to go away.
But when someone's just been a troll, you want their comments to remain--and you especially don't want to lose the comments of others who've interacted with them, or simply posted on the same comment thread as them. And so there's another way to ban folks like that. It's not something I do often. And because it isn't I absent-mindedly forgot & did it the wrong way. I'm hoping there's a way to restore what's been lost--I know the data's still there, but if the necessary pointers are gone, there's probably not a trick that will restore things.
So the first thing I want to do is to apologize to those who got passionately and thoughtfully involved, and posted comments that may now be lost in the ozone, due to my own momentary carelessness.
The second thing I want to do is talk about why I banned that user, and about the larger questions of banning in general. I usually am quite reluctant to ban people. I like the ideal of free speech, not just as a constitutional principle, but as a civic one. The cure for bad ideas and bad attitudes should be better ones.
But we all know that doesn't always work. And we all know there are good reasons to limit free speech--if nothing else, then because you can't very well hear anyone if everyone talks at once. It's less of a problem in cyberspace, of course, which is one of cyberspaces big advantages. But still, there is a need for structure of some sort in order to preserve enough coherence for any meaningful signal to get through. Which is why we recognize things like being off-topic as usually being unhelpful, even anti-social or downright antagonistic at times.
In this case, I banned a new user because he showed clear signs of being a troll. A new comment on a newish diary repeated his bellyaching that my diary was bellyaching, rather than providing any solutions. He'd already had it explained to him that not every diary could be all things to all people. That there was nothing wrong with a diary being purely critical. There would be others that were not. And he appeared to be utterly clueless about--and utterly uninterested in--any of my past writings about possible solutions. He was factually impaired, as well. Now it's entirely possible that he was just a bit dense and unpleasant. That he wasn't trying to be disruptive, that he just couldn't help himself. It sure didn't look that way to me, but fine. He could always ask to be reinstated. And I told him that Chris or Mike might see fit to let him come back... in a comment that's now lost to view.
But what about the broader issue? My thoughts--and yours, should you chose to share them--on the flip.
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