On self martyrdom and getting banned

In what I hope will be my last post of the subject I want to put down some rules on what won’t and what will get you banned on this blog.

It has become clear to me that with people (unique IP addresses) finding my blog at a rate of about a 100 each day of the week with about 50% of those being from New Zealand it has become clear to me that I will actually have to come up with a policy as to what I will and will not allow on my blog.

I have taken my cue off the Standard blog as they seem to have a high tolerance for robust debate while being rigorous in their anti-trolling/Schill policies.

But while they are the main source of what will become my policy there are some differences I want to emphasize too.

Like them I really don’t want to ban anyone as debate is a good thing and I would love more debate among commentators on this blog. I would love for commentators who do not agree with others to engage in debate based on arguments supported by links and if things get hot so much the better.

In order to facilitate this here are some of the things that will get you banned and this is where I will act differently to the Standardistas and here is why:

I am the sole writer/moderator of this blog. I have to gather material, select what to publish and write my own posts. And it may not occur to my readers but I don’t get paid for doing this so I have obligations in the “real” world which means I don’t have time nor inclination to engage in endless discussions with commentators. So if you engage in what at the Standard is so aptly named self martyrdom when trying to engage me in discussions you will get one warning and then a ban. I don’t ban for one week or two, I ban permanently. The reason for this is that unlike the Standardistas who take turns reading every comment as it comes in and moderate their blog I don’t have that time and will therefore have to be rigorous in my banning policy.

Here are some forms of self-martyrdom as pointed out in the Standard policy:

There are a number of topics and actions that are viewed as being self-evident attempts at martyrdom. They typically result in immediate and sometimes a permanent ban.

A partial list of these self-martyrdom offenses include:-

• Generally wasting a moderators time is just not a good idea. We’re there to deal with isolated problems. People persistently sucking up our voluntary time won’t like the results.
• Abusing the sysop or post writers on their own site – including telling us how to run our site or what we should write. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity, and should be added as a category to the Darwin Awards.
• Describing the site as having ulterior motivations, being a tool of someone, or generally being ignorant of where you have come to. When visiting a blog site it always pays to read the About pages before making a fool of yourself. Then you will know what the site is about. Failure to do so is just bad bad manners.
• Similarly, people should read the site policy before commenting on or even worse demanding that our policies should change. We might tolerate someone doing it once, but people asking about topics that are in this page are liable to get long educational bans because it is clear that they need time to read them closely.
• Link-whoring when not in the context of the comment thread. We have advertisers who pay to hire our space to pay for the servers. Link-whores do not contribute, so why should we allow you to advertise here? You can link to your own site provided it isn’t excessive, explains why you think it should be read (so people can decide not to go there without clicking into it), is short, and you either do it in OpenMike or within the context of the post or surrounding comments.
• Similarly pasting long materials from other sites, especially copyrighted materials, is not permitted. Just link and selectively quote. Repeated offences is really dumb.
• Being banned and arguing that we have no ‘right’ to ban you. Arguing with moderation is a darwinian trait that usually results in a rapid education about who runs the site (regardless which of your many pseudonym’s you use).

There is one more issue I take very serious and while I will judge carefully if it is warranted in each case I will ban people who use this platform to call for violence. I abhor violence and while I understand that the situation we find ourselves in is cause for alarm and will push many of us to the limit I will not tolerate my blog to be used to incite violence.

I hope this gives some direction on how to behave on this blog and how more importantly how to behave towards me. If you can live with these rules be my guest and let the fun begin.