My two knuts

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 30 Jan 2004 at 04:23, "Amy Z" <lupinesque at ...> wrote:

> I strongly object to the question of whether Cindy should have been 
> banned being raised here.

And I strongly object to the implication that any otherwise on-topic 
discussion be banned simply because it pertains to a person who was 
banned.  Are banned people to be "unpersons" in the Orwellian sense, 
to be treated as if they never existed and purged retroactively from 
history?

Since the specific topic of this list is to discuss policy issues 
regarding the entire HPFGU group of lists (an issue that's off topic 
in the other lists), I'd say that discussing whether a past ban was 
justified or not, and whether that person should be "unbanned" now, 
was perfectly on-topic.  It's subject, of course, to objections from 
other participants against beating dead horses, but it would be best 
off left to die out by itself than forcibly banned.

I've been around electronic discussion forums for over 20 years now, 
including campus networks, FidoNet BBSs, Usenet, e-mail lists, web 
forums, etc., and I know that one of the most divisive things any 
moderator can do is to issue a flat ban on discussion of some topic 
that, other than for this edict, would seem otherwise to be perfectly 
within the forum's charter.  People don't like to be censored in this 
way (as Umbridge found out on OOtP), and they find ways around it, 
which sometimes includes starting alternative forums on their own 
which split the group.  Sometimes years of fighting ensues.

-- 
== Dan ==
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