Protecting Freedom of Expression

So what was the final straw that led to the banning then?

I didn't see the Top Shop thread until this morning, but it was the sexist remarks in there that then de-railed the thread. Coming only a day after asserting that he wouldn't do that kind of stuff.

It got to me because whilst a troll is an annoyance and can be difficult to keep threads on topic, this was a bit like pissing on someone else's parade. The Top Shop gig is a great thing for Amy and she's worked hard at it for a long time and been involved in several events that the forum has helped publicise or attended... and here we were with the situation that this troll had managed to so successfully wind up everyone with yet another dumb and inflammatory post that no form of appreciation or recognition of Amy's work could happen, instead we had P-M antagonising on one side, wiganwill exploding on the other and tynan attempting to bury the thread... and what should have been a great moment descend into farce.

If all of these things were one-off's, nothing would happen. If they only occasionally happened, nothing would happen. But for almost every post and thread to seemingly be so out-there and with only one possible result, it's extremely hard to see P-M for being anything other than a troll. I kept trying, and I failed.

I ban trolls. But because it can be subjective I do try and gauge forum feeling on it. Spammers are easy... they're obvious, a few reported posts and I'm done. But trolls? Well it depends, someone got reported a few times last year so I posed the question and the forum agreed he wasn't and to leave it. But with P-M the concensus was largely there. And that 85% of those used the ignore function were ignoring P-M really showed that the forum feeling is not with P-M. So I banned.

And what of freedom of expression. Expression? Don't you mean speech? Anyhow, there is no such thing in the UK, and even in the USA it's not enshrined in law that you can say anything (shouting 'fire' in a theatre is the usual example). What we have instead is societal tolerance within certain boundaries. And society is not censuring P-M's ability to say anything he wants... this little website (a very miniscule slice of society) may have enforced a technical block on those views being expressed here, but society is where the restriction of free speech is measured.

All I am doing is running a communications service between cyclists the best way I know how. As it is a communication service you all get free run of the place, but if/when things are reported I need to act to ensure the continued service and standards for the people who use the service. That means I'll ban one person who is affecting the medium so greatly that it has resulted in a degradation of service for others. So I'll ban the spammers when alerted to their existence, delete spam when alerted to it, and I'll ban the trolls when alerted to those and having given enough slack to determine whether someone really is a troll.

I think it also means I have to act to remove copyrighted material if alerted. But I'm hoping that by asserting that we are a communication service and that you contribute your content to the service under a creative commons license, that such rubbish is your responsibility. But the law is vague as hell on it really and I won't lie that I don't understand it really.