
Originally Posted by
lol wow
Simmer down chang
Chang really does need to simmer down.
He's comparing my banning of years-long trolls who posted on the forum for the sole purpose of harassing me to my allowing of the free expression of ideas.
Blake, if you can't see the difference there, I don't know what to tell you.
Think about college campuses back in the days when they weren't censoring speech. You could go to the public square and express the most controversial viewpoints possible, and you wouldn't be thrown out. However, you weren't allowed to follow around individual students and repeatedly harass them. That's basically the situation here.
Let's say I do what blake seems to want and ban those engaging in antisemitic speech. What do I do with people like Pooh who use the N-word to describe black people? Ban them too? What about the people who post derogatory terms about gays and transsexuals? Ban them, as well? Or should I only stop the Jew-bashing but allow all of the other racism? That would be incredibly hypocritical.
Running a forum which allows free expression of ideas comes at a cost of allowing ideas expressed which people don't like.
I did ban FPS_Russia because he was posting incoherent garbage which didn't even relate to the topics being discussed. But aside from things like that, I'm letting people express their opinions, even if those opinions are offensive and ignorant.