Barbelith Underground > Policy & Help > What exactly does get you banned on Barbelith?

Okay - ploughing in a little here. Yeah it's true that one type of humour is based upon saying obviously controversial or forbidden things and that it's being-on-the-edge stuff makes it the more amusing. Except of course if you fall off that edge, at which point, you know, it's not funny any more. This is a risk you take when you make humour on the edges, and it seems to me that people should go into that kind of stuff with their eyes open. People aren't obliged to find other people funny. And sure - people might find things offensive and if they do should feel more than comfortable to stand up and protest and argue and fight for their opinion. On the whole I think, this stuff tends to come out in the wash and everyone's the better for it afterwards.

So there's the utopian vision - people go in with their eyes open, if they cross a line someone will protest and then the general will of the community will manifest itself in terms of who seems the more reasonable. Ideally, the person who made the original comment will take the criticism on board, examine it rationally, try to work out why the other person is finding it offensive and stick with it / retract it depending on how reasonable they think the debate is or how much they want to be seen to be reasonable.

Practically there are a few other issues here. Basically as far as I'm personally concerned, people on Barbelith are more than entitled to express their opinions any way they want as long as they're not spamming the board, harrassing other members or saying anything that could get me into legal trouble. I consider some forms of trolling to be basically a kind of spamming - ie. broadcast onto the site rather than engagement with it. We have said in the past too that language that is intentionally racist or homophobic or sexist or anti-semitic and the like could make ethnic minorities, gay people, women, Jewish people etc. feel very uncomfortable or unwelcome on the board - even on occasions scared. As such it seems to me eminently fair that we should consider sustained racist / homophobic / sexist and anti-semitic post and language to constitute a form of harrassment of those members of Barbelith who belong to those groups. People who harrass members of Barbelith get booted out.

So I think at this point we have to consider whether the language itself consitutes harrassment wherever or whenever it is used - to which I would think the answer is no - and whether the persistence, strength or perceived intent of the language should be a relevant consideration. I think it basically should be. If someone says something uncharacteristically stupid, then we should give them the benefit of the doubt and query what they're doing and give them the opportunity to either hang themselves or apologise or rephrase. If someone says something based on a clear and proselytising belief that gay people / jewish people / women / gypsies etc are bad or evil or stupid and need to be controlled or put down or whatever, then we don't. They are banned. The scale of the comment, its persistence and its intent have to be taken seriously as considerations.

I think the argument that someone was 'just trying to be funny' here is a legitimate one - but they have to learn from that if people just didn't find it funny. They're within their rights as far as I am concerned to say, "Hm. I was just trying to be funny, but I guess for some of the people here I overstepped the mark. Rest assured I've taken it on board and if I'm angling for a laugh I won't use language like that again." Again people aren't obliged to find other people funny.

I would also add that members of the board should consider HOW to respond to someone who has made a stupid comment. People should bear in mind what they want the end result to be - do they want to cause a big fight, communicate the values that most people on Barbelith are comfortable with, or do they want to change someone's mind? More importantly people should consider what might not be preferable outcomes - like alienated new members who could have value but who are inspired to rampage by the frustrations of the unspoken rules of a new community. Basically, this is an appeal to have some perspective and to try and work out how to approach someone about something they might have said without putting them on the defensive, without cornering them so they feel they have to fight, and without allowing them to take the role of the oppressed revolutionary. People can be wrong without having their noses rubbed in it, they can say stupid things without being evil people. I do think it's important that we don't always think the purpose of a discussion is to win.

In this particular case, I'd appeal - as ever - for everyone to calm down a bit, for Psionic Nurse to recognise that perhaps his humour fell a bit flat and to consider changing his material for his audience, and for the rest of us to work on the principle that being liberal is about giving the benefit of the doubt, trying to reason with people and being measured in our use of last resort weapons like banning. If Psionic Nurse is going to harrass people - which I hope he/she won't and don't think he/she had much intention to do - then this will manifest itself quickly enough, and we'd all be more than able then to take action.

In the meantime though, I'm pretty cool with how this thread has emerged - I think it's been a good and mostly pretty reasonable discussion that's raised most of the issues around this stuff pretty well and given a suitable opportunity for redress. It's way way calmer than some of the (necessary?) witch-hunts that happened after the assaults by you-know-who when the community felt much much more fragile than this, and I'm delighted by that. Thanks everyone (including Psionic Nurse) for on-the-whole being pretty reasonable and good natured about the whole thing.