QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS SITE

[BigV]

"Hahaha, ladies, I'm just playin' ladies, you know I love you."

People say the craziest shit, don't they?

I have said I don't believe there's been a crime committed here, I still believe that. But as Dana and others have said, there's another standard here, our community standard. It is clear that JBK's statement has violated that standard, despite the fact that that standard is subjective and not explicitly published anywhere. It is the standard that we dwellars carry inside ourselves each day. It's not static, it's not identical from one dwellar to another, but it is real.

I find his remark offensive. Others find his remark offensive. I have a problem with talk like that and so do many others. That problem needs solving, needs correction, needs addressing. Here in the cellar, we have very few explicit rules of conduct, and we have very few definite measures to enforce those rules. Though I find his remarks unacceptable, banning him for that remark is the wrong response to that problem. Banning is the wrong tool for this job.

Banning is our most severe response to misbehavior. Misbehavior is not a great term, it sounds much too mild, but I won't use other terms I know are incorrect like "criminal behavior". We have reserved banning for self protection of the cellar itself, for violation of our (few) rules, it is the capital punishment of our code. Since JBK's remarks and actions have not violated our written rules, he should not be subject to this consequence. He *has* violated other "rules" though, he should be subject to other consequences. We have other responses available to us. Most powerful and most effective is open communication among ourselves, including JBK (ironically the exact opposite of banning). It is good that this is happening.

There are other responses available too, like ignoring, formally via the ignore function and informally by just not responding. We do this all the time too, we've got a phrase for it "don't feed the troll" (though JBK isn't trolling in my opinion). This is very effective and may well be in place for individual dwellars. This kind of shunning has the advantages of being very fine grained for the cellar as a whole and for individuals. Some can do it and others can refrain, one can do it sometimes and sometimes not. It's reusable, it's discreet and discrete.

Mocking and shunning are group responses like discussion and ignoring and they can also be effective. I see some of both of these happening here. All these other responses, short of banning are better tools for this problem. I like discussion (no surprise there). And I would like to continue the discussion. What has JBK done? What should be our response? What should JBK's response be? Some things are already established--his remark(s) are offensive and his remarks are not criminal. What now?