Well, I’m sorry, but I think we were a better board with Dio and PRR and other posters that were banned.
Maybe it’s just selfishness on my part. I’m afraid I will someday write something stupid and get banned and I’d hate that.
Plus, free speech? I know that’s not a good argument, but it still feels a little lot censoring.
Just my opinion. I don’t really expect to win the argument. 
Does your version of “free speech” involve repeatedly ignoring moderator instructions on a private message board? He didn’t just “write something stupid and get banned”-he wrote something stupid hundreds of times and ignored moderator instructions repeatedly.
Never paid much (any?) attention to him, but it seems to me that repeated attempts to drive traffic to one’s blog despite moderators telling you not to is sufficient reason for banning.
I understand that that is most people’s issue with lekatt (if they have one), but however bad he may be in that respect, it should not even be a factor in a decision to ban someone. That problem can easily be solve with the ignore function (so I hear - I have never felt the need to use it or figure out how to), or with even less drastic measures like your brain’s built-in ignore function.
Are we being told the links to his blog are the real issue now, and the rest is doesn’t figure, because that is not very apparent from the actual announcement of his banning?
Sure it is. If you look at the links in the thread announcing his banning, the last one was because he linked to his blog. That was just a few days ago.
Although Dex is correct that insults have been among the things for which lekatt has been warned, they are not the only thing. Although the reasons are not specifically described in the posts giving the four most recent warnings, two were for not following moderator instructions, and two were for being a jerk.
Of lekatt’s previous warnings before the more recent ones, most were actually for not following moderator instructions, including repeatedly being told not to link to his blog.
It would not be possible to make a violin small enough using existing (known) sub-atomic particles for this particular banning.
I believe that we are being told it is a number of issues.
Just to clarify, then, about linking to one’s blog(s).
Is linking to a blog:
a) rarely or never appropriate regardless of motivation
b) okay if it’s being done to avoid having to retype vast swaths of text from the blog to the relevant thread (thereby also avoiding any potential copyright issues as well)
c) a ‘no-no’ only if it seems the purpose of the link is to increase traffic to the blog
d) none of the above (if this is the correct answer, please elaborate).
Thanks.
My WAG would be that it would depend on the specific circumstances. In this particular case we have someone that, for over ten years, gave links to opinion pieces and anonymous unverifiable anecdotes on his own website when asked for double-blind studies(or any other type of scientific study), and/or scientific evidence. Every single time he entered a conversation in Great Debates it was like everything he had been told about scientific terminology and method over and over and over again through the years had been wiped from his mind-nothing said by poster or moderator ever stuck.
Okay, okay. I said I didn’t expect to win the argument, I just miss those fellas.
Another aspect is that the poster was the author of 3 books that were promoted via his website. There was incentive to post on this board and incentive to evade questions of a scientific nature. Arguably such posters deserve a fair shake. Arguably 5000+ posts over 10 years is more than a fair shake.
I would defend lekatt’s efforts to place paid advertisements on this message board, should he decide to do so.
Upton Sinclair (1935): “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Since he was previously suspended in part for disobeying moderator instructions not to link to his blog, his linking to it again would be sufficient to justify a ban even without any other offenses. However, the other offenses were also considered when deciding on a ban.
Yeah, the ones in the he’s banned thread seemed pretty weak for the most part (though I don’t know what other past offenses he may have had).
The past instructions were that if he ever did anything like that again, his ass was grass.
While they were very good sources of information, they were also trouble on the hoof. I wouldn’t agree that “we were a better board” with them present, merely that they sometimes contributed positively…and, alas, broke the rules too often.
How many warnings have you had? You almost certainly are safe from writing something stupid and getting banned for it. You’d really have to go out on a limb to get yourself banned without at least a couple warnings first.
“Brinksmanship” is not a good idea here, because of the variability among the mods. What one guy might see as a cute bit of provocative badinage, another might see as a warnable offense. The temptation to skate out onto the thin ice should be resisted!
(Grinds teeth, twitches, crosses eyes, gasps a little…and resists.)
No significant loss to the board, IMO. Long overdue.
I’d just like to state that this is a great reason to ban someone, or at least restrict their posting, especially if they’re going to insist on being motivated idiots and repeatedly pollute threads with their nonsense. This behavior doesn’t make them “interesting.”
So this isn’t a bandwagon we’ll expect you to have leapt on, huh?