[QUOTE=Priceguy]
No, I have said that I have no right to complain. That is my opinion, and will remain my opinion until a) someone shows where this right comes from or b) my definition of “right” changes.
[/QUOTE]
[…raising hand…] Priceguy fan here. 
I have to say that I was really surprised to hear you say that. I’m sure I can’t (and wouldn’t if I could) force upon you how I view rights, but just so you understand why I disagree with you, I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out. Wait until the end though, because it says some things that, taken alone, may shock a bit. But I promise to tie it all together. Note that this is an ethics viewpoint, and not necessarily a legal one.
At the most basic level, I think rights represent the authority that accrues to ownership of property. You are born with certain rights because you are born with certain property — your body and your mind. With your body comes the right to life; i.e., you have the authority to defend your life and use your body in the way that you believe best secures your safety and happiness. Other people are born with this same right. Therefore, while you have the right to do with your own body what you please, you have no rights with respect to someone else’s body because that right is theirs. Therefore, you may not initiate any physical force that harms someone else bodily. But you may use responsive (as opposed to initial) force to defend your own.
Likewise, you are born with your mind. It’s okay if you believe that your mind is an extension of your body since we’ve already established that you’re born with that as well. Ownership of your mind entitles you to the right to give or withhold your consent as you see fit, in order to secure your safety and happiness in the manner that you believe is best for you. But again, others have this same right, and so you have no right to sway their consent by means of deception. That would be a mental coercion that strips them of the ability to exercise their will by tricking them into consenting to something other than what they believe they are consenting to. Therefore, you may not initiate deceit that bends someone’s will. But you may use responsive (as opposed to initial) deceit to regain consensual freedom.
Now, the idea is that one right leads to another through the peaceful and honest economy of praxis among free people. In other words, you may use your body and your mind to acquire even more property that you will own. So long as you initiate no force or fraud in your dealings, whatever property you acquire comes with the authority to call the shots with respect to it — in other words, the right to say what may or may not be done with it. That’s because that property is an extension of what you owned originally. Your new property is the product of your labor, which is a product of your body and/or your mind, and the same rights are extended to it.
So, if you own a message board, you have all rights with respect to it so long as you do not use it to interfere in the equal rights of others. You have the ethical authority to decide what will be its terms of service, who may or may not post, who will moderate or administrate it, and so on. One of the reasons I usually don’t get heavily involved in these board complaint discussions is because of how I view the rights of the board’s owners. If they wish to give lousy service, it is their right. They promise nothing more than the privilege to post, along with a few trivial perks, and so ethically, that is all they must deliver.
The only reason they can succeed in treating customers like dirt is because those who tolerate it perceive that there is no competitor who will treat them better. Straight Dope does have a rather unique feel to it, and there really isn’t anywhere else that people can go for a similar community — one where hundreds of brilliant people post on a wide variety of relatively mature topics (the Pit notwithstanding) where the goal of the board is to eradicate ignorance (at least to some degree on some matters). If enough Dopers got sufficiently fed up, and started a board of their own, it could have an impact here. But until then, lots of people are willing to put up with second-tier service and two-bit equipment and software.
Anyway, that’s how I see it.
As far as a right to complain, the board’s owners do confer upon us that privilege. That’s what the Pit is used for. A cynic might say that it is a clever administrative tactic to relegate all complaints to a forum where flaming is not only permitted but encouraged. Nevertheless, it’s what we have. And so, there is a right to complain here, but that right belongs to the board’s owners. All we have is their permission, which they could withhold at any time. But they won’t ever need to do that so long as everybody is free to shit on your complaint, thereby doing the dirty work of snuffing out dissent with jokes and catcalls.
Only the most popular complaints will get the attention of the board’s owners. And barring the rise to administrative leadership of someone who just plain enjoys being kind to people, only a mass exodus of paying members will have any effect on customer service. Even then, though, I’m not sure that the Chicago Reader cares that much. They’ve said repeatedly that we’re more of a burden than a help financially. So basically, this fishbowl of complain-and-wait is all we have to work with until something better comes along. So cut a little slack to people who complain. They won’t likely get satisfaction anyway, and no one is harmed by their effort.
