The above is clearly a threat of legal action in which the SDMB would be involved, if only peripherally. Our longstanding policy is that any such threat, however oblique, will get you banned without warning. We recognize that legally we’re not on the hook for postings by our members. We also realize the odds of anybody actually taking legal action are low. Nonetheless, anything involving lawyers potentially would cost us fatal amounts of money, and our attitude has always been to take no chances. We realize there’s a question of fairness; StS had been goaded. Nonetheless, this is a bright-line rule. We have banned StS.
We don’t currently have a rule against goading other posters, and we’re not eager to create one. However, the above type of behavior, aimed at someone who is already making lawsuit noises, is over the top. We expect you to use some common sense. If you intentionally try to provoke someone into dragging in lawyers, even if you think they’re only bluffing, you are putting us in harm’s way. I’m not going to write this into the formal rules, because nothing like this has happened before and I don’t expect it to happen again. However, let me pass along the following word to the wise: PEOPLE WHO DO STUPID SHIT THAT THREATENS TO GET THE BOARD IN TROUBLE WILL GET THEIR BUTTS BOUNCED OUT OF HERE WITHOUT FURTHER NOTICE. Thank you for your cooperation.
I concur. I didn’t agree with a word he said and he used to infuriate me at times but he did serve as a catalyst that sparked interesting debate and I too shall miss him.
I think this is a gigantic overreaction, given that it is obvious to any reasonable person that there is no chance that any legal action would really take place. If anything, Giraffe should be suspended. His behavior was purposefully designed to get SmashTheState to commit “suicide by mod.”
It’s too bad, because STS was an intelligent, provocative and interesting poster in a time which those are severely dwindling in numbers here on the SDMB. It’s getting downright boring here sometimes.
That is too bad. I know this rule exists, and as soon as I saw SmashTheState’s post I thought he’d probably be banned, but I was hoping it’d only be a suspension. He brought a very different perspective here, that for some reason seemed to infuriate a lot of people, but that was nevertheless important.
ETA:
Indeed, it’s surprising that Ed takes the time to point out that he strongly disapproves of Giraffe’s behaviour, but doesn’t actually do anything about it, not even give him a warning. I’m sure we could argue that it ran afoul of the “don’t be a jerk” rule.
Deepest apologies, it never occurred to me that mocking what I saw as an absolutely ludicrous position by SmashTheState (statements on a message board about his organization have to be 100% factually true or else!) would cause any trouble for the boards, since his lawsuit noises seemed (to me) to be obviously ludicrous.
I was just trying to be funny, I wasn’t trying to get him banned or cause trouble. It won’t happen again.
And to those who are arguing for official punitive action, while I personally don’t think it’s warranted (obviously, since I didn’t think I was doing anything out of line when I posted), I’ll accept whatever the mods feel is fair. I do think that whatever action would have been applied to Random Poster X in this case should also be applied to me – former mod status should not be a shield against consequences.
Yes. Smash’s previous post said that any jokes or satire posts needed to explicitly labeled as such, so casual readers would know they contained misinformation. I was mocking that, by deliberately disobeying his instructions.
General comment: we usually lock threads announcing a banning, Ed just forgot. Basically, the banned person is not able to respond, and so we consider it unfair to allow posters to make comments about them.