Erik said:

> Mark has not done these things, and if you are suggesting he will
> because his other behavior is similar to your friends, then you are
> unfairly jumping the gun.

I was not suggesting that. However, it is worth thinking about the
limits of freedom of speech (and I think that, in forums such as this
or the Culture list or #culture, there are such limits). For the record,
I consider what I've seen of Mark's contributions to be much less
extreme than the situation over there.

> From your description, I don't think it was handled badly. But this
> situation is NOT comparable.

Perhaps not, but everything you've said here would suggest that you
would've handled the situation on that IRC channel differently. What
would you have done?

(My friend has gained considerable professional help in the months since
I banned her from the channel and I've now lifted the ban. I'm very
impressed by how hard she's trying to get control of her life and to
manage her serious psychiatric problems. I think we made the right
choice - it simply wasn't possible for us to go on providing a sort of
ersatz therapy for her because it was consuming too much of our time
[probably several hours a day each] and having too great an effect on
our own emotional states. She now also agrees that her behaviour was
beyond what we should've tolerated and far beyond what most people
would've put up with.)

Rich
GSV Unfortunate Conflict Between Principles And Practice

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