First, I apologize to everyone for using profanity. It was uncalled for, but at the time I was too tired to be more creative about expressing my discontent.
Second, Richard: I see nothing in Mark's behavior that mimics the poor person from your IRC channel. Yes, Mark's posts have been weird. It's kind of like he's channelling the Illuminatus Trilogy after eating some bad sushi. But they don't rise to the level of torrential abuse you describe below, IMO, nor does Mark appear to pose a threat to himself or others in any way that our banning him would help solve. On Tue, 28 May 2002, Richard Baker wrote: > Marvin said: > > > Finally, the notion that banning him is a good way to teach him > > "boundaries" as though he's some kind of kindergarten student, is > > insulting and insane. No, it's worse. It's fucking bullshit. > > One of my friends suffers from a serious dissociative disorder. We used > to allow her totally free access to the #culture IRC channel. Sometimes > she would rant and rant for hours, mostly about her parents and about > death. These rants would collapse rapidly in coherence and then even > grammar and spelling would fall out of the picture. It got to the point > at which she was doing this every day. She would also describe for us > such unpleasant things as tearing apart her pet frog or making and > eating food with her own blood when she was more lucid. Furthermore, > she refused to get any psychiatric help (mostly because her mother, who > had seriously abused her, was a psychiatrist and so she is terrified of > them). On one occasion, I returned to the computer to find that she'd > been ranting away into an empty channel for over an hour. I have many > megabytes worth of such material. In the end, she almost drove a very > sweet and caring channel regular to a nervous breakdown, used things > she'd learned about various of us in extremely hurtful ways and > mailbombed me with a large number of emails saying "traitor! this is > war!" > > By that stage, many of the less frequent visitors to the channel had > ceasing going there, and the core of five or so people were actively > hiding from her and talking by private messages. Finally, we decided to > ban her until we could handle her presence again or she showed signs of > being able to control herself in a more civilised manner. Was that > unwarranted censorship? (It seems to me that it wasn't. An IRC channel > not listed in the public directory feels more like a private room than a > public space, and as channel founder I owned that private room. She > ended up setting up her own channel almost immediately.) What else > could or should we have done? > > Rich > GSV Hard Decisions > > Marvin Long Austin, Texas "Never flay a live Episiarch." -- Galactic Proverbs 7563:34(j)
