WTF? This has nothing to do with free speech. The administrators can ban anyone they please. A message board isn't a democracy, how the administrators runs the board is up to them. And if you ask me, I agree with them. If I ran a board I would not tolerate this shit, at all, and I'm definitely no Sean Saulsbury.

Star Wars is perfectly welcome to start up his own board for attention-seeking Nazi trolls or he can mess around Stormfront. Government agents aren't coming to his house and chucking him in a sinister-looking black van with tinted windows.

Yeah! They only do that for pacifists who oppose the war in Iraq!

Mike, and I've said it from the beginning that the standard on this board is that people are not banned because of what they say and the threads will not be locked because of their content. It leaves a lot of room for abuse yes, but also a lot of room for various opinions.

It isn't just what he said, it's that he was doing it under a false alias, hiding his name. When you say you won't ban someone just for what they say you are treating it like if one of the regular users under their regular username did something outrageous. But people as a policy should not be allowed to create havoc/spam and such from behind a double account or come in from the outside with the purpose of causing problems. What you are leaving out in your analysis of it is intent, and that's a big part of it. At the time it happened, there were two possibilities: either an outside spammer attacking the board, or a regular user trying to cause problems with a fake ID. Either one is both ban and lock worthy.

No offense on a personal level Krem.

Archie, again, this is assuming that nobody would actually have opinions like these ont heir own. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I explained that before in the thread.

However, as soon as I learned that this was from a double account, the account was locked.

The only problem is that the guy wasn't banned instantly for being a troll, that's all. This is a privately owned website with its own rules and guidelines. You break them, you're not welcome here. I don't see how free speech enters into this at all. No one is denying that someone else can speak their mind, by all means, go do it. But to say that we should let someone stick around despite him/her having broken the rules is absurd. How about our right to set up an online community with a set of guidelines that aims at being tolerant and inclusive? This takes nothing away from that user's right to set up his/her own website, and do whatever he wants and say whatever he feels like it. If we went up to him/her and tried to stop him/her, then that would be problematic with respect to free speech. As I see it, this person did that to us. And anyways, he was banned not for speaking his mind, but for breaking the rules.

He broke no rules by starting the threads that he did.

He was banned for breaking rules, right?

Yes, for using a double account.

I thought double accounts were just frowned upon, not banned? Was that just with bABA and Eagle?

For humour or randomness...frowned upon. For trolling, baiting, or tampering with games/awards...more.

I can't believe this is still up for debate as freedom of speech. Its not like other people haven't said controversial stuff in the past, and while threads have exploded to 20 pages and other members were allowed to express outrage, the authors of the threads where never warned. But when someone comes by with that kind of username right off the bat, and their first post is this, you know they've joined with intentions other than participating in the community. I'd say the same thing about the user name that's the newest member's right now. C'mon. For a user name? You really mean to tell me that person is here to talk about movies, or once in awhile coach some topic that they differ in opinion from the majority on? I doubt it.

Lets not fail to make the distinction between freedom of speech and someone who is ridiculing it.

Star Wars wasn't banned right away. I gave him plenty of time to explain himself and apologize. He didn't.

Dolce, while I understand where you're coming from, I've explained my position plenty of times. Call it an agreement to disagree, k?