<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by attorney28:
I know this will probably rub some people the wrong way - but if I were the one that would have had to pull the trigger, I would have banned a lot more people already.</font>
Me, too. But...
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">With a site like this, you have to set a signal sometimes and just outright kick people if they start challenging you. This is not a democracy. This is a free site that belongs to Randy (as far as I know)... But if Randy decides, it is enough - you have no right to complain... That's the way it is. Again, this is not a democracy or a debate club. Any right that you have on this site is derived from Randy allowing you to post here...</font>
This is all IMHO: I've been here long enough to make an educated guess that Randy does not subscribe (!) to the notion that it's "his way or the highway".
Rather, while he retains the right to ban people, of course, he DOES seem to try to be "fair" and non-arbitrary. There are rules, and if you follow them, he will not ban you just because people don't like you or whatever else. That would include complaining about things you feel are legitimate to complain about.
I mean that "private property" stuff and talk about "you have no rights here" is all fine to talk about, but Randy has stated that he does not want to stifle opinions, and has invested a lot of time and resources into fine-tuning the terms of service, so would he just rip it up in a moment of anger and just start banning people left and right? No, I would bet not.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Coming back to what you said about the site where people pay a lot of money and they still have flaming problems: That site apparently does not make it clear in their terms and conditions that paying money does not mean you can do what you want.</font>
Well, the board of which I'm speaking has a Terms of Service, just like FT, and an even stricter moderation policy, banning far more people than FT, and STILL they have problems with flamewars, so again, it's not clear to me that restricting membership on the way in (with fees and subscriptions and veri-check ID's) is going to accomplish that much, if anything.