My hope is that people here can discuss this dispassionately today. I am writing this diary to inform rather than to inflame. I hope that it will be read and treated in that spirit.
Meteor Blades has just promulgated a new site policy -- I'd call it a "standard" rather than a "rule" -- for bringing material from banned users onto the site:
"Don't circumvent the banned-user guidelines by allowing people to participate here as if they were users, although this is not intended as a complete ban on conveying or quoting their thoughts when the situation is appropriate. We trust people to use their good judgment."
Mostly, I want to make sure people see it; I think it warrants a larger audience than it might otherwise get. I have comments, but they're far less important.
Note first: this diary is not about the appropriateness of TocqueDeville's banning, nor of MSOC's; nor is it really about Karmafish's publishing a diary here where MSOC expressed grievances against various figures here, nor even about budhydharma publishing TdV's valedictory diary by proxy. Those topics have been talked out. The question addressed here is: what are the rules now?
Essentially, what this policy does -- and this is my gloss, not his -- is assert the legitimate interest of the website's management: "banning" has to have teeth. That means that once one is banned, and unless reinstated, they are expected to be denied the right to anything approximating the ability to participate in the site.
The rule relies on good faith. To help guide our good faith actions, I want to offer some illustrations of what seem to be to be Obviously Unacceptable and Obviously Acceptable activities:
Prototypically Unacceptable: Posting regular diaries from another user and conveying their responses to posts, writtten in real time, from another website. In such a circumstance, banning is merely a technical inconvenience for the banned user; they are still participating in the community here.
Prototypically Acceptable: Noting and/or briefly summarizing a banned user's grievance towards the site or perspective on the site or other matters in a comment.
Now, there are a lot of variables distinguishing between what seems to be Definitely OK and Definitely Not OK: (1) writing a diary versus a comment, (2) frequent versus occasional and ad hoc, (3) affording two-way communication versus posting a one-way announcement, (4) quoting in full versus quoting in part or summarizing, etc. I'm sure there are more.
What good faith actions are acceptable would no doubt be a function of how and whether the site develops; if the site were to become overrun with proxy posts (quoting or summarizing) from banned users and site admins were expressing increasing irritation over it, "good faith" would probably require backing off a lot than would otherwise be the case.
MB fleshed out his perspective in an answer (predating his formal statement of policy) to a series of clarifying questions I posed to him (somewhat in anger, frankly) last night:
Talking about a banned user or quoting a banned user in the same way that quote anyone - with an eye toward fair use (so 30%, 60% and 90% are out), or summarizing a diarist's point of view, or alluding to the existence of a diarist or diary of a banned user posted here in the past or elsewhere currently is not a circumvention of the banning rules.
We're not a court here. We have to make assumptions about "good faith" or eliminate banning altogether. The latter is not going to happen.
As you know, nobody has been banned in the past few days for discussing TocqueDeville's banning. Nor was karmafish banned for posting his entire diary since this was a new situation and he was gently warned not to do it again.
Markos was not happy to have to impose the banning rule over 9/11 CT diaries. But anyone who was here at the site when that decision was made is pretty aware of how awful those diaries had become.
A few points on this. Those who have never been warned may not know this, but there are different levels of warning. I have never gotten the dread red box that I had to acknowledge, but I have been contacted by a CE before (I forget about what) and told that some action I had taken was skirting the line. Most actions, as I understand them, take place with similar informality -- which is good. If I were karmafish, I would wonder exactly how and where I crossed the line -- and why the diary wouldn't have been banned, if I had -- but we can surmise from this that the diary conveying MSOC's complaints verbatim crossed the line.
I don't know whether buhdy was warned in what I believe to be (for reasons expressed in both threads linked above) was a more sympathetic case.
We all have to arrive at our own sense of what's permitted -- as MB notes, the diaries-by-proxy yesterday did pose a new situation (with some precedents, but not ones that were fully applicable), and despite my disagreements about the underlying issues, I think that he handled the one with Karmafish well. Others may disagree.
At this point, in good faith, I would hesitate to publish a full valedictory diary from a banned user except in a situation that was so compelling I thought that my own good faith would be pretty clear. Consistent with Fair Use, though, I would probably feel free to quote liberally from a diary presented by a banned user elsewhere, especially if I mixed in my own comments and observations, like a commentary. I expect the judgment of my good faith in doing so at all would depend on why and when I was doing it: for TdV, I think that such a diary would have been timely and compelling; for MSOC (who has registered these complaints here before), less so; for someone like the person who wants to destroy Markos's reputation (whom MSOC has mentioned having had to ban from My Left Wing as well), it would be hard to claim good faith in posing an attack at all, although I suppose that a summary of what was being said would not be bannable on that grounds. (On grounds of personal attack -- well, I don't know. I don't plan to find out.) A diary on circumcision might well quite RealityBias, I figure, so long as it doesn't broken a conversation between him and the site.
Anyway, my thanks to MB (and whoever else may have been involved in the decision to offer such a policy); however I feel about the underlying events, I feel that we have a little bit more clarity tonight than last night. Again, I personally would appreciate -- and I expect that the site management and most other isers would appreciate -- keeping the discussion below solely on the topic of diaries-by-proxy (and comments by proxy) rather than underlying issues.