The jury appears to have spoken, and clearly the consensus is that Vile should stay. If you don't agree with this consensus this is clearly a time when you should speak up, at least privately.

I did not understand, when I read Gavin's post on my cellphone, that Vile's message to him was a response to Gavin's earlier public question about Vile. I had sent Gavin a message in response to that earlier public question advising him that he shouldn't have made it public (IE don't feed the troll). Vile had a right to respond, having been called out publicly. The fact that Vile's sentiment (that this should have been a private message) echoed my own was probably the reason that Gavin thought that he might not be joking about having been "deputized" by me.

Having said that, I strongly object to those who have accused me of censorship. Vile's action in this instance was not merely expressive. I cannot have people fraudulently claiming to be an authority on this site and asking people to stop posting. That is itself an act of censorship, and its something that we cannot tolerate.

Furthermore, Vile's actions, in general, are not merely expressive. Gavin's message is not the first time that someone has told me that they feel like they have to leave MemeStreams, or that they cannot tell other people to join MemeStreams, because they feel like they are being targeted and harassed by Vile, or they feel like other people would be targeted and harassed by Vile. There is a difference between merely expressing your perspective, and harassing people with the intent of driving them away. What Vile is doing is the later, and it has hurt this community.

The reason that I haven't responded in the past is largely because I haven't had the technological capability to do so. In the past it was easier to generate accounts with full posting rights than it was to delete them. Due to the need to control SPAM, that is no longer the case. We have the capacity to prevent unwanted people from participating, but we do have to delete accounts in order to make that happen.

Could we develop an alternative technology? If we generated a "demerit" system what would the consequence be of accumulating demerits? Who would have the right to issue them? By what process?

Should I create some sort of icon that gets displayed everywhere Vile goes on the site? Something which denotes that "the administrators have determined that this person is a jackass and should be ignored?" There is some value in that idea, as new users who have no reputation can still send messages to threads and memeboxes. Ultimately we need some way to control that or it will turn into MySpace. Our system could differentiate between messages from trusted users versus new untrusted users visually more readily than we could determine with certainty that a new user was a spammer. What sort of visual representation would clearly communicate that? Maybe the color of a user's name should indicate their global reputation?

All of this is an interesting academic exercise, and I'd like feedback on it, but writing code takes time. If Vile becomes a problem that I have to respond to, I'll have to do it with the tools that I have at the time that I have to respond, rather than simply imagining a time in the future when I might have other tools at my disposal that would allow a more just response. Right now the tool that I have involves deleting accounts. I'm willing to use that tool if I have to. I will only do so against established users with the consent of the community.

RE: what?