We never take banning a member lightly: there is almost always discussion about how we might save the situation, and always deep reluctance to use the last resort of banning. But banning can and does happen.
Here are some of the reasons we ban members:
- Poor journalism, especially making irresponsible, unsupported (possibly illegal) claims. (All information presented as factual in an article must be backed up with references.)
- Posting right-wing messages or supporting right-wing organizations
- Presumptive conspiracy theory content even if supported. People can act in concert for reasons other than conspiracies, and support for conspiracy theories is self-perpetuating, with each expert relying upon the other for authority. We do not rule out conspiracies, but they should not be the first explanation for every political or economic phenomenon. Writers who jump immediately to such conclusions are likely to be banned.
- Actively evading moderation by using comments and diaries exclusively to post content that is otherwise marginal or against Opednews policy. If a writer routinely posts unmoderated diaries and article length comments instead of going through the queue and moderation, this is systematic evasion of our moderation and curation system. Rather than end the diary system altogether, we stop people who over use it.
- Using Opednews to attack Opednews (duh! But it happens!)
- Being abusive to an editor (we have a zero tolerance policy, to protect our volunteers.)
- Engaging in too much drama. It takes a great deal of precious volunteer time to deal with members who engage in drama, time we are not willing to expend
- Spamming comments -- this policy is stated at the end of every article. If a person posts comments unrelated to the article that detract and distract from the discussion, that is considered spamming
- Submitting commercial, or self-promotional content, or repeatedly submitting content that is outside our guidelines in comments, bios, etc.
- Or, an accumulation of actions and behaviors -- too many flagged comments, posting on topics it is our policy not to cover, hate speech, or just interacting in a way that is deemed to be too much hassle or friction or unpleasantness to deal with.
- Posting hate talk such as misogyny, racism, anti-semitism, anti-gay or anti-Islamic content.
- abusing the messaging system
- making threats
- Repeated episodes of uncivil postings on the site.
- repeated violations of copyrights
- illegal activity
- posting pornography, or links to pornography
Most of the people we ban are commercial spammers who try to use the site to boost their search engine ranking. There have been thousands of them. But we've also banned several hundred other people over the last 10 years (about 1 in 20,000 visitors) for the reasons mentioned above.
Some writers start out with great articles, and later start submitting articles that don't fit our editorial policies. When we reject (or pull them after editorial consultations) some of those writers cry "censorship." However, they are not using the word correctly. Governments censor. Publishers curate and set editorial policy. There is a big difference. We're confident that we are unusually open to writers and topics.
We really are fortunate. Almost all of our readers, writers and editors are great people, and we appreciate all of them, and we hope this includes you. Even most of the folks who have been banned are cool about it, and we appreciate that, too. They may not like it, but like mature grownups, they move on to find a more compatible site. And we wish them the best.
But there always seem to be those few folks who don't seem to be able to deal with any type of rejection. Some get vicious to the point of extreme or even illegal types of retribution, including hate-communications, hate-websites, fake websites, and even, apparently, malware and denial of service attacks on our site. Some are frauds and pathological liars, who try to sneak back on our site with false names and bios. Some folks have even signed up with multiple fake personas which they use to positively comment on their own articles or comments.. We catch a lot of them. They're not as smart as they think they are.
Some sour grapes writers have accused us of being "Jew bastards," Zionists, or CIA operatives. One former writer even accused us of being a CIA site because the proprietary software we use is so good, that writer thought it was better than "CNN, MSNBC, etc.," and assumed, therefore, that it must be funded by the CIA. Rob Kall considers that a compliment, backhanded though it may be, since he personally architected this software, working with a part-time coder and some open source widgets. Of course, we have no connection with the CIA, other than having written or published many articles criticizing it.
We're a bottom-up site, but even a bottom-up site requires policies and rules. Just about all the rules discussed here have been developed through discussions of our Managing Editor or Senior Editor teams. Everything is relative and while we're not perfect, it's hard to imagine a more bottom-up news and opinion site with our traffic that has been able to meet the diversity and openness standards that we've set.
Ironically, some of the writers we've banned have been big donors to the site and some have written articles that drew a lot of readers and page views. But, when they either wrote material that didn't fit the site or they got nasty, we've had to ban them anyway. Some are shocked that they are banned after they post comments or diaries that libel or slander Opednews. But it shouldn't surprise anyone that we don't tolerate that. And we are totally confident that the bans we've made have been the right call.
On some occasions, if writers have gotten extremely vicious, we've deleted or hidden all the articles we've published by them. We don't have a responsibility to continue promoting their ideas or links to their work elsewhere once they have initiated and concluded an end to our relationship. We're making it clear, right here, that when a relationship sours, the member may lose his/her access to the site. Someone who gets nasty may find that all their content is deleted from the site or hidden. It's always been our policy to revoke access to the site for members who get nasty. We've rarely deleted or hidden banned member content (less than one in a million) although if we get pushed into it by a member's behavior, it's an action we will take.
We see Opednews as a community, one that is open and welcoming, and yet also protective of the rights and safety of the site, and of its members. The guidelines we have set into place are designed to help our community thrive.
We wrote this article to offer greater clarity about our policies. This article will become an FAQ which will be required reading for editors. We'll also encourage all new members to read it before commenting or submitting, and we will refer members to it if their actions raise flags.
We are inviting you to participate with everyone else here in building a community of excellence, a community that agrees to disagree politely, a community of people who want to do the best we can to create a strong foundation for innovative thought and effective progressive action. We are excited about the potential for all of us working together in friendly and supportive ways, and hoping you'll accept this invitation to do more of it. And we appreciate all of you who have contributed in so many ways to this site. We are glad to have you in the community as we work together to build a better world.
Your comments on this initial draft of the FAQ, which is a joint effort of the Senior and Managing Editor teams, are very welcome.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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