Fair enough. This is the way everybody feels before they try to run a community site.
But the thing is, as soon as you have a big community that you're personally responsible for, you find that there are people who you just really wish would go away. They're making the place worse, possibly without even realizing it. You need to get rid of them, but if you kick them out explicitly they'll just make a new account and come back. The most important thing is to stop them making things worse right now. Anything else is secondary.
It's important to consider that online communities are in no way democratic and do not have the concept of "free speech". That's tough to swallow, having spent your whole life knowing how free speech is the most important thing ever.
"Free Speech" is you being able to write whatever you want on your blog without the government taking it down. It's very different from being able to write whatever you want on HackerNews without the spam filter taking it down.
If you need any explanation as to why, turn "showdead" on for a few days and try to pick out the content from in between the real-estate spam.
But the thing is, as soon as you have a big community that you're personally responsible for, you find that there are people who you just really wish would go away. They're making the place worse, possibly without even realizing it. You need to get rid of them, but if you kick them out explicitly they'll just make a new account and come back. The most important thing is to stop them making things worse right now. Anything else is secondary.
It's important to consider that online communities are in no way democratic and do not have the concept of "free speech". That's tough to swallow, having spent your whole life knowing how free speech is the most important thing ever.
"Free Speech" is you being able to write whatever you want on your blog without the government taking it down. It's very different from being able to write whatever you want on HackerNews without the spam filter taking it down.
If you need any explanation as to why, turn "showdead" on for a few days and try to pick out the content from in between the real-estate spam.