The village has spoken

My post about banning Zachriel garnered over 61 comments, all very thoughtful, including Zachriel’s own defense.  After a great deal of rather painful internal debate, I’ve decided to ban Zachriel.  Indigo Red, discussing a Zachriel-type commenter named Mudkitty, best sums up my thoughts on the subject:

Some of my best posts and best comments involved Mudkitty and I always had high visitor counts as long as she was around, but the problems she created were eventually far greater than the challenging arguments. No matter the post subject, the comment thread quickly focused upon her, her Liberal views, and her autodidactic knowledge which was almost invariably and demonstrably wrong. She would question the ideas of my readers, but would never answer challenges to her own positions, constantly making the wildest claims that I and others felt compelled to rebut and always taking up far more time and energy than the ordeal was worth. In the end, she would answer with another inanity or nothing at all. In essence, Mudkitty hijacked my “intellectual living room” creating a great deal of strife and animosity that caused, as you’ve noted, some readers and frequent commenters to simply go away never to return. To save my blog and sanity, I banned Mudkitty, the one and only time I’ve banned anyone.

I can’t put it better than that.  Despite an invariably placid tone and polite mien, Zachriel is nevertheless creating a hostile environment.  The best analogy I can think of is to a sit-down striker:  he’s not committing any act of violence, but he’s nevertheless preventing things from getting done.

Banning Zachriel does not mean that I want to create an echo chamber in which everyone merely applauds what I have to say (although applause is always nice).  It does mean, though, that people cannot simply churn out facts.  Comments must have a beginning, a middle and an end, with a discernible narrative.

Also, I’m henceforth going to delete spam-like comments, which I define as someone leaving three or more comments, written within minutes of each other, on a single post.  This is simply too burdensome for people, since it clutters people’s emails and stifles dialog.  I won’t be banning the commenter, I’ll just be slowing the flow.