Over on Room Eight, our former contributor Gatemouth - he was banned yesterday - is discussing the circumstances of his banning, as follows.

In an unrelated, yet perhaps karmic event, I was “permanently banned” today by the left-of-center site, the Daily Gotham. Although I started publishing on that site after a rather emphatic invitation from its publishers, I was uncomfortable from the start about whether my centrist (for lack of a better term) Democratic views, however partisan, were really suitable for the site. Clearly, events have proven that my qualms were well founded, and that we were not a good fit.

I hadn't intended to write about this incident - specifically, I wrote Gatemouth that "I wouldn't piss down your throat if your balls were on fire, let alone write about you" - however, given that he's now publicly materially misrepresenting the decision to remove him as a fruit of clashing ideologies or a history of conflicting views, which is not our policy at all, I'm forced to set the record straight. This blog exercises a very light hand with regard to what content or what contributors we accept, and the assertion that we banned Gatemouth in some spat over positions he holds is ludicrous and false.

Yesterday morning, I received the following email from Gatemouth, or rather from his real-life email address. It was addressed to myself, the entire editorial team, the Observer's Azi Paybarah, Liz Benjamin of the Daily News, Eric Engquist of Crain's, and Senator Marty Connor.

I recently posted a comment on Bouldin's thread on the 504 club endorsing Steve Harrison [Ed. note: here], it seemed to me that if the 504 endorsement was so relevant, it was relevant in other races as well.

Mr. Bouldin deleted the comments [Ed. note: it was one comment, not several], which was called "Liz Benjamin Says" and consisted entirely of a reprint of one of her posts on Daily Politics. It was in no way offensive.

It was my impression that TDG was not taking a position in the Connor-Squadron race,and that more members of your editorial Board actually preferreed Connor to Squadron than the other way around.

Nonethless, Mr. Bouldin is clearly engaged in an effort to suppress pro-Connor comments.

The original Daily Politics post he references is here. I responded to his email as follows - and note that I'm going to be really fair and not use his real name, in part because I've met his awesome wife and kid:

Dear Mr. [...],

I cannot hide from you that I am somewhat surprised to be receiving this email. I am further at a loss to explain why you decided to involve various members of the media, along with Daily Gotham's entire editorial team and Senator Connor himself, in what appears to me to be an administrative issue on our blog, in especially as I have not heard privately from you on this matter.

Your comment was removed because you impermissibly reproduced an entire copyrighted work, which you have previously been asked, repeatedly, not to do for legal reasons. It is standard practice on several community blogs, notably Daily Kos, to delete such content and to ban the user posting it. I note that you currently have a piece on our front page which may very well violate the same accepted standards of fair use, which will now require further editorial involvement to determine whether or not there is a fair use violation. If I determine that there is, in fact, such a violation, I will pull the entire piece, regardless of whether or not I support the views it expresses.

Daily Gotham, as a rule, does not engage in content censorship, a fact demonstrated in regard to this race by a wealth of commentary, both on the front page and in comments, opposing and supporting either candidate. As you correctly point out, a majority of our commenters seem to be supporting Senator Connor's re-election, and to be doing so without editorial interference. Overall, I'm quite confident that all points of view in this race are well and fairly represented on our blog, and that an accusation of suppression of supporters of one candidate or the other, let alone a pattern thereof, is specious.

However, since your quasi-public email seems intent not on remedying what you describe, incorrectly, as unfair treatment, but to make charges against our editorial team and me personally that are demonstrably not borne out by our actual practice and further are clearly intended to bring us into disrepute, I have to treat this exchange as evidence of bad faith on your part.

Given these public accusations against us, along with the fact that your posting behavior, cf. fair use, uniquely requires significant editorial oversight, I see no remedy but to ban you permanently from our community. Certainly, when you publicly describe a singular effort to protect ourselves from possible liability arising out of your violation of copyright laws as evidence of a pattern of suppression, I see no other course of action.

Regards,

--
Michael Bouldin
Managing Editor
The Daily Gotham
http://www.dailygotham.com

It's really hard to know where even to begin with this bullshit, but here are some basic pointers: if you post material on our site that violates commonly accepted standards of fair use, and posting an entire blog post from the Daily News without question amounts to that, yes, it will be deleted, no matter what it contains. This has happened on prior occasions, and no, we do not normally go through the additional effort of letting you know. If you just demonstrated the piss-poor judgment of putting us in a position where we could be sued, no, you don't get a courtesy email. We figure that, since it is commonly known that you can't just post entire copyrighted works and should know that if you're posting on the internet, this is self-explanatory. Apparently, it's not.

Now, normally, that would have been the end of it. Rational adults don't, I think, usually react to the deletion of a single comment by emailing reporters or, for that matter, incumbent legislators, to helpfully let said reporters and legislator know that this monstrous crime of censorship in one single instance is actually a pattern whereby supporters of the legislator in question are being, quote, "suppressed".

At that point, all bets are off. If there's a policy here whereby comments in favor of or opposition to anyone in the SD-25 race (or any other race) are being suppressed, I am unaware of, and certainly not the executor of it. If there were such a policy, in fact, I'd be doing a piss-poor job at implementing it. I'd also, at the risk of belaboring this bullshit unduly, be somewhat hesitant myself, if I took comments on a blog quite as seriously as Gatey, to detect a pattern in one single event, but that's that whole rationality business again, I suppose.

Our actual policy, both for diaries and comments, is that we accept basically anything we view as Democratic in the widest sense. There are exceptions, for material we consider libelous, spam, hate speech, copyright infringement, completely unredeemable bullshit, or if a commenter requests editing. No big deal, really, and basically, if you think someone's wrong here, fine, make a better argument. We generally don't have the time, and I myself can go for days or even weeks without looking at this blog, to do real moderation. Also, rational people don't go into hysterics over comments on a blog. Because, you know, it's a fucking blog.

So you tell me whether this banning was justified. I'm perfectly comfortable with it, frankly. But fine, since we're fair, here is our policy: if we find it necessary for whichever reason to remove your content on this privately owned blog, and you then write the media about that claiming that your views are being suppressed, yes, you will be banned. It hadn't previously occurred to me that this was anything other than really fucking obvious, but there you have it. Who you are, or what your prior history is, doesn't play much of a role in that.

I actually detest all this meta bullshit, as I think is made reasonably clear by now. However, Gatemouth is misrepresenting what we do here, how we moderate this community, and what content we think is fitting here.

And for him to represent his banning as a clash of cultures or ideologies or whatever, in which he may perhaps carry some debatable measure of blame, is just kinda dishonest. Oops, there's that word again.

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