Thank you for explaining that, Mac. Your policies are a little different to ours, but based on at least some of the same principles. We have special forums for nonsense, and people get warned if they don't keep it there. We provide a range of forums for people to talk about anything they like, much as you do, but we were forced to implement bans and warnings and a code of conduct by people who just flatly refused to be anything but annoying, after literally hundreds of complaints from forumers to take action. Plus some of our forumers are quite shy or young people, and when their attempts to discuss something get disrupted by morons posting nonsense just to piss them off, it drives them away. We like our community. We don't like seeing them driven away.

None of which would be necessary if people were not so rude and insensitive in the first place, of course. Unfortunately, people are.

Not all bans are permanent, and very few cases warrant an outright ban. Offences that do include talking about copies of the games we do sites for, cracking and hacking. We have a good relationship with the game companies and we like to keep it that way. Therefore although none of us came down in the last shower and we all know pirate copies and no CD cracks exist, we do not support them on our discussion boards. Nobody feels it imposes on their freedom in any way by us having that rule in place - some of our staff and forumers have gone on to get work in the game companies due to their involvement with us. I notice on your games board that there are a few fans of games like Age of Empires etc, the development of many of those games has come from the good relationship between the game companies and the online communities.

Generally it is two warnings then a one month ban. People mostly cool off in this time and most are just fine after that. Further transgressions do make the ban permanent.

Doesn't sound very freethinking, I suppose, but it is. All we ask is they do it in the right place. We even have a forum just for people who want to flame each other, which is pretty open minded. But not everyone wants it in their faces when they are just trying to discuss something, and we respect that too.

I'm all for free thinking, but to me there is a difference between that and deliberately taking the rise out of people's wishes. If you continue to annoy people after they have asked you to stop, you may be exercising your freedom but you're still a jerk.
"All governments suffer a recurring problem - power attracts pathological personalities. It is not power that corrupts, but that power is a magnet to the corruptible" - Dune, Missionaria Protectiva.