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But then what you're saying is that all that's important is that a group of people is angry about something and that rather than expecting them to deal with dissenting opinions maturely, it's better to just chuck out the dissenter? If a group of people believed that all LPMUDs are somehow causing harm, you'd be willing to ban LPMUD operators based on the same logic?
I mean, what your actions effectively do is either officially sanction mob rule or officially condemn Medievia. That's fine if that's your forums' stance, of course, as it's your forum, but it also kind of casts some doubt on the "open discussion" claim. Again, I'm not attacking your decision. I have no stake in it and it doesn't affect me either way.
Also, you know, they don't have to forgive and forget. Nobody is asking them to. The thing is, just because you find something distasteful doesn't mean you have to constantly disrupt forums attacking people over it. I think it's not at all unreasonable to expect that people simply hold their tongues. Sun and Microsoft had disputes over FAR more serious issues than this, and yet you'd never see Sun's CEO Scott McNealy bursting out during a press conference calling Bill Gates the devil or making silly analogies between Microsoft's activities and paedophilia. Heck, Microsoft and Sun even worked together on certain things during their otherwise heated dispute? Why? Because they realize that life doesn't revolve around a single issue, and that disagreement doesn't have to mean constant, relentless vilification. And no matter how much they disliked each other, you'd never have seen them reverting to their childhood years with insults like "Microthievia" or "Sungay" or whatever. I mean, I'm not going to name names, but I believe that one of the most frequent flamers as regards Medievia has done a lot of harm to the MUD community over the years. Does that mean I should initiate flames against this person constantly because of my belief? I tend to think it's my problem to deal with, not his/hers.
--matt
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