I checked your site and didn’t find the offending
post or your response. But I offer the following
comments:
NO, I do not think you should have posted his IP
address. Would you like it if someone who didn’t
like something you said decided to post yours?
Think about it – the statement the “troll” made did
not include any “dirty” words and was a properly
composed English declarative sentence used to
express his opinion. Would you have taken the
same extreme action against him if he had said,
“You’re all idiots”? Certainly both sentiments
are argumentative and nasty. But, I would bet
that you wouldn’t have come down as hard on
the guy if he’d just said you were an idiot. You
might have even thought he was a relatively
legitimate visitor with an extreme opinion about
the game. And you might have “chided” him
about his attitude and then truly challenged him
about his opinions on the game – i.e. tried to
steer him back to the subject at hand.
Instead, you re-acted to the word “gay”, which
is not a dirty word, and leapt all the way to
trying to harm him. Harm him? Yes, to get
others to block him, etc. TO SILENCE HIM.
TO CENSOR HIM.
So, you’ve got quite a dillema. You don’t want to
“censor” yet you punished (censored) someone
who posted something you didn’t like. You say
you know that “challenging” someone is not the
same as “censoring”. Yet, you didn’t challenge
the offensive poster. You censored him, in a
most extreme and knee-jerk fashion.
“Challenging” that person would have involved
asking him why he thought the way he did or telling
him that you disagreed with his assessment. Or
maybe even just ignoring the comment and not
giving him power to pull your strings.
But choosing to take offense and punishing the
person was a form of censorship since you are
the one with the power to EDIT his statement
(censorship), DELETE his statement (censorship),
and PUNISH HIM for his statement via banishment
or publishing his IP address so others can
potentially hurt him (censorship).
I close by saying that I understand your dilemma
and suggest that you just start admitting that you
WILL censor when YOU want to. And then be
VERY SPECIFIC about what measures you
will take if someone posts something YOU find
offensive (which is your right, in my opinion,
by the way). I read the disclaimer at the bottom
of your site where you say censorship is rare but
will be done for “legal purposes”. That sounds a
lot like a cop-out. Or maybe just an overly
generalized statement that can be interpreted any
way you like which makes me very, very nervous.
I sure won’t be reading and/or posting to your
site with that disclaimer now that I know you will
go as far as posting IP addresses of those who
say things you don’t like. The disclaimer
sounds too much like you’re saying, “I don’t
censor. But, if I arbitrarily dislike something
someone says, then I’ll do whatever I feel like to
control/manipulate that person, including publishing
their IP address so others can help me silence
(censor) him.”
