On 9/1/2022 7:47 AM, ais523 via agora-discussion wrote: > I think the principle that all players should have the right of > participation in the fora (rule 478) is important. As such, if someone > is abusing the fora to the extent that it warrants a ban, e also has to > be banned from being a player.
I agree it's very important! But let's say a player sets up a spam bot and bombards a forum with spam from eir email address (in the past we've judged that bots set up by a player count as being sent by that player). Their spam is crafted to avoid typical spam filters, thus preventing other players from exercising their right to participate as it makes it hard/impossible (i.e. makes it "prohibitive" for most players to do so in the language of R478). With that as a starting point, I think it's quite possible that *if* a forum establishes a code of conduct, such that violations of that code of conduct are detrimental to other players' right of participation, and the code is reasonably decided upon, communicated, and fairly applied, then remedies such as temporarily banning a player for violations would be protective of overall participation rights and not violate R478. We don't have such a code established for our email forums - it would need to be in a Rule IMO and really high-powered and clear, so as to be minimally intrusive of rights and not abusable. But it's worth noting in principle that "participation rights" are not necessarily interpreted as "send all the email you want with whatever content you want" rights. -G.
