I was threatened by Wrong Planet based on my opinions here.

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Reddingcal: I own a large mental health website and I have had very few problems through the years with people breaking my rules. I remember one time someone once got very upset and said that I can't ban them from my website and I can't stop their free speech. But the way I see it, my website is an extension of my home. When we're all talking in the forums/message board, it's like we're sitting around in my living room talking. When someone disrespects MY rules in MY home, they get warned. If the infraction is bad enough, I boot them out of my home and I say "On your way out, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya."

You don't have to agree with the rules. On this website there is a list of rules and a disclaimer, which relieves the website owner from liability for problems such as your complaint here. And if you don't agree with them, you don't have to post here. The Terms of Service are found here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/tos.txt so just so you know, there is nothing you can do about the website owner moving your thread, deleting your thread or ban you altogether. It's up to him and/or his moderators.

When I first saw your 3 page thread this afternoon, I kind of cringed because the person you were talking about is a WP member here and you were talking about her in a negative way and that is considered slanderous or flaming (I forget now who it was whom you were mainly having the discussion with in your thread) and I thought maybe you shouldn't be saying anything. But after I read what you said at the beginning of this new thread here about Amanda Baggs being a public figure now and how that opens her up to free dialog, I had to rethink my position. That's very true... once you are a public figure or of some sort of celebrity status, your life is an open book to all. But it's not up to me... it is up to the owner of this website. I didn't feel that you were trying to cause trouble on purpose... I felt that you honestly had a problem with Amanda's diagnosis and her supposed lack of honesty about her condition/symptoms.

At any rate, 'this is my story and I'm sticking to it'

I don't know what your original complaint was.

But ... well ... "somebody on the internet really pissed me off" will get you laughed out of any lawyer's office.

there's a million boards with a gazillion moderators who make a quabizillion judgements every day. People are banned, called names, even ... legally threatened (ahem.)

The courts rightfully don't care.

You have a right to free speech. You have no right to insist that speech is hosted by WP or any other site.

The same way I can't write on your forehead, and demand you leave it there.

So, you know, .... deal. The WP mods are generally pretty mellow. Sometimes they might screw up. Them's the breaks.

I can see both sides in this matter.

I have not read the thread about Amanda Baggs, so I don't know what reddingcal posted about her. It is possible to come to conclusions about her from reading what she posted on the Internet as a teenager, and from the fact that she has been diagnosed with various psychiatric disorders. In fact in February 2007 she posted on her blog an article about her one time diagnosis of schizophrenia, and she has posted on Wrong Planet about the commonalities between autism and schizophrenia.

But while there must not be personal attacks on members of this community, what about the theoretical case of someone coming here and claiming that they are a diagnosed autistic or Aspie, and then someone who knows them well (not an enemy) comes here and reveals that they have never been diagnosed and that they are neurotypical. Is the second person making an unjustified personal attack on the first person? Is questioning the validity of a member's autism/Aspie diagnosis always off limits? Of course this hypothetical case doesn't apply to Amanda.

It seems that would be permissible to question here whether Donna Williams is autistic because as far as I know she is not a member of this community, but not if she were a member of this community.

I do not want to see restrictions on freedom of speech, but people must be protected from hate speech and their reputation from libel or slander. But free speech should be allowed up to libel/slander or hate speech. I don't know if what reddingcal posted about Amanda was hate speech or libellous, though it may have caused her distress if she had read it. But I have read on various threads on Wrong Planet insulting and distress-causing attacks by members on other members, and those threads have not been deleted. It should be left to people's conscience as to whether they post such attacks.

The issue is the boundaries of free speech on Internet forums. I am very uneasy with the argument that because Wrong Planet is private property any restriction on free speech is justified. It is very tempting for authoritarian governments to ban members of Internet forums from having discussions with which they don't agree or which criticise members of those governments. Imagine a political discussion forum which is moderated by members of a governing party and no comment critical of that party or government is allowed. Would the owners of that forum be morally justified if they claim that it is their private property and they have the right to ban comments?

Here is information about the American Civil Liberties Union and free speech on the Internet: http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/internet/index.html .

Thread-killer.

Responding to the title of this thread:

Using caps to emphasize PART of a message, is not yelling, nor threatening. As a veteran of countless message boards and moderator of a few, I can safely say that such use of caps by message board moderators to point out a violation of board policy is standard. I have been moderated here on WP for my response to a now deleted thread and I perceived no threat from it.

Responding to 'freedom of speech':

As pages of responses to this thread point out, Wrong Planet is essentially private property. Those who post here agree by registering an account with WP that they will be bound by the Forum Terms Of Service. Ideally, the enforcement of these terms would be perfectly just in every way. However, even if they're not, WP is privately owned and therefore those who post here have only such freedom of speech as the site owner (and by extension) the forum moderators allow.

Responding to the "I've got a lawyer and they're gonna sue you for everything that you're worth!":

Perhaps a dishonest lawyer would take on your case, AND your money, but see the response above - there is no case.

ACLU: ditto.

Now can we let this thread die?

I might actually leave this site soon because I think its moderated by idiots.

I think it's really curious that this whole argument is based on that one autistic person thinks the other autistic person implied something that cannot be detected from the words.

I think the OP is taking the "freedom of speech" thing too literal. Lot of people take it literal NT or not but I think lot of us know it doesn't apply to private places such as homes, work, school, businesses, places, and of course forums. That's the gray area we can see despite our autism and we are known to be black and white thinkers but we can be taught the gray areas.


So put it this way reddingcal, I am sure your parents gave you rules when you were a kid and you weren't allowed to say certain words or talk to them in a certain way, do you think they violated the constitutional rights?

Or what about at school, they don't allow profanity and I am sure you had teachers who had rules about to treat other students with respect and also didn't allow bad language, do you think they violated the constitutional rights?

Or what about at work, they also have rules and you aren't allowed to say certain things there, would you take your work to court saying they violated your freedom of speech?

Or lets say you're on Amtrak and you are going to another state, you start using profanity on your cell phone, a worker on the train tells you to cut the profanity or they will kick you off the train, are you going to complain to the headquarters about it and take them to court because they didn't do a thing about it and your freedom of speech was violated?