Act against convictions: At no point did I suggest that Eugine must agree or state he agrees that he shouldn't have downvoted people.
No, but you did suggest that he might be asked to take action to explicitly reverse the effects of downvoting people:
Eugine could be asked as part of staying on site to go through and reverse all of his own downvotes.
I would agree that merely asking him to refrain from mass downvoting would not constitute pressure to act against his convictions; however, asking him to reverse his previous downvotes would.
As things stand now, from what has been stated, Eugine has not been offered a choice, he is being compelled to not participate.
Yes; he is being compelled to take the null action. The ability to post a comment on a given web site is not a right that can be fought for - it is a privilege that is extended at the whim of the administrators and moderators of the website in question. Removing that privilege from someone who has shown a pattern of abusing it does not seem unfair.
I wonder what a CEV made from the 3 of us in this conversation would wind up looking like when it comes to these values. Would it come down to majority rules?
Hmmm... it would probably be more complicated than that. I highly value the ability to express one's true opinions, and in case of trouble I prefer to minimise damage if possible. I highly disvalue social pressure to express, through words or actions, an opinion different to one's own as if it were one's own.
It seems that you highly value freedom of choice, and are willing to accept a compromise in the opinions you express as long as you have the option of choosing that compromise. It also appears that, in case of trouble, you prefer to give other actors the chance to self-modify to reduce future trouble, and highly disvalue removing the freedom of choice from someone.
I think Error's values may be closer to mine than yours; I don't see, in this conversation, any major differences between myself and him (probably mainly because we agree on the correct action in this situation)
If you put all of those together, I think you'll end up with a values function that highly values both freedom of choice and freedom of expressed opinion (both important freedoms) - but which of those two would be the most highly valued I cannot say (due to insufficient information).
As previously discussed, on June 6th I received a message from jackk, a Trike Admin. He reported that the user Jiro had asked Trike to carry out an investigation to the retributive downvoting that Jiro had been subjected to. The investigation revealed that the user Eugine_Nier had downvoted over half of Jiro's comments, amounting to hundreds of downvotes.
I asked the community's guidance on dealing with the issue, and while the matter was being discussed, I also reviewed previous discussions about mass downvoting and looked for other people who mentioned being the victims of it. I asked Jack to compile reports on several other users who mentioned having been mass-downvoted, and it turned out that Eugine was also overwhelmingly the biggest downvoter of users David_Gerard, daenarys, falenas108, ialdabaoth, shminux, and Tenoke. As this discussion was going on, it turned out that user Ander had also been targeted by Eugine.
I sent two messages to Eugine, requesting an explanation. I received a response today. Eugine admitted his guilt, expressing the opinion that LW's karma system was failing to carry out its purpose of keeping out weak material and that he was engaged in a "weeding" of users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
Needless to say, it is not the place of individual users to unilaterally decide that someone else should be "weeded" out of the community. The Less Wrong content deletion policy contains this clause:
Although the wording does not explicitly mention downvoting, harassment by downvoting is still harassment. Several users have indicated that they have experienced considerable emotional anguish from the harassment, and have in some cases been discouraged from using Less Wrong at all. This is not a desirable state of affairs, to say the least.
I was originally given my moderator powers on a rather ad-hoc basis, with someone awarding mod privileges to the ten users with the highest karma at the time. The original purpose for that appointment was just to delete spam. Nonetheless, since retributive downvoting has been a clear problem for the community, I asked the community for guidance on dealing with the issue. The rough consensus of the responses seemed to authorize me to deal with the problem as I deemed appropriate.
The fact that Eugine remained quiet about his guilt until directly confronted with the evidence, despite several public discussions of the issue, is indicative of him realizing that he was breaking prevailing social norms. Eugine's actions have worsened the atmosphere of this site, and that atmosphere will remain troubled for as long as he is allowed to remain here.
Therefore, I now announce that Eugine_Nier is permanently banned from posting on LessWrong. This decision is final and will not be changed in response to possible follow-up objections.
Unfortunately, it looks like while a ban prevents posting, it does not actually block a user from casting votes. I have asked jackk to look into the matter and find a way to actually stop the downvoting. Jack indicated earlier on that it would be technically straightforward to apply a negative karma modifier to Eugine's account, and wiping out Eugine's karma balance would prevent him from casting future downvotes. Whatever the easiest solution is, it will be applied as soon as possible.
EDIT 24 July 2014: Banned users are now prohibited from voting.