No one was ever banned for that.
Not yet that I am aware. But you (or I) would certainly be in the running to be the first.
I don't care about the conditional probability P( me gets banned for my opinions | someone gets banned for their opinion ) if the probability P( someone gets banned for their opinion ) is extremely low, which I believe it is. Actually, I don't even believe the conditional probability is so high for me; though it could be a bit higher for you, but anyway...
I believe the probability of either of us getting banned on LW during the next five years, assuming we continue writing our comments more or less the same way we do now (which I intend to) and don't participate in any activity such as mass-downvoting; and assuming that MIRI and CFAR will continue to exist and be connected with LW... is less than 2%.
And I believe some people had expressed that many opinions I believe you and I hold are simply beyond the pale and should not be "tolerated".
I agree with you in this. I just believe those people don't have enough power to enforce their threats here, and they are more likely to leave this web disappointed than remain here long enough to gain that power. Also, contrarianism works against them.
He is reported to have said:
users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
No talk of "sides" here, just rationality.
My model of him says that he detected "insufficient rationality" when people disagreed with him politically. What you quoted is how it felt to him from inside. (I admit I cannot prove this.)
I just believe those people don't have enough power to enforce their threats here,
Today. But it's rather telling that the threats were made and discussed seriously.
You're not from the US, right?
Things have been pretty wacky here in the last year, with numerous high profile cases of people losing their jobs/status/property for Thoughtcrime. I would have considered these highly unlikely just a year ago.
My model of him ...
My prior would put that as fairly likely. Without going through the posts of the people involved, and I won't, it's hard to know....
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.