Most of this has already been covered, but:

So why do you ban/discourage imms from talking on the likes of dioxides if you have such support for free flowing discussion.

If I'm going to discuss CF, I'll do it in a place where trolls are short-lived and accountability is higher. We've tried the unofficial forums experiment before we had our own forums, and all it did was burn people out dealing with the usual suspects. Anyone who thinks it would be a barrel of hugs if we started duplicating our efforts on two forums clearly hasn't read the archives that far back.

Here, we can have discussions with our responsible players. There's any number of threads where players disagree with staff (scroll down the front page of Gameplay on any given day), and so long as they do it in a reasonable and mature manner, that discussion continues. It's when Ranty McPotShot shows up that we moderate matters.

Generally speaking, the number of people banned from these forums hovers around six. People tend to make a ton of noise upon departure, so it might seem like we're banning people left and right, but that's the median: six, maybe ranging from 4 to 8. This forum is an open discussion among all members of the CF community except six or so. If you're on that list, you made a large number of poor judgement calls. I'm not aware of anyone who was banned "for one post", even though that's the usual martyr's cry.

I don't believe that unmoderated "free flowing" discussion is inherently best, or even desirable, on the Internet. (This is especially due to Internet Tough Guy syndrome, coupled with issues related to anonymity and accountability.) Most people don't-- serious, productive discussion (academic, legal, political, etc.) overwhelmingly takes place in formats with some boundaries, rules, etc. People disagree all the time, since if everyone agreed on the matter, why are you having a discussion about it?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com