Word count: 1,053 Estimated read time: 5 minutes, 11 seconds Thank you for being receptive to what I had written. I know in your position, you have to make a lot of decisions daily, and surely deal with a lot of crazies. While I don't know the exact things TipTony has done, I've made the (reasonable) assumption that he's upvoted his own listings, reviewed himself many times, trolled users in the Trollbox, spammed comments and downvotes, because the "people" who do this all have the same writing style and operate all at the same time. So I believe you when you say there's been trouble with him. You ask -- what would I do? Personally, this is my thought process: In this specific isolated incident, where he is listing a service that utilizes open source GPL software to install and administer on a server -- he is doing nothing wrong. He would only be doing wrong if he refuses to provide the source code with his service, as that breaks the GPL license. Aside from that, he's in the clear and hasn't "stolen" something that is licensed with GPL. When you consider the other things he is probably doing, it may be tempting to want to penalize him for this listing, but, objectively the listing itself has not misused the code. Therefore, penalizing him for it sets a presedent for the rest of the community here. It can lead to confusion (like it did for me), or probably distrust among some users if the admin doesn't uphold the importance of GPL products. There's a lot of Linux and open source-savy people on XMRBazaar, and I feel like if they read the current warning on his account, they would be confused, as open source software almost always enables others to utilize the code how he was doing. So, for me personally, I would leave it. I think consistency and unbiased ruling is the right way to proceed. So whether it's me or some (probably) scummy guy hosting Kabus, it's not stealing code and it's legal. As for moderation, I have dealt with my fair share of nutjobs in the 10 years of running imageboards. I used to try to abide by "never deleting anything" in favor of free speech. However, you will eventually run into bad apples who make a point of disrupting the flow or basic goal of the website. For example, my goal of an imageboard is to allow users to freely communicate with one another. Naturally, I wouldn't want to censor discussion. However, I have one very persistant user who always discourages people from posting, because anytime people post, he responds with insults over and over until people decide to stop posting. It works, he usually stops discussion because people get tired of being told they're stupid, shouldn't post etc., and then the imageboard is dead for weeks. Nobody likes this behavior, it disrupts the entire point of the website (to discuss), and this individual has been warned. But warning alone didn't stop him, so I eventually resorted to deleting those posts. I ruled that it was in the community's general best interest to allow discussion without the spammy-insults that disrupted the general flow and idea of the website. Doing this drastically helped get discussion going again. And people were very understanding, "censorship" wasn't my goal. My goal was to have an imageboard where good-faith discussion could take place. Most people are sypmathetic and can spot a bad-faith person. To get around "censorship", my board has a "mod log". Anything I remove gets listed in my mod log along with the date I took this action, the reasoning, and the contents of the post if I wanted. This allows complete transparency so people can see I don't abuse power, and that any actions I take are not burried. It's out in the open for people to see. I'm a proponent of freedom of speech too, obviously. However, imagine if a guy went to a movie theater, bought a ticket, and then in the middle of the movie got up in front of the screen and started reciting poetry in as loud a voice as he could muster. If someone did this, they'd be kicked out of the movie theater, and rightfully so. Nobody is trying to 'censor' them or stifle their freedom of speech -- but the movie theater is selling a product (an enjoyable movie-watching experience) and this person, who entered the theater voluntarily, is acting in bad faith and ruining the product for everyone else. That's a silly scenario, but this is effectively what people who act in bad faith in any kind of online community are doing. As the manager of a movie theater, or as an administrator of a website, my opinion is that you not only have a right to remove these people, but an obligation to do so. A "mod log" adds transparency, so that everyone else on the website can understand exactly why certain administrative actions were taken. Without this transparency, the guy in the example before could go around town telling everyone that the movie theater kicked him out "for no reason," when that's obviously not the case. A transparent mod log gives a community more trust in the administration, because if they DO happen to see an action taken on the mod log that they disagree with, they can voice their opinion then. In 99% of scenarios (deleting spam, banning obvious bad-faith users) the community will thank you for dealing with the problem. The above is my personal opinion. It can be hard balancing absolute free speech with a website that accepts user-submissions like xmrbazaar. You will get people absuing certain aspects. My advice is to remember the general goal of the website, and care and tend to the website to achieve that goal. Even in an anarchist society, there are general agreed upon ethics or order that a community agrees upon. It's a matter of balancing order with respecting people's ability to utilize the tool/platform you give them in a productive manner. Also, you are free to use any part of the message I had sent you, thanks for asking. You can keep it anonymous or put my name on it, either way is fine. I would've put some ascii art in there if I knew it might be shown off. Better late than never: ___ ____ _ ____ _ _ | |/ / | | / \ (_) | | | ' / ___ ___ | | ___ / _ \ _ __| | | < / _ \ / _ \| | |___| / (_) \ | |/ _` | | . \| (_) | (_) | | / ____ \ | | (_) | |___|\___\\___/ \___/|_| /___/ \___\|_|\__,_| _______________ ____________ ( _____________ ) ___ ( ) / _ _ \/ _ \ ( OH YEAH! ) / (,) (,) \/ \ \ /_____________) | _ | | | _______ | (_) | | | _______ ( . . )_ | . . |/ / ( . . )_ | o |_) \ '.....' /__/ | o |_) ) '-' ( \ / ) '-' ( (_______) )_____________( (_______) ____(_______________)_________________________________