General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Has the banning of dkf made you more reluctant to criticize certain things on DU? [View all]Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)What does the owner of a website want? Traffic, because that pushes up page views and advertising revenue. Nothing wrong with that, the site owners need to feed their families and pay for their homes. And what generates more traffic? An uncontroversial thread that everyone here agrees with ("Hey, Ted Cruz is such an asshole!" or a somewhat provocative thread that divides opinions, generates 300 responses and is viewed thousands of times?
On the other hand, basic standards of civility need to be enforced. One only needs to glance at the horrible comments replete with insults, racism and homophobia at sites like YouTube to appreciate this. We want decent, well-behaved people here, hence the jury system.
So in a sense a poster like dkf was the admins' dream member. He or she was here a very long time, posting provocative stuff, generating many responses and page views and driving up traffic and advertising revenue, but without stepping over the boundary of unacceptably breaching the community standards. So for those who are wondering "how did he/she get away with it for so long?" the answer is simple. I'm sure the admins are keenly aware that if by banning everyone who posts controversial stuff they turn DU as a whole into a clone of the Barack Obama Group, they will be killing the goose that lays the golden egg.