Usually, I try to make most of the administrative decisions about Team Speed Kills on my own. Part of this is because, while I consider this blog to be one that belongs to all of its participants, I am still ultimately responsible for it.

However, the question I'm wrestling with is one of the community standards, and one I'm trying to make with all of you in mind. So I'll put it before you and see what feedback I might get.

I took the step of pre-emptively banning someone this weekend. I'm not big on banning people; this might be the first time I've banned a non-spam commenter either here or at Garnet and Black Attack. When the person I banned contacted me, I felt the pang of doubt growing a little bit.

The commenter -- and, no, I won't name him or her -- once crossed one of the few lines I have here about comments. I warned the poster and haven't had a problem since. However, in the interim and as part of an unrelated discussion, some of my SBN colleagues have drawn my attention to what I find to be fairly inappropriate comments on other sites in the network -- seemingly gratuitous personal attacks, etc.

The are only two reasons I will ban someone from Team Speed Kills. First, I'll do it to prevent spam -- that should be pretty self-explanatory.

Second, I will do it to protect the community and its members. This is a place you should feel comfortable coming and saying whatever is on your mind about football, baseball and (on the rare instances it's mentioned) basketball, or just about anything else, without fear of personal attack. Your ideas are fair game -- you are not.

But we're all grown-ups here -- or act like it, anyway -- and so I don't want to be paternalistic about this. Truth be told, the civil libertarian in me also cringes at the idea of punishing someone for something that didn't happen on this site. It's a matter of weighing risk and reward. This isn't a strict democracy and there are no due process rights, as such. But the principles still apply in some ways.

And so I am considering rescinding the ban, though I haven't firmly made up my mind one way or the other. I want the community's input first. Was the stop I took reasonable or not? At what point should a member's comments on other SBN sites, or any other site, be taken into account? Where do we, as a community, draw the line?

Any thoughts you have would be deeply appreciated.