# Motion to Ban 'anew1' (split from "What a person is...")

**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/motion-to-ban-anew1-split-from-what-a-person-is/86404
**Category:** Meta
**Created:** [October 14, 2026, 1:13pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/motion-to-ban-anew1-split-from-what-a-person-is/86404 "2026-10-14T13:13:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 18

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### Author: ![Carleas](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/user_avatar/www.ilovephilosophy.com/carleas/32/9448_2.png) [@Carleas](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Carleas)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2026, 3:40am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/motion-to-ban-anew1-split-from-what-a-person-is/86404/18 "2026-10-15T03:40:07Z")

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Let me start by saying that ‘ban-worthy’ is a high bar, so I’m starting from a pretty strong presumption against. I’ll add a poll below, though.

There are three related but distinct issues to consider: this incident, the pattern of behavior, and the requirements to justify a ban.

* * *

Taking this incident, I see [your first post in the thread](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/what-a-person-is-precisely-and-why-people-are-not-created-genetically/86381/90), which I agree is as you describe.

But I disagree that what you quote is anew1’s response to that. Rather, the response is [here](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/what-a-person-is-precisely-and-why-people-are-not-created-genetically/86381/92). I won’t say that post is a model of clarity, or that it offers a strong rebuttal, but it’s not nonsense: he challenges you on the meaning of ‘personality’, and rejects that twin studies contradict his claims.

It’s also worth noting that that exchange comes 90 posts into a thread, so his response (or lack of response) may be explained in part by his ongoing discussions with other users in the thread. Skimming them, there is a lot of discussion of ‘personality’ prior to your post (I think he intends something that I would call ‘person-ness’).

It’s not a great thread, before or after your exchange. Atla makes clear by [the fourth reply](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/what-a-person-is-precisely-and-why-people-are-not-created-genetically/86381/5) that it will import some personal animosities from previous interactions, and shortly after your first exchange, and directly after ~20 posts speculating on anew’s mental health, he laments that “another thread has turned into being ‘about me’”.

* * *

I don’t think this incident would justify a ban on his own, bit this seems a reasonable place to turn to the pattern of behavior.

There have been a few other formal complaints against anew1:

- There was a similar complaint to yours in August for [this post](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-new-religion-philosophy/85997/27) (you rejected that flag).
- There were two complaints at the end of September that I think were coming from a similar place, for “misrepresentation” and “quoting[…] out of context” (you rejected these as well).
- You flagged several of his posts as off-topic; I consider those as part of this motion.

I take it that @Atla and @greenfuse also have problems with how anew1 engages, and from this thread I see @Peter_Kropotkin, @ghatzige, and @Nausamedu agree.

And I do find anew1’s posts to be difficult to follow. His writing style is idiosyncratic and makes interpreting both their meaning and tone difficult (e.g. the frequent and inscrutable use of single quotes and capitalization). He may also be a non-native English speaker, or a speaker of some less familiar dialect of English (e.g. mistakes of word order: “what is ‘your’ REALLY issue here”). He seems to have some philosophical beliefs and presuppositions that go unstated but suffuse his writing.

And he often comes across as haughty or superior, implicitly deriding or insulting his interlocutors, and as dissembling rather than trying to clarify a point of disagreement. I don’t think these critiques apply equally to all their posts, but their quirks appear to get worse in response to disagreement.

Something that stands out to me is that, if there’s anything ban-worthy in anew1’s posts (and I don’t concede that there is), it is here: the possibility that the pattern of behavior in a user’s contributions could be net-negative _despite_ individual examples seeming excusable or embiguous.

* * *

By vocation I am a lawyer in the [common law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law) tradition, and so my inclination is to refer to precedent: what have we done before, and what would this mean going forward?

I can’t recall a person we’ve banned for behavior comparable to anew1’s. We don’t ban people often, especially permanently (which is how I interpret the suggestion here). Since the software update, we’ve only banned a handful of accounts permanently, and their behavior seems egregious by comparison (persistent harassment, death threats, 20 years of being a dick). Expanding the criteria to encompass behavior like anew1’s would be a significant change.

Going forward, it would also seem to justify banning _a lot_ of other users. How should we characterize ‘behavior like anew1’s’ in a way that would make moderation rational, predictable, and fair? The charge is something like ‘doing philosophy badly in a way that is annoying’; is that a fair characterization? However it’s characterized, I suspect more than one user would level a similar charge against me.

It’s not a question of whether conversations with anew1 are themselves productive discussions of philosophy, but whether anew1’s presence makes it harder to have the kind of conversation ILP is meant to enable.

Furthermore, there’s the question of how banning anew1 would affect other users: several users in this thread express both a dislike of interacting with anew1 _and_ reject the idea that people could be banned for it. Because users will see others getting banned and consider what that means for their own place here, we should take seriously not only whether a banning can remove someone that is causing problems, but also whether it undermines the participation of other users.

* * *

Ultimately, all policy and all applications of policy should relate back to the Purpose as defined in the [Forum Philosophy](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/guidelines), so one question should be: Does anew1’s behavior inhibit the ability to discuss philosophy on ILP?

As it happens, my conclusion aligns with my presumptions: **I oppose banning anew1.**

I am skeptical of that conclusion, and everyone else should be too.  
I would appreciate your input:

_Poll ([view on site](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/motion-to-ban-anew1-split-from-what-a-person-is/86404/18))_

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_[View the full topic](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/motion-to-ban-anew1-split-from-what-a-person-is/86404)._