wittgenstien,
Ostracism means to expell someone from a community or group. Surely ostracism is not the same a solatary confinement without being allowed to send letters to others.
Ostrcised people can still communicate with the others individually or collectivly by other means, but not in the group setting that they were citizens or members of.
Historically, those ostracised were stigmatized by the action. . The ostracism was done without trial., the ostracised person was not granted any due-process or any opportunity to defend the accusations against them before they were ostrcised. Even though ostracised people can start their own newspaper if they want to, they are still ostracised from the community or group that they were in and can not be an equal participant in the community or group that they were ostracised from.
http://dict.aiedu.com/word/ostracise
My interest here in this is that if the forum is a mental-health community, could not other alternatives be used even if it could requier some work?
For instance, if I chaired a mental-health forum, I would have large group of people to review the posts in the first minuet and if there was something that needed to be changed in the post, those 'editors" could send it back to be modified for resubmission. That would take more work for the group's owners, but I think that in a mental-health forum that it is worth the extra effort.
My vision of a mental-health forum would start with a few people to moderate it and then involve many more so that there could be a moderator for each thread. There would never be anyone blocked or even written to them on the board. That would be a large endevor , but could it not be worth the effort?
I think that each thread could have a moderator easily by having 10 moderators for a group that has 500 posts per day.
The overiding issue here is that expelling a member from a group has the effects to some that are evident in this thread, so I ask you to consider if expulsion is a sound mental-health practice in a mental-health community.
Lou