A quick look at the EDH banning mindset & the importance of the social contract.

On the EDH social/ban list in general, this is my take:

You can't ban everything, you shouldn't try. Prismatic is a painful lesson in what happens to a great format when you go that route. With this in mind, the only cards on the ban list should be those that are inherently unfun, those that almost never generate potentially fun game states and those that are financially restrictive as outlined by the banning principles.

Unfortunatly there are exceptions to these principles both on and off the list, that's my opinion. And that brings us to the huge elephant in the room:

The banning guidlines are extremely subjective and, as a logical result, leave a huge grey area both in the definition of unfun and the financial barrier. This grey area is highlighted and explained by Geno in his "Misinterpretation..." thread. It's better to err on the side of ban list brevity and to trust players. Prismatic is the QED of this theory. What do you do when you don't trust players however? (apart from councelling) I'd put it to you that 99% of players calling for additional EDH bans belong in this latter catagory.

Every opportunity should be taken to impress on players that they can do what they want however they should remember that opponents expect adherence to the social contract laid out by Sheldon & the other founding fathers but also that their interpretation of that social contract may not be as strict/loose as your interpretation. Communicating the social contract successfully is a huge task because it's now intended as a global social contract, rather than a local social contract. Maybe Sheldon and the RC are on to the new thing in international relations!

And this is what I think the RC and everyone else in the EDH community will have to work really hard to impress on those that will inevitably cry for widespread bans even more-so than before with the advent of Rise of Eldrazi:

It's each player's responsibility to make the choice to break or not break a set of cards in EDH and assume the responsibility for that choice. The ban list can't be the apron strings that protects players from negative feedback from other players as to how they build and play their decks.


Relevant reading:
EDH Banning guidlines can be found here
The current EDH banned list can be found here
Sheldon's article on the Social Contract and the 4 basic principles