[Textbook-l] Block against

Thu Jun 15 04:18:25 UTC 2006

Brianna Laugher wrote:

>On 15/06/06, John Pozniak <gentgeen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>I agree. Unless this user was blocked from all
>>Wikimedia projects by the board, a block on one
>>project shouldn't mean a block on all. After all, we
>>have very few enforced policies, and one of them is
>>"Wikibooks is not Wikipedia".
>>    
>>
>
>Just an observation from a relative wikibooks-newbie, there seems to
>be a pretty hostile attitude to Wikipedia. Don't you trust the
>Wikipedia community to make the right decision?
>  
>
Not for wikibooks.  They have a huge user base and edit wars and wheel 
wars are common.  A common tactic built into the site unfortunately from 
the start was "label and lynch".    If someone wants to bail out of that 
environment in the middle of a conflict it is beneficial to everyone to 
allow them to behave civilly relative to the new environment.   The 
controversy goes away.   If we allow following between sites which are 
inevitably starting to drift slightly in cultural matters and 
operational methods then we have to deal with all of these other 
projects hassles.   Some of which for us would not be hassles if people 
were simply left alone to start over in a new community with a different 
purpose.

Consider a troll who insists on inserting too much information for an 
encyclopedia but when shows up here is creating useful content and 
working well with others the enhance the collective output.

We do  not want to take this resolved situation and relaunch into a 
multisite troll war.  Let sleeping dogs lie, maybe they will stay asleep.

>Coming from Commons...if a user was blocked in another project for
>copyright violations, I would be very prepared to block them if they
>did the same thing there. If an image was deleted in a project for
>having no source/being a copyright violation, I would trust that
>project's decision and delete it on Commons too, if there was no new
>compelling evidence.
>  
>
If you do this at a site where I am a regular I would probably conclude 
you are the problem.

So now you and I have a problem.

You and the "troll" relative to the other site have a problem.

We, you and me, are sucked into the original "troll" and the other 
person from the other site who followed or stalked (see wiki stalking at 
Wikipedia,  it is frowned on to follow people between topics or group 
clusters at Wikipedia, they would rather have the problem go away if it 
will than waste time escalating it and involving a bunch of new people) 
the alleged troll who is undoubtedly presenting themselves as the 
persecuted to our new site here.

See how it can escalate?

>But copyright is a different issue to what is essentially being
>blocked for social reasons (trolling)...OK it's probably not
>appropriate to just automatically block anyone who has blocked
>elsewhere. But don't you think it might be useful to find out why they
>were blocked elsewhere? If you could save yourselves a lot of
>potential hassle (some vandals are extremely disruptive), wouldn't you
>consider it at least? I mean it's not like Wikipedia is this totally
>separate thing and they're all strangers, that's all.
>
>  
>
It is my conclusion that it would be more work sorting out conflicting 
claims on the other site where I may be a complete stranger to their 
ways and certainly do not have the historical data to figure what the 
real problems might be.

Take a look at the Arbcom proceedings sometime.   You might be amazed at 
the level of effort that goes into attempting to treat people in 
controversal conflicts fairly.    I was amazed and impressed at the 
level of effort that was going into being fair and effective and 
resolving controversy somehow and taking responsibily for mandate 
resolution methods to the parties.

As Wikibooks continues to grow in content and size of community and 
volume of casual users and vandals or trolls it may or may not need to 
emulate the Arbcom.   Keep your fingers crossed.

regards,
lazyquasar