[WikiEN-l] silent bans

Thu Feb 27 12:14:52 UTC 2003

I'm not sure right now who 142.177.* is, but perhaps someone will
remind me.  This is the death threat guy, right?  Or am I forgetting?

elian wrote:
> Second question: Since when is the fact that some user was banned a
> valid reason (without giving any other reasons) for deleting entire
> articles?

This is not as easy a question as it first appears.  My own position
is that if someone is sneaking in to edit after a ban, it's really
important to simply revert everything they do, in order to deprive
them of the benefit that they seek.  Debating over the quality of each
individual edit only encourages them to stick around and argue about
it, as if they had never been banned.

> And my fourth and last question: Why the hell do you ban users who write
> articles like this: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asharites ???

Well, here's the thing.  If someone does good work, and *also* behaves
like a royal ass to others, at some point it's necessary to say, hey,
you know, the good work is good, but it's costing us more good work
from other people.

--Jimbo