[WikiEN-l] unfair blocking

Wed Aug 4 07:14:01 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Rick wrote:
>  
>
>>Since I was involved in the redirecting and reverting, I was not
>>allowed to protect the page, much as I would have liked to.
>>    
>>
>
>I detect an anomaly or contradiction in our policies.  An admin is not
>allowed to get into a fight with a user over the content of a page and
>then protect the page, but the admin *is* allowed to block that user
>after having fought with them?
>
>I offer no solution to this; I just pose it as a problem.
>  
>
I didn't think we had such an anomaly.  It comes as quite a surprise to 
me that a party to a dispute is supposedly allowed to ban his or her 
opponent in the dispute.  Generally using sysop powers for personal 
disputes is considered a misuse of power, for the exact same reasons 
protecting a page is.  Similarly, arbitration committee members recuse 
themselves from cases involving users with whom they've had disputes.  
Certainly if there's enough of an involvement that protecting a page 
would be inappropriate, banning the user would be highly inappropriate, 
not to mention quite unseemly.

-Mark