[WikiEN-l] Arbitration progress report #2

Sat Jan 24 00:28:22 UTC 2004

On Friday 23 January 2004 07:06 pm, Delirium wrote:
> Sascha Noyes wrote:
> >So what you're saying is that you don't want to enforce [[Wikipedia:No
> >personal attacks]]. So who will enforce this rule? As I have stated
> > before, we should either enforce our rules or stop paying lipservice to
> > them and scrap them.
>
> Well, I see a lot of our policies more as "you ought to do this" and
> "you ought not do this", rather than as "if you do (don't) do this you
> will be banned", which is a somewhat more strenuous pronouncement.  

"No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period. [...] Unlike the other rules, 
which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this 
one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy, i.e. grounds for 
banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold."

The question is whether this is an extreme case. I agree with you that we 
shouldn't run around "throwing" everyone who has made a personal attack in 
front of the arbitration committee. But the above-quoted policy also states 
quite clearly that the policy "may also be implemented in extreme cases as 
policy, i.e. grounds for banning".

> Of 
> course if we have no consequences the rules are meaningless, but I don't
> think we should be banning people simply for violating "the letter of
> the law", so to speak.  Really we should only ban people who we've
> determined are highly detrimental to Wikipedia, combined with a
> determination that they're unlikely to change their behavior in the near
> future.  In my opinion, anyway.

Basically the same question as above; when are people "highly detrimental to 
wikipedia"? The current policy, by my interpretation, states that someone is 
highly detrimental to wikipedia if their personal attacks are extreme. Which 
is obviously far from a clear-cut answer.

Your suggestion of assessing whether or not someone is likely to change their 
behaviour is, IMO, answered by my suggestion in the parent email under (2.1): 
A "last warning". In my opinion inferring the probability of future 
compliance from past behaviour is in most cases an unsatisfactory approach.

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
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