[WikiEN-l] Two users left because of Wik

Wed May 5 04:46:25 UTC 2004

User:Tannin and User:Kosebamse left, in large part because of Wik's  
extremely aggressive behavior (continued reverts on many pages: he now has  
a list of pages he reverts daily to be in compliance with the arbitration  
ruling of not reverting the same page more than three times a day; he also  
calls many users "morons" on his user page in clear violation of  
Wikiquette).

Tannin and Kosebamse were both great and highly productive users. I don't  
want to compare them against Wik, and I have nothing against Wik  
personally, but if he can't learn to cooperate and keeps driving valued  
contributors away, he has to go, period. In fact I suspect that he is  
*trying* to get himself banned to play the victim.

Wik is currently in arbitration again. I urge the AC to speed up their  
negotiations on this matter as every single day increases the risk of  
losing more people. The least severe punishment I would find acceptable is  
to forbid Wik from reverting edits entirely for a substantial amount of  
time. If he has to revert something, he can try to convince someone else  
to do it. At this point I would not rule out a temporary ban, however.

My gut feeling is that the arbitrators will be too lenient again. I have  
to say that if they cannot solve this problem, I must consider the  
arbitration process broken, and will strive for a complete reform. I  
respect all of the arbitrators, of course, but I believe so far this  
process has been far too slow and ineffective. Even Jimbo was faster and  
less lenient.

Regardless of any AC reforms, I definitely think that we need an acting  
body which can say things like
- "Wik, take these insults down or you will be banned"
- "Wik, justify your edits on the discussion page X before you revert  
again, or you will be banned"
- "Wik, because of your behavior, you may not edit article Y for the next  
week"
*quickly*. Such decisions can be the result of a poll among sysops, a  
committee, individual appointed users, I don't care. But we definitely  
need something that *works* before we lose more people and reputation. I  
know we have quite a few hardcore anarchists, but as [[Wikipedia is not]]  
states, we are not a vehicle for testing anarchism. We are an encyclopedia  
and a community, and we need to develop realistic and effective ways of  
dealing with problem users.

Regards,

Erik