[WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a new policy

Sun Feb 6 02:20:55 UTC 2005

steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050206 07:25]:

> Fred Bauder points out that what I suggest amounts to a permanent 
> ban.  Yes, this is precisely what I mean.  I understand that many people 
> might disagree with me, but this is the effect of what I proposed.  If 
> Jimbo rejects it, so be it.  But to reiterate, what I am suggesting should 
> only be used in the most extreme cases, and after some sort of due process.

We only give up to a year's ban, because a year is forever in Internet
time.

Also - and this is important - all banned users are theoretically
redeemable. Michael was turned form a swearword into a good editor. If that
particular miracle can happen, anything is possible.

> David Gerard points out that this is, in effect, the current situation 
> concerning Cheese Dreams.  Yes, I understand that too.  But it is an 
> informal and ad hoc response.  I am suggesting giving the ArbCom one more, 
> formal, ultimate sanction.  I think making the sanction official will make 
> it easier to enforce; having the ArbCom in charge guarantees that the 
> accused will benefit from due process.

We can hand out up to a year already. Note some recent cases like Alberuni,
who got more than a year's ban total but ony a year was enactable.

> But the main point that I share with Nicholas Knight: "It's just going to 
> get worse, and as legitimate users get fed up and leave, people like CD 
> will turn Wikipedia into a laughing stock."

CD is the merest flea on Wikipedia. And we're already a laughing stock, ask
Larry Sanger.

> Forget about my personal gripe with CD -- forget about CD altogether.  The 
> point is, we can count on situations in the future where a person given the 
> most reasonable temporary ban will flout the ruling of the ArbCom, and, by 
> using many sock puppets, effectively neutralize our current means of 
> blocking users.  This calls for some new policy.  People now have my 
> proposal and Nicholas's proposal to consider.  I really urge all committed 
> Wikipedians to participate in this discussion, and perhaps develop other 
> proposals worthy of consideration.

Look, the essential point is that harder and harder bans can't actually be
enforced more than the present sanctions against CD are being enforced.
It's just about impossible to keep someone off Wikipedia if they really
want to edit on it except by continuous admin vigilance. Making bans we're
comically unable to enforce is the way to make us a laughing stock amongst
those interested in trashing the place.

There is absolutely no reason to presume contacting the ISP will work in
any meaningful way. We're not paying the user's monthly fees,
they are. We have the website "anyone" can edit. To get an ISP to act, you
have to have a Terms Of Service violation. Not only that, you have to find
a TOS violation they will actually act upon, not just one that's written in
the TOS - those are two entirely different things. Spam, they act upon,
'cos otherwise everyone blocks their mail. Illegal threats, they act on
those. Editing an editable website really doesn't register on that scale.

The reason Wikipedia goes in for soft security is not just because we're so
nice and full of the wikilove, it's because the degree of hard security
being asked for in this thread, though emotionally satisfying in a
simplistic Daily Mail manner, is not actually *possible*.

- d.

[WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

[WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a new policy