From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Temporary injunctions are for the specific purpose
of keeping the
peace.
On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 13:50:10 +0000, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
An editor in good standing feeling mistreated is
the sort of thing
that makes volunteers fade away, so all this is a matter of concern.
Temp injunctions need to be applied with care.
David, one arbitrator has strongly implied that the policy of
tempbanning has been adopted in order to discourage editors from
seeking arbitration, and not simply to keep the peace. S/he has
written of tempbanning: "I strongly encourage you to complain about
that practice widely and to discourage others from seeking
arbitration. If you can build a consensus against us, we will either
change or be replaced," and "[P]lease remember that arbitration is not
something that people should want or feel good about doing. It is a
serious step that can result in a Wikipedia Death Sentence; if these
temporary injunctions make disputants decide to try a little harder to
avoid bringing their squabbles before the ArbComm, so much the
better."
It's a good thing to discourage squabbles from being brought to the
arbcom; but not all disputes are simply squabbles, and you may be
discouraging genuine disputants too, in cases where the dispute
resolution would be for the benefit of Wikipedia.
That doesn't make sense to me. I do understand the argument that tempbans
where seen as unjust could drive away good editors, but so can seriously
bad behavior. If a week's rest from editing a few articles is *worse*
than editing those articles in the presence of the behavior about which
one wants to make a complaint, I just don't see that the complaint can be
that serious. Suppose somebody says "Tony Sidaway, no editing articles
about politics or sex." Well I'd just get on editing articles about the
hundred-and-one other major subjects an encyclopedia covers.
A sense of proportion: is that something so lacking in Wikipedia editors?