[WikiEN-l] Re: temp banning

Thu Oct 2 11:58:50 UTC 2003

The vandalizing user talk pages and so on I'll agree
is over the line,  but I disagree that it warrants a
temporary ban.  Simply revert the  changes, like we do
with everyone else.  We've had plenty of other  users 
who've vandalized pages, including EntmootsOfTrolls
and BuddhaInside,  among others, who were not
summarily banned through the extraordinary use of
developer powers.  I don't see why RK should be
treated  differently.

As for a permanent ban, while RK has been somewhat
obnoxious in his  complaining about anti-Semitism,
several other people (notably SV) have  been equally
obnoxious in their complaining from the other side
(e.g.  of  the "pro-Israel" bias of adding Israeli
census data).  RK has also  added quite a bit of
useful content to Wikipedia, much of it entirely
unrelated to Judaism, Israel, or related issues.

-Mark

---------

Contributors on Wikipédia must be very diverse indeed,
but not only are they valuable when they add useful
content to the encyclopedia, but also when the
cooperate with others ("collaboratively developed" is
the term used).
We just all of us have different appreciations of what
is useful, and what is cooperation. People are not
banned because they are not useful, or because they do
not work with others, they are rejected because they
offer counter productive content, and/or they hurt the
community process. Or at least, are seen as such.

Any banning is a combination of "hurt the encyclopedia
in terms of content", "hurt the group process" and/or
"hurt encyclopedists themselves". We should not
compare one banned person with another banned person.
They are all unique. Just as we should not compare one
who is banned with another who is not, just on *one*
of the arguments used for banning people.

RK is bringing useful content to the encyclopedia, I
don't think anyone would deny this, but some also
think he is preventing useful content to be added to
the articles. RK is not hurting very much the
community spirit (though it might soon happen if we
disagree over how to handle the matter), but to some
people opinion, he has been trying (and very likely,
sometimes succeeded) to hurt some people to a degree
that some don't think acceptable.

The vandalizing user page is just a final straw, which
is very useful indeed, as it is a point on which there
might be a *rule*, or a more or less said agreement,
user page are personal (I do not agree with that
statement btw, imho, user pages are not our pages,
they are pages about us). The agreement says blanking
another user page is bad, putting bad words on them is
worse. At the opposite, there are no rules over using
offending terminology, calling people vandals or nazi.
Because, the offense is just personal perception.

But, thinking that people support a temporary ban just
*because* of these blanking would be a great
misappreciation of the situation.

I sure hope that the temporary banning will not be
considered just over this blanking argument, and as
such very likely lifted. Because that would show a
huge misconsideration for many wikipedians. That would
be just stating officially word abuse (word abuse as
*no one* in real life would *ever* tolerate to be
submitted to) is just okay, as long as the offender
offers good contributions. Comparison with other users
and other conflicts seeds would be just evading the
issue.

Till now, basically, there has been no gradation in
punishment. It is either, "you are good, you can
edit", or "you are bad, go away". Just an occasional
little tap on the hand for those getting out of the
way.

I think we should try to use in-between reactions.
Temporary banning is mostly a way to say to someone
"we would like you to stay with us, but you really
have to work on your behavior". It is a time-break, to
allow thoughts. 

Not a time-break to receive further insults and appeal
to force intended to soften people who fear him never
coming again.

A temporary banning is also a nice compromise between
those who do not accept that situation any more, and
those who think it is acceptable. And imho, temporary
banning is an option that any sysop could "initiate",
that is just to us, all together, to discuss what
temporary means, and how we could use that time-out.

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