[WikiEN-l] DON'T BAN RK – hes indispensable

Thu Oct 2 13:18:01 UTC 2003

This is Abe Sokov's opinion. I do not agree with it, but he asked for it 
to be presented in a "readable" format, so here it is.

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I am going to make strong pleas against any moves to ban RK or 
marginalize him. While I’m not arguing that we tolerate his bad behavior 
in the short-run, it is crucial that we tolerate having to deal with, 
and act against, his bad behavior instance by instance in the long-run. 
To sum up my argument, RK’s bad behavior is an indispensable asset for 
Wikipedia.

Yes, his tendency to overreact, aggressiveness, and lack of ability to 
channel disputes into a more substantive debate, rather than an all-out 
personal conflict, is confounding his difficulties with other users, 
underlying this conflict is the nature of the articles on which he has 
been working. On Wikipedia his fields of interest (Israel, Judaism, and 
anti-Semitism) inherently attract a polarized core of contributors, 
which pits committed supporters of Israel against pro-Palestinian advocates.

Of course, certain practices and behavior are better at channeling them 
toward cooperation. Although I did say that his personality is at the 
heart of this whole attempt to ban you, the dynamics of his edit wars 
mean that he has to act as he does! While other topics polarize as well, 
the ideology of the extremists on both sides, along with their ingrained 
prejudices against each other, discourages them from yielding any 
concessions to each other. Moreover, it encourages both sides to seek to 
prevail at all cost, and escalate the conflict into a zero-sum game. 
Since both sides are too fearful of the aims of the other, RK is always 
forced not to retreat and make concessions to the other side (that might 
be his personality, but the often raving lunacy of his crudades is means 
of putting checks and balances on his opponents in the long-run).

Although he can be paranoid irrational at times, and he’s raving and not 
strategizing, his aggressiveness is well-suited in that it might be the 
only pattern of behavior that will work for him. Moreover, since he is 
almost always outnumbered in any dispute, he naturally has to lodge just 
as many salvoes, and make just as much noise, as many users put together.

The fair-minded users who favor his banning ignore one the only fact 
that matters: the end result of most of his edit wars has been 
neutrality. There's a lot of noise, but everything's fine afterwards. 
Wikipedia needs his forceful dedication to his side of the issues.

RK and RK alone provides a counterweight to large number of 
contributors, and determines whether or not his side is equally powerful 
(despite being under-represented in terms of the number of contributors) 
in each edit war.  Right now, we have a “balance of power” on the 
Israeli-Palestinian articles that yields stalemate in edit-war after 
edit-war. Thus, Wikipedia gets the quality of writing, accuracy, 
balance, and neutrality needed for to emerge as a viable sourcebook.

Thus, even if he did do something that warrants a banning, Wikipedia 
needs to accept his actions at all cost in order to maintain balance on 
the articles on the Israeli-Palestinian articles.

His absence would mean that conflict would ease considerably over the 
Israeli-Palestinian issue, thus meaning that they written at a far 
faster rate by the remaining users. But that would be the result of a 
terrible development.

This would be at the cost of allowing his antagonists to achieve an 
all-out victory, and be able to exercise such a degree of control over 
the articles that there would only be a façade of neutrality. While I 
did not reach this conclusion when I was subjected to my first RK 
experience (disagreeing with him isn’t pleasant), I now realize that his 
absence would be a crushing blow to Wikipedia, an unprecedented 
experiment whose success is not a foregone conclusion.

The dynamics of the disputes on Wikipedia that arise over the 
Israeli-Palestinian issue mean that neutrality is only going to be 
attained when both sides are finished terrorizing and brutalizing each 
other, after a zero-sum battle has ended in a stalemate. If RK weren’t 
here, that would mean that the other side would consistently win.
RK’s role as the lose cannon on the Israel-related articles - always 
suspicious, prickly, and aggressive – bolsters the influence of his side 
of the issues. You cannot deny that RK has steered dozens of articles 
toward an orientation further from that of his antagonists. He often 
starts off adding grotesquely POV content, but that’s toned down after a 
fierce battle with his ever-observant opponents. Although his opponents 
are more subtle in slanting articles, there are more of them, and other 
users usually have no sympathy for RK. Whereas RK can inject hysterical 
propaganda in a few articles, many other users can inject subtle biase s 
in many articles. However, fear of RK’s tyranny is a check on them; and 
when RK mobilizes his energies into a hysterical fit, balance results 
from the ensuing struggle.

In short, if Wikipedia is to present both sides, it’s contingent on 
letting RK be RK. He generates chaos and a lot of ill-will. He’s often 
obnoxious (but he can magnanimously admit that he was wrong – I believe 
that he took my advice to stop calling a very well-respected user an 
anti-Semite). He even alienates his own supporters, and often attacks 
potential allies with great bitterness. But due to the nature of users 
who are attracted to the Israeli/Palestinian article, the only way to 
get balance is stalemate after stalemate after stalemated zero-sum 
conflict between equally powerful and committed groups of antagonists. 
Among the non-academic partisans who take the time to write about this 
dispute, the fanatical camps on both sides make it impossible for the 
two sides to put aside their differences and agree on what a neutral 
article is. It’s too idealistic to expect them to have the dexterity to 
cooperate and quit wasting time by sniping at each other. RK’s intrans 
igence, and often flat out bizarre behavior, but it’s an indispensable 
part of a confluence of opposing forces required for Israeli-Palestinian 
neutrality.