[WikiEN-l] RK temp-banned

Thu Oct 2 22:29:48 UTC 2003

Jimmy-
> Since wikipedia isn't really accessible at the moment (sigh, new parts
> arriving tomorrow or Monday, though!), and also just for the
> historical record of the mailing list, can you give the mailing list
> some details of what RK was doing?

After one of his many flamewars (I sent you an email when I noticed I had  
another inbox full of RK flames), he started accusing people - respected  
Wikipedians including Angela and Martin - of "vandalizing" his *user*  
page. What they did is post comments on his *talk* page. Both Angela and  
Martin are exemplary, reasonable Wikipedians, and their comments were not  
hateful in any way. (In fact I deeply admire Martin for his patience with  
RK, if he had treated me like that I would have called for consequences  
long ago.)

He then accused these people of hating Jews and replaced their user pages  
with disparaging comments. If I remember correctly, he also blanked a  
regular talk page. I put a comment on his talk page to the effect that 1)  
there is a distinction between user and talk pages, and everyone was free  
to leave comments on RK's talk page; 2) vandalism is absolutely  
unacceptable, that if he continued blanking Martin's user page, that page  
would be protected, and that he would be banned if he continued  
vandalizing other pages. This, to me, seemed like a reasonable safety  
measure to prevent this nonsense from escalating further. In response, he  
inserted a disparaging comment on my user page. At that point I decided to  
ban him.

> This might be an ideal case study for 'line drawing' in the case of
> temporary bans for vandalism.

In my opinion, this is a clear cut case of vandalism by a user who has  
obvious psychological problems, and an enforced cooldown period was very  
much within the "arsenal" of sysop powers that we should acknowledge.

It is correct that RK has made good edits in the past. He is very  
knowledgeable about Jewish culture and has a healthy pro-scientific  
attitude. But whenever he has a conflict of opinion, his usual course of  
action is to revert -- completely. I spent weeks trying to find  
compromises over a single article with an anonymous user, responding to  
each of his arguments in detail. RK, on the other hand, will just write  
something like "reverting anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish nonsense" in his  
edit summary. When the other person doesn't back down or is a regular, he  
will send a rambling post to the mailing list about evil persecution.  
Because most of his "victims" are anons, they usually don't defend  
themselves much -- but it creates a very negative impression of our  
project.

Not that there weren't real anti-Semitic edits. But there's a difference  
between anti-Semitism and criticizing Israel's current and past politics.  
In fact, even if you accuse Ariel Sharon of being a murderer or a  
terrorist, that has not necessarily anything to do with anti-Semitism. I  
think we can agree on that. Yet, that has always been RK's accusation  
against anyone. I was accused of being anti-Semitic by him months ago  
because I oppose circumcision.

He lost it completely this time, and most people who are familiar with the  
matter consider the response adequate. Whether he returns is his decision,  
but I personally am of the opinion that he should apologize for this  
recent episode before being allowed to edit again, not the least because  
he insulted everyone working on this project and it would be a further  
insult to just pretend that nothing happened. I for one don't like being  
called a nazi, in rage or not, and I don't like to work with people who do  
so.

Regards,

Erik