[WikiEN-l] Be nice to newbies

Thu May 12 14:00:44 UTC 2005

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leif Knutsen [mailto:vyerllc at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 9:03 PM

[snip]

> I do appreciate the need to enforce rules and be consistent 
> about it, but I 
> also think that a) a warning is in order before blocking 
> someone; b) the 
> person who is being blocked should have some means of 
> defending his/her 
> actions; and c) it should always raise flags in a situation 
> like this, when 
> the person (an admin) whose deletions were reverted reported 
> the reverts; 
> and another, who only a few weeks before had lost a dispute 
> with me, jumped 
> at the opportunity to block me. 

All that sounds pretty reasonable to me. If you ever need to be
unblocked, shoot me an e-mail or leave a message at my talk page.

I helped WRITE the guidelines for "when to block" and we all agreed back
then that there are one or two steps that ought to be taken before a
block.

1. Talk to the person. Explain the situation. Make a polite request.

2. If they persist in violating a RULE after you have (a) explained it
AND (b) warned them that another violation will result in a block; THEN
you may do the block.

I think I speak for the entire community on this. (If there have been
changes, while I wasn't watching, no doubt maveric169 or Anthere or
someone on the Arbitration Committee will set me straight, but I had
thought these principles were written in stone.)

Once again, if you have any trouble, just let me know.

Ed Poor
Wikipedia's First Elected Bureaucrat
Mailing List Admin Emeritus
Developer Emeritus
(and all-around nice guy)