sannse wrote:
This is not
about avoiding lawsuits. This just about finding a way to
ban people from editing Wikipedia in a way that respects our internal
culture.
And (I hope) about finding a way to avoid banning people in the first place!
Absolutely! I was on a bit of rant there.
My goals for the procedure are of course all about keeping and
extending the peace, and a culture of mutual helpfulness, and the
prevention of the need to ban people any more than absolutely
necessary.
We want a procedure that is widely viewed as credible and fair, so
that even if people disagree with a specific decision, they will agree
that the process is worth supporting.
(Even my retaining a right of executive clemency or pardon, is
something that I would exercise judiciously, deferring to the decision
of the committee in almost all realistic cases, even if I didn't
*quite* agree. I only want everyone to understand that I intend to be
there to keep the process from going wildly haywire with dozens of
bans per month or whatever.)
However, and I think that Alex and I agree much more than my rant
yesterday would suggest, I really want to make sure that our putting
in place a process does not give rise to anyone thinking that they
suddenly have new legal rights to edit the Wikipedia website,
regardless of the wishes of the other users, or regardless of the
final decision of the Wikimedia Foundation.
--Jimbo