By "some people" I assume youre not making some kind
of prejudicial comment about anyone who might see the
issue differently. And Im sure any objective reader
would consider your use of "heartless" "relativism"
and "intellectual lazyness" and "corrupt morality" as
personal attacks, so I'll just ignore them. I
understand how good people can lose their cool. And
any point of view expressed with such articulation as
yours should never be considered "flaming," (certainly
not a blockable offense) even if it does have some of
the above in it. I dont understand how any distinction
of "intrinsic/inherited" can be definitive enough to
make for blocking people.
While I empathize with your desire to not want to be
treated with personal hostility on Wikipedia, it has
be said that there is no premptive remedy for that
problem. Work it out like everybody does, and if you
get wikitired and wikistressed, take a wikibreak. At
least we have a dispute resolution process. First off,
Im not sure that list can qualify as a "hit list," as
the reaction to that list seems to have been
appropriately jovial ("how do I get on the list?"
etc). Granted its on the borderline, but wheras the
weighing of evidence requires some balance, indefinite
bans are an absolutist remedy without any. Others have
correctly noted that such might even encourage
sockpuppetism. Its a close call, no doubt, and only
the absolutist nature of the superprocedural block is
really at issue. Please try to understand my
objectivity here.
For little background, the development of the formal
DR process arose only after (very, very, very) much
long-term tug and pull between prominent members of
the community --as the lack of any formal process was
increasingly viewed as being a failure in terms of
principle and shown in practice to be unresponsive to
WP's exponential growth. There were a few notable
cases wherein conflicts regarding both issues and
personality became larger flame wars, and mere chatter
on the lists proved insufficient to either do the
basic work of making an accurate case for corrective
measures, or for finding any nuanced remedy. Before a
certain point, any banning was an extremely rare-case
issue provided for only extremely disruptive trolls
--meaning only those making overt and
uncontroversially improper edits. The notion that
trollism should be redefined to include not just overt
behaviour but subvert behaviour as well is
controversial enough to merit discussion before
applying to a ban. IAC, banning was once an extreme
rarity. No more apparently.
When I first got into some edit wars, I admittedly was
quick to react to certain offensive personal attacks,
and topical debate of course shifted the issues into
the realm of personal attacks. But despite the
flaming, reason eventually prevailed, and those
conflicts surpisingly enough helped to shape the
formation of the now familiar formal process that was
(up to the time of their institution) missing. So I
dont care how overworked the understaffed Arbcom is,
or how so much someone doesnt ever again want to run
into people lacking in some areas of basic civility
and decency. The dispute resolution process is
something to be promoted, supported, expanded, and
upheld --not something to be treated like a dying
elephant and relegated back to the good-ol-days of
unilateral decrees. I'm disappointed that many good
people fail to have this basic trust in the culture
Wikipedia has developed, but I attribute that to the
natural unawareness of DR history, coming from those
not present through that formative period. And while
Im at it, anyone seriously citing IAR in the context
of a discussion regarding a preemptive permanent block
is to me just an example of how out of touch some
people are. The notion that we need to enforce
anti-troll measures with the same extreme prejudice
that those mentioned promote is of course one glaring
contradiction, from the point of view of my "so-called
moral high ground of un-"principled" relativism."
SV
--- El C <el.ceeh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Greetings, WikiEN-l,
My point then (and so it remains now) was centred on
what I termed
intrinsic/irreversible properties, the distinction
between the
inherent and inherited. The latter says: you may be
sub-human now, but
you can convert to what I believe in and then be
human, just-like-me.
The former says: you will *always* be sub-human, as
an intrinsic trait
that cannot be reversed, you can't be just-like-me,
ever.
There is an alarming tendency on the part of some
participants in this
thread, I find; I will go further, a seemingly
heartless and ugly
current, whose basis is intellectual lazyness at
best, and an utterly
corrupt and morally bankrupt mindset at worse. The
so-called moral
high ground of un-"principled" relativism. But
before I'm banned from
the list on account of flaming (which I nonetheless
am taking pains to
direct with a measure of moderation, though
ambiguities will not save
me), I'll pause for a personal example from
Wikipedia:
About two months ago or so I encountered an abusive
editor who refused
to speak to me because, as he told me, and then all
of WP:AN in a
notice he authored, that he does not, as a matter of
principle, speaks
to homosexuals (at the event, I never made privy to
him whether I was
even male or female to begin with, I was only
reverting, warning, and
eventually banning him for homophobic hate speech on
[[Iran]] -- the
user was defending the Islamic regime's policy on
homosexuality and a
certain infamous execution of underage homosexuals
in a very prolific
fashion, but I digress).
The user explained that he considers homosexuals,
and later he added,
also Jews, to be lower than animals or something to
that effect, etc.,
noting how he would "love to rid the world of gays
and Jews."
Now, there was a certain vocal user, an established
user, a user with
thousands of edits, who insisted that my actions
were contrary to
policy and that I should have attempted to resolve
my *differences*
with that abusive user (well, his proxies, since at
that point he was
propogating his hate speech via block evasion)
through the dispute
resolution process. This is what I'm talking about,
and of course this
exchange led to a whole lotta (wiki and otherwise)
love!
Anyway, I do not look forward to the (further
ensuing?)
agenda-driven(?), moral abstractions about
preemptive banning and how
SlimVirgin's ban amounted to nothing but that;
insinuations on her
purported 'selectiveness,' and on how terribly
unfair this whole
ordeal was to this neo-Nazi and his
(surprise-sururpise, who would
have guessed it) accompanying *hit list* (ah, yes,
but this hit list,
unlike some others that I, myself, had been
subjected to on Wikipedia,
did take place offsite, though I would still argue,
within the realm
of the known universe). Someone get the poor fellow
a worthy and
so-called 'righteous' advocate(?). And most of all,
I am not looking
forward to the flames, but I sure do expect them
after having said all
that (which nevertheless, isn't actually so much).
Alas, I do confess
to being mildly curious in seeing how subtle and/or
decisive they
get...
*Though*, you can always shower me with love,
instead. It is within
your power and even the realm of possibility. Please
shower me with
your love. Let it shine, shine, shine. Let it shine.
Love,
El_C
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