Ben McIlwain wrote:
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Mark Gallagher wrote:
I agree with you both ...
Sometimes "blocking in a dispute" occurs when there's no dispute in
progress. Suppose that User A repeatedly inserts a copyvio image into
an article. Admin B, after giving appropriate warnings, deletes the
image and blocks the user. User A then says "but Admin B was edit
warring over the inclusion of the copyvio image! It's a dispute! He's
not allowed to block!"
It even works if Admin C gets involved, at B's request (on ANI, or IRC,
or a talkpage, or whatever). Then User A says "Admin B asked C to get
involved! It's a conspiracy!" No matter what, there was no dispute,
and User A is being a dick, and we shouldn't pander to him by saying
"you're right, that *was* a legitimate dispute". Further, Admin B
shouldn't be prevented from blocking a disruptive user simply because
some smartarse decides to pick a fight and impugn her impartiality and
ability to do her job.
I had a recent RFC over this actually. A user (who shall remain
unnamed) was repeatedly removing or altering the image on the
Jyllands-Posten article (for over a month) to the point where it was
simple vandalism and it was pissing everyone off. So I blocked him for
a week.
You can always assume bad faith and call it vandalism, but I clearly
stated my good reasons many times on the talk page.
Then he turns around and says my block was invalid
because I was
previously in a dispute with him, and he dredges up an old diff.
I did not only dredge up an old diff, but I dredged up about 15
diffs, where you've repeatedly argued your POV with many editors
beside myself.
And then another admin comes forward in support of the
block, and he comes
up with another diff where that admin reverted his vandalism to the
article. This happened two more times with two more different admins
stepping forward in favor of the block and he was like, "You can't,
content dispute, content dispute!"
It's not my fault, that some more admins breached
WP:BP#When_blocking_may_not_be_used. Btw. they did not revert my own
but other editors edits and they've been engaged in the dispute
on the talk page as well.
It's ridiculous. When a bunch of admins are
coming forward saying you
did the wrong thing, you should shut up and accept it, not dredge up
various incidences when you were possibly in a dispute with that admin.
Why? Because administrators are supposed to have a last say
in content disputes?
Luckily the block stood. Despite this
rules-lawyering, it was clear
that nobody was buying the argument that you can't block someone for
very questionable edits if you happened to have interacted with them in
the past.
I wonder why the policy says, that blocks to gain an advantage in a
content dispute is strictly prohibited, when administrators are
accepted to decide that a position, they disagree with, is questionable.
--
Raphael