[Wikipedia-l] Edit Wars

[Toby Bartels]

Although I just expressed support for KQ's banning the Bible bot,
in general I have a strong revulsion to banning individuals
for individual reasons.  If threats get people banned,
then we should have a specific policy that says so,
and ban people on the grounds of that policy.

I wasn't around for 24, but I've read some his stuff
on talk pages and meta, and I must say that he disgusts me.
I take much of what he writes as a personal insult,
because he claims political alliance with ideas that I support
(such as distributive democracy, for example),
although his actions show these claims to be complete lies.
(For example, ordinary users' editing his remarks is democracy,
while setting up revolutionary commissars to reeducate people --
something that he suggested a few places although not in those words --
is not.)

Nevertheless, I think that he should be unbanned ''now''.
That's the default action without a reason not to,
and the fact that it's more pleasant without him is no such reason.

We can, of course, have a policy to ban people that make threats
(although I don't think that this is a good idea in general)
or people that a community consenus agrees are consistently biased
and refuse to work with others (very difficult to implement).
If he runs afoul of policy, then we can treat him like a vandal.
But we shouldn't ban him for personal reasons.


-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>