[Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus

[Poor, Edmund W]

When I ban an anonymous user's IP, my bannings are upheld. I cannot, however, ban a signed-in contributor.

Only Jimbo or a developer has the physical power to ban a signed-in contributor. They have to change some setting on the server that ordinary sysops can't get to.

The only time I ever threatened to ban someone, all other sysops told me I was wrong to make such a threat. Banning, they reminded me, is for (A) vandals who delete entire articles or litter words like cool "kewl" or "Mike loves Mary" into the text; or (B) contributors who obstinately and perpetually work against the ideals of the project by violating NPOV.

Some better ways to deal with a person who is "too hot to handle" may include:
* I'll just work on something else for an hour (like the spellchecking project)
* I'll take a day or two off from Wikipedia
* I'll try to figure out what's making the person so "hot under the collar"

Some ways to keep working on an topic during an edit war.
* Think hard about ways to phrase an addition to an article that no other contributor will want to revert it (like "Some other advocates, like A and B, said X about Y")
* Create a new article. (Like "Unification Church and anti-Semitism")

Ed Poor