[Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

[Toby Bartels]

LDC wrote in large part:

>Here's another thought experiment.  Suppose you are organizing
>a conference to dicuss some topic, and preparing for it by hosting
>a mailing list discussion.  A troublemaker appears on the list
>and disrupts things.  It is discovered that the troublemaker is
>in fact a bright 9-year-old. Is there any question in anyone's
>mind that it would be a perfectly legitimate exercise of control
>to simply drop the kid from the list and the conference, because
>it's clear that a child that young doesn't yet have the maturity
>or experience to effectively work with the group or understand
>the deeper issues?  "Free speech" and other freedoms are marvellous
>things, but such rights only apply to adults whom we can hold
>responsible for their actions.

Rights only for adults?  What contemptible, unprincipled garbage!

>On Wikipedia, we can't see whether the troublemakers are adults
>or not, so we give them the benefit of the doubt.  But some of them
>probably are, in fact, children.  It wouldn't surprize me a bit to
>discover that Lir is a very bright 14-year old.  Why should we
>bend over backwards to give such a person presumed rights here that
>even the most liberal of us wouldn't grant in real life?

You may count me as insulted at the suggestion
that I would care for one moment about the person's age.

>And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
>perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
>of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
>to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
>they should be treated like one.  A block isn't saying "you're an
>awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
>a while, the grown-ups are talking".

Your argument seems to be that, if you knew the person to be an adult,
then you would grant them certain rights of free speech
that you wouldn't grant to children.  But since you don't know this,
you have to give them the detriment of the doubt.
Well, nothing surprising -- this is the usual result of prejudice.


Having thus criticised Lee, I'd like to point out
that I'm not actually commenting on his main point,
which is that people should be blockable for antisocial behaviour.
You could remove all the age-linked bullshit from his post
and still have something reasonable left over,
based on an assumption that even adults
don't have unrestricted free speech rights.
But I can't let these unconscionable slurs against 9-year-olds stand.


-- Toby