[Wikipedia-l] ban attempt

[Tom Parmenter]

|From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
|Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 15:10:20 -0400
|
|
|Okay, the "ban" is lifted. Gimme a break, okay? 
|
|I just wanted to re-focus the talk constructively, but then Lee is like, let the kids bicker and pull hair, as long as they don't damage the furniture. 
|
|Ed

How about, instead of stopping *people*, we froze *articles*, including
talk pages, for a day, week, or month, until everyone calmed down?

That is, when it starts getting thick and hot, rather than coming down
on someone, we simply shut off access to the opportunity to snipe,
edit-war, insult, and so forth.  

There is *plenty* of time to get an article organized, whether on
anti-semitism, or Copernicus's little-appreciated contribution to the
Prussian coinage, or even the law, but if people are firing back and
forth in the article and on the talk page with only minutes between
salvos, we may never get the articles we need.  We can wait even a
month or longer, but people in heat can't stay in heat a month, no
matter how much they might want to.  

In the worst cases, an admin or other responsible individual could
look over the entire subject, refactor or rewrite the article, and
then open the floodgates again after the fuss had had a chance to die
down.

As it is, after months of good contributions by Julie, we lose her in
two weeks to some hit-and-run artists who might actually have
something to contribute if they weren't so keen on scoring points.
Remove the opportunity for scoring points, remove the dread of logging
in to Wikipedia when this kind of thing is happening, and take a crack
at making an encyclopedia.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

PS - I speak from personal experience at firing off half cocked.

Tom