[Wikipedia-l] Desysopping procedure against waerth

[Andre Engels]

2006/1/18, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
> I do not think Andre has an answer to that. Neither have I. The
> situation is deadlocked at the moment. People are urging me by mail to
> stay. Another group would not have that. No one knows what to do. At the
> moment we have all lost.

Indeed, I do not know. I do however think that it would be good to
look beyond the specifics of this specific case and the underlying
issues. And perhaps hear something from elsewhere about whether the
same problems exist there, and if not, why not, or why do they not
have the consequences of people being de-sysopped, asking for their
own de-sysopping and leaving the Wikipedia?

* What is the policy on (for example) blocking, and how is it decided?
That is, when and by whom is it decided that certain behavior is
enough to block a user or an IP, when and by whom is it decided how
long, and when and by whom is it decided to remove such a block?
* How is such policy decided? If there is a vote, who starts the vote
and at what point? If things work with consensus, how is consensus
reached and who decides when that it has been reached? What happens
when the same policy is interpreted differently by different people?
What happens when large groups of editors cannot come to a consensus?
* There's many people who have a great love for Wikipedia. That sounds
good, but I have found that it often is a major source of friction as
well. What doe you do when two such people have precisely opposite
views on what is desirable and what is disastrous for Wikipedia? How
do you stop them from destroying their own and each other's pleasure?
* What do you do with problem users? How do you stop them from
destroying the fun for everyone or specific targets? And if you deal
with them, how is it decided that they are?
* How do you avoid Wikipedia becoming constant fighting, about issues
and/or about people?

I'm sure there's other Wikipedias which have had problems like the
ones the Dutch are facing now. But I doubt that they have it with this
frequency. It's not the first time things like this happen (nor is it
the first time Waerth is involved).  And that's why I think there's
something wrong. I think that every Wikipedia has its trolls, and
every Wikipedia has its users like Waerth and me, well-meaning but
hot-headed. But why then, is it starting to get so common on nl: for
these vulcanoes to erupt so violently?


--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels