Brianna Laugher wrote:
BTW cf. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge#Banned_WP_editor_Primeti... which seems to have been accepted without question. That's more the kind of thing I was talking about...(again this is more copyright related, not social behaviour, and lazyquasar made a good point that in some cases people can "start anew".) I mean yes each project has its own community but I don't think it's beneficial to treat them like strangers. In situations like this we can work together and save each other some hassle.
Heh, imagine if WoW showed up at a new project and we had this attitude... "Give the man a chance! He might have reformed!" :)
cheers Brianna
Look, I'm not saying that actions on one Wikimedia project should be ignored, but it is only "evidence" to help build a case against a user. You shouldn't have a knee jerk reaction and assume that bad actions are going to carry over from one project to the next. It is cause to investigate, however, and I have reviewed the edits of Zephraim Stark on Wikibooks in the past myself. And carried on conversations with him on talk pages and e-mails.
Things like open proxies and routinely abusive ip addresses (such as one IP address from an Indian internet bar that has caused a bunch of problems for Wikimedia projects) should be investigated and banned as appropriate. And have been by local admins on Wikibooks. That is my point as well, that Jimbo didn't need to perform this micromanagement activity. A warning to watch out for this user would have been more than sufficient. A note by admins from Wikipedia would have been more than sufficient, if they felt it was of sufficient merit to warn other Wikimedia sister projects.
This is one more case where I say trust the community to get it right, as extreme micromanagement by the WMF board is going to simply cause problems in the future.