Kernigh wrote:
[[en:User:Zephram Stark]] was recently blocked:
- 13:18, 8 May 2006 Jimbo Wales blocked "Zephram Stark (contribs)" with an
expiry time of infinite (trolling, banned user on en.wikipedia)
I am not aware of the situation on en.wikipedia, though I do know that this user is blocked on commons.wikimedia, and has used sockpuppets to evade the block. However, this user has not been vandalising en.wikibooks, and the only thing that I could find that resembles "trolling" are a few allegations about sockpuppets, not anything which disrupted en.wikibooks.
It appears that the only reason for this block concerns trouble on en.wikipedia, and of such trouble I have no knowledge. (Maybe someone could describe to me what happened?)
I think that this user should be unblocked immediately or the block be shortened to 1 week or less. What does everyone think? -- [[en:User:Kernigh]] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Kernigh
I have dealt with this issue in the past, so far as there has been a very significant community of people with visseral hatred of this particular user. I don't understand completely what the justifications have been, but yes, on en.wikibooks he has been a fairly quiet user and hasn't really been too much of a problem. The largest "problem" he created was with the Social Postulutes Wikibook and a few other books of a similar vein. That these books could be considered original research, perhaps, but that is something that can and was dealt with on the VfD pages.
I think these actions are encouraging the creation of a troll rather than trying to deal with people with very different life philosophies. I also see this as part of wheel warring that is going on regarding this user's actions on Wikipedia, but unfortunately spilling over into Wikibooks. I have instead tried to be very cordial and try to discourage this user from doing the supposedly disruptive activities on Wikibooks using communications as a tool, rather than trying to invoke administrative tools.
Wikibooks has become a very hostile environment to work in, and unfortunately I think it has aquired some critical mass of deletionists lately whose opinions are changing the nature of Wikibooks that was one of the major attractions to the project in the past. Decisions used to be much more reasoned and weren't made in such a hurry, and all I can hope is that this current wave of culling is going to burn out and that Wikibooks will eventually return to the way it was in terms of being much more rational in its decisions than Wikipedia has been. I also agree with you Kernigh that if a user is to be banned on a project like Wikibooks, they should be banned because of their actions on that particular project, and not because of some universal action and policy that was decided on another project, including Wikipedia. Particularly because all I can get is very biased and POV information from Wikipedia of the whole issue anyway.