On Saturday 17 January 2004 10:19 pm, Geoff Burling wrote:
On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote:
Hi. I'm not happy that it had to come to this. Mr-Natural-health has repeatedly been warned numerous times about not making personal attacks on other wikipedians. I am requesting a ban for this user on the grounds that he is not abating with said attacks.
I have documented clear violations of basic wikipedia policies by this user on http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snoyes/sandbox
I've taken a look at these, & while MNH's behavor is not exemplary, I don't see any smoking gun that justifies banning.
Two of the people MNH has exchanged barbs with -- RK & Adam -- haven't been models of restraint themselves, making a few attacks on MNH themselves. His response to Teresa Knox does appear unjustified, though, & I would like better proof that he was the person acting from those IP addresses.
[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks) states: "No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period." and "Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy, i.e. grounds for banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold."
The question is not whether he argued with users that have not been "models of restraint", but rather whether his personal attacks were sufficiently extreme to warrant a banning. I submit, with documentation of no less than 11 instances, that his behaviour has been sufficiently extreme, and a proper refutation of this should be made for each instance of his use of personal attacks.
[snip]
(...) At another time he has made an implicit threat to RK on his talk page by stating "The German Nazi from New York. I am proud of my German heritage, how about you?".
I'm not clear how identifying one's home location is a threat. And having read quite a few emails on this mailling list from RK where he accuses people of being a Nazi for disagreeing with him, I read this as a sardonic descriptioin.
I agree with you that RK has at times behaved extremely badly on wikipedia, but that is not at issue here. I have stated that I believe that MNH's statement that he is a german Nazi from NY who is extremely proud of his heritage is indeed an implicit threat to RK:
RK is a jew who lives in NY. MNH stating that he is a Nazi from NY implies firstly that he is ideologically motivated to kill RK, and secondly that he lives close to RK.
It might be assumed that MNH did not know that RK lived in NY, but:
1.Why mention that on his talk page then? 2.With that same post, MNH said something to the effect that "people wanted you [RK] banned many months ago"
This means that he is not as new as his November 2003 signup date would suggest, and that he obviously knows a bit about the whole RK situation, and therefor also perhaps that RK lives in NY.
all documented at the above url. My question: are we only paying lip service to the policy of not making personal attacks (and implicit threats), or shall this policy be enforced?
As an endnote, it must be stated that MNH has not just personally [attacked] RK, but numerous others as well.
I've seen a fair number of people called "kooks", "zanies", etc. here on Wikipedia, & I was unaware that was not approved behavior. (After reading Sacha's article, I followed the link to find a forum on Meta from a few months ago about this very matter, which I somehow missed.) If a contributor to Wiki can get banned for certain behavior, then these terms should be made clear somewhere on Wiki, & not merely discussed on Yet Another Meta Page.
The policy on personal attacks is not at all obscure. On the front page of wikipedia is a link to [[Wikipedia:Policy and guidelines]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines). On that page, under the header "Specific guidelines to consider" is a link to [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]] (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks), which I have quoted above.
Best, Sascha Noyes