The problem was that Hershchelkrustovsky had gone through an arbitration. The proposal to ban him from LaRouche related articles had been defeated by a vote of the arbitration committee, so he was an editor in good standing. There are people who believe in good faith that the the LaRouche movement can be accurately described as fascist. There were a few who insisted that that characterization could be applied on Wikipedia both to LaRouche and to Hershchelkrustovsky and his colleagues (I am still not sure how many edited, although more than one "user" was editing from the same ip). In that context personal attacks on him were inappropriate despite the obvious fact he was here only to push LaRouche.
Provided his ban is not extended indefinitely he will be back in a year and under our policies entitled to the same respectful treatment as any other editor. It can be anticipated he will simply go back to the same stuff.
Any suggestions?
Fred
From: "steven l. rubenstein" rubenste@ohiou.edu Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 15:34:29 -0500 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom - too attached to 'equal treatment'?
Theresa wrote:
But as Sarah said "These were minor things, but they were annoying"
Let's keep things in perspective. Should we really change the way the AC works to avoid annoying minor gripes.
Sarah's nature (at least here) is to self-effacing and gentle. However "minor" she characterizes her experience, I think it is the perfect example of the kind of thing that should be avoided as best possible.
I understand that many members of the ArbCom have serious problems with the various proposals floating around. So I ask a question to the ArbCom: forget about those proposals. Just looking at Sarah's experience, can you propose any reforms, either to the ArbCom m.o., or to the dispute resolution process as a whole, that would make it very unlikely for an editor in good standing to go through something like this in the future?
There are so many proposals because people have slightly differing notions of what is wrong. I hope the ArbCom will take this sense that something is wrong seriously, even if the proposals thus far fall short. Maybe if instead of proposing solutions based on general notions of what is wrong, we focus on one or two actual cases and ask how things could have gone better, we will come up with some workable solutions.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l