On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:05:57 -0800, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Forcibly outing people who fall into disfavor with our critics, however, seems like a short road to destroying the project. A large number of editors and admins I otherwise respect have happily run to do Bagley's bidding on this one, and that's highly disturbing. If we're going to enforce all the policies equally, then a number of people have met the policy definition of "acting as proxy of banned user" in this, in addition to attempts to reveal the real-life identity of a Wikipedia user in public.
A totally ridiculous policy, amounting to "thought crime"; the theory seems to be that once a user is banned, all ideas he espouses, true or not, are banned with him, and become a "third rail" that no other users had better touch. Better not say that 2 + 2 = 4 if a banned user has said that first! The policy makes no sense under the best of circumstances, and can be horribly abused in the worse circumstances that actually prevail, where powerful admins and their friends can win arguments by getting their enemies banned and then use "acting as a proxy for banned user XXXXX" as an all-purpose trump card to play in future arguments.