On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed. blah blah
on 9/18/07 8:50 AM, Vee at vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick up a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear the end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
On 9/18/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Vee,
They react against you because you protest being banned!? And simply the fear of this is enough to deter you?!
Doesn't sound like a very friendly, mature culture!
Marc Riddell
on 9/20/07 7:39 PM, K P at kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
No it doesn't. But deterence due to fear sounds smart.
People did seem to enjoy, with malice, how irritated I got at being banned by an administrator who had plenty more history of bannable actions than I did. Protesting a wrongful ban was pretty stupid, because of the way the administrator involved took it as AN INVITATION to berate, attack, and insult me to all of AN/I. And, again, as far as I can tell, the other administrators really enjoyed it.
Armed Blowfish is giving good advice in the current climate at Wikipedia.
There appears to be a great deal of power resting in the hands of a relatively small group of persons in this huge Community. And, from what I can ascertain, they are given this power as a result of a popularity contest and edit count. The decisions of these persons have the power to impact not only the substance and credibility of the Project, but the credibility, reputations and emotional states of its Members.
As the Project grows more complex, I believe the screening process involved in selecting the persons who administrate it should also grow more complex. In short, a crucial question that must be asked: is the person emotionally mature enough to handle such a powerful and sensitive position?
A major principle involved here is fairness: to the Project, to the Community, and to every single Member of that Community.
Marc Riddell
PS: This process of choosing administrators in the Project sounds very much like our own American political process - and look what that has produced as our most recent "administrator".