On Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:49:28 -0700, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
For one, by ENCOURAGING the people to come forward and blow whistles-- not threatening blocks when they do based on a trumped up copyright claim, ala the Giano think.
Oh brilliant, that will really help. Why not unblock all the banned users, while we're at it?
I really don't see how this follows. Giano wasn't a banned user and very few banned users were banned for reasons related to anything like this.
Call me cynical. Encouraging people to blow the whistle in this context seems to me to equate to encouraging people to publicise their grievance as widely as possible, without regard to privacy or harassment concerns.
It seems to me that those intent on publicising supposed or actual abuse are anything but reticent. I fail to see how they need further encouragement. I have had the opportunity to view in detail what the average Wikipedia Reviewer considers administrator abuse from me, and it includes indefinitely blocking a user who created an article [[Paki bastard]] with the content: == Sweaty Cunt == i hate them all, they are all paki bastards, and they fucking smell like curry
As far as I can tell, that sort of administrator abuse is adequately covered by [[WP:ROUGE]] and is not actually a problem for the project.
Perhaps if we could persuade people to stop howling abuse whenever they are caught on the losing side in an edit war, we might be able to separate genuine abuse from the ludicrous.
It has been proposed that the admin noticeboard, which despite its assertion to the contrary is the de facto Wikipedia complaints department, be subject to some kind of informal clerking, with the more obviously trollish comments removed, uncivil or inflammatory comments refactored and so on. There is no doubt in my mind that the actions of persistent abusers of Wikipedia in trying to promote their abusive agendas have, in the past, actively hampered attempts to deal with genuine abuse.
Guy (JzG)