On 9/30/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
On 30 Sep 2007 at 09:46:58 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. Note that a "community ban" on en:wp means "not one of 1000+ admins is inclined to unblock you."
Though, in the "some animals are more equal than others" environment of Wikipedia, there's a handful of powerful people (sometimes termed the "clique" or "cabal") who, if they decide that some banned user is Evil Incarnate, will promptly add to their Enemies List any admin that dares to unblock such a user, try to shame that admin into reversing the action, and agitate for the desysopping or banning of the non-groupthink-compatible admin if he/she resists that.
I think some confusion stems from your tossing of phrases like "cabal" into the mix. From what I understand, there's no organised or co-ordinated effort to do this; it just naturally happens.
I think it's also important not to overestimate the size of this problem. For every banned user controversy (of which there are not that many I can recall), there are dozens if not hundreds of ordinary users still working on the encyclopaedia and ignoring the whole ruckus. I like to think I'm one of them, except that I read the mailing list and that I only sporadically still work on the 'pedia.
Johnleemk