Fred Bauder wrote:
The current policy on blocking provides that users with
names that are
objectionable to at least "some" users can be blocked after refusal to
select another name. I have been treatening to block [[Troll Silent, Troll
Deep]] under that policy but am awaiting a decision in JRR Trollkien. See
TSTD's talk page. JRR Trollkien was unblocked so he could participate in
arbitration. By the way, it is only the name not the user who would be
blocked.
I had thought it was more along the lines of names that are
objectionable to at least "some" users can be blocked after refusal to
select another name if a majority of Wikipedians think blocking is
appropriate. That is, to block [x], there have to be at least some
users who are offended by the name [x], and then a majority of people
have to think "well, even if I'm not offended by [x], I can see why it
would be offensive." In the past this has sometimes been done by voting
on talk pages.
My main problem with a looser criterion is that people can be offended
about almost _anything_. There has to be some threshold for what is
reasonable, and if all it is is something like "at least 5 users have to
consider it offensive", given enough time for Wikipedia to get big, I
bet you'll be able to find 5 users offended at almost anything
ridiculous you can come up with. There's a lot of crazy people out there!
-Mark