Ed Poor wrote:
We're getting to be such a big community that we're going to have to do
SOMETHING like this.
Some points are: enforcement is not really a difficulty - bans are easy and effective, except for the known but minor problem (in the scale of things) of the returning bannee. Justice is an unknown quantity - and the whole business of being barred from what is time-consuming voluntary work is odd (those who feel they have a 'right to edit' are probably harbouring some POV they feel their right attaches to). Justice is very important, because the community feels it is. Patently unjust tactics, 'pour encourager les autres' as Voltaire didn't really mean, were employed at my school (I mean, where I was a pupil), a most conservative place, with the object of convincing young boys that the world is an unfair place. It did that, all right.
Charles