JAY JG wrote:
JAY JG wrote:
Wikipedia would not be able to handle 43 Vogels. Even 10 would tax its current resources and structure. If 1 in 4000 is intelligent,
coherent,
and motivated, Wikipedia is in trouble.
I don't think so. Remember my constant mantra: the purpose of our community is to write a high quality neutral encyclopedia. Our openness is a means to that end, and a very excellent one we should respect highly.
But if 43 Vogels show up, I'll personally ban them all if necessary, and that's that. That's not likely to be necessary, because we're pretty good at devising community-oriented solutions to such problems.
I appreciate your determination, but banning doesn't work for some people; people with dialup accounts, for example, who are unafraid to create multiple sockpuppets. How many socks did Cantus use to carry on his recent war? How many has CheeseDreams created?
People that will go to the trouble of picking up a sock puppet (or, at least, do so more than once) are a decided minority in most online communities. If there are 43 egregious offenders, and they all get banned, I suspect you'll see about five or six come back with sock puppets. It's much easier to deal with that smaller number in other means than to simply ignore the banning option altogether.
Of course, banning is probably best used only after other options are attempted. Smack-downs tend to make for rankled egos more than a proper education for someone that has wandered astray.
-- Chad