The faster (and harder) you go the easier it is to make serious mistakes
(and do real damage to the community). Things just aren't always what they
seem at first impression.
Fred
From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales"
<jwales(a)wikia.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 03:07:30 -0800
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Registration system and blocks
3) ArbCom is afraid of backlash for dealing
rapidly with clear abuses.
I feel like this may be the most likely problem.
I also think
it could be worked through simply by biting the bullet and
coming down hard and fast on a few exceptional problem
cases, making Wikipedians get used to the fact that "due
process" doesn't mean "any process that makes it harder to
ban someone". (I think this is an artifact of a time when
Wikipedia was much smaller you held sole power to ban and did
everything you could to avoid it. A benevolent dictator
presiding over a medium-sized project is markedly different
from a pseudo-democratic body presiding over one of the
largest "open source" projects in the world with one of the
lowest barriers to entry. I don't think enough people have
grasped that.)
I think this is basically accurate. I do recommend, though, that the
"coming down hard and fast" be really limited to a few exceptional
problem cases, as opposed to being random.