G'day George,
I don't think WP:POINT has anything to do with that block. That was, and I say this
as a regular[0] participant in IRC, pure and unadulterated moronitude. It's fatuous,
plain and simple, to state that Jeff has "exhausted the patience of the
community", or that "there has been consensus" of all admins to get rid of
the chap. This is not a problem with IRC, mind: as an admin, I used discussion on IRC to
inform many of my decisions; it's a valuable tool. The same goes for the mailing
list. There's a huge problem, however, with taking an incredibly stupid action and
then citing an IRC discussion as justification.
I mean, I could be wrong. Perhaps Jeff has taken to doing something really bad, like
spamming all of Wikipedia with images of the goatse man while I was away, but my
experience with him --- personal experience, discussions with others who disagree with him
as or more often than I, a scan of his block log --- show him to be an extremely annoying
process wonk, but nonetheless an extremely annoying process wonk with a heart of gold who
is of net benefit to the project.
Vampires are important, because they remind us what stakes and garlic are for. Process
wonks are important, because they remind us why we need process refugees. I've found
talking with Jeff invaluable in helping me form my views on process and policy, and
I'm sure a number of other editors have gained similar benefit. On top of that,
he's a nice chap, he's capable of having sense beaten into him on occasion, and
he's done far less damage than other editors who we tolerate or actively encourage.
I can't see any justification for Zsinj's[1] behaviour here. If someone wants to
criticise the less process-oriented editors out there, then all well and good. Part of
the trade-off for being a process refugee is that you have to be willing to explain your
actions. I'm on record, probably ad nauseum, saying that process should be ignored
whenever we have a good reason to do so. Fine and good. Users like badlydrawnjeff help us
ensure that we *do* have a good reason. You can't say you're willing to be held
accountable for ignoring policy/process, then turn around and block someone for trying to
do exactly that. There's a number of words for that: cabalism, autocracy, hypocrisy
... incompetence.
As George says, let's not do that again, okay?
[0] Okay, not regular, not any more. But back before I was working ...
[1] Who, I note, is a proud CVU member with a tonne of userboxen and a WikiDefcon template
on his userpage. Correlation is not causation, I know, but ... hmm ...
--
[[User:MarkGallagher]]