A Wikipedia administrator needs to be thoroughly familiar with those parts of Wikipedia policy they chose to deploy. Many of us never block anybody. Those who do need to know what is permitted and what is not. That is laid out on the page [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy]]. What the arbitration committee is trying to do is to craft a remedy for those instances where administrators are making up their own policy, perhaps to some extent in reliance on community consensus but nevertheless expanding their actions beyond those set forth in blocking policy. Certain parts of that policy are somewhat ambiguous but it is a limited policy which permits blocks only in certain cases. Not in every case where it "feels right" or in every case where "something has to be done".
Fred
From: Rick <giantsrick13@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 23:04:58 -0700 (PDT)
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking policy
This "rule" requires sysops to have to have all of the policy pages available at hand. Fine. Then give me a table of contents.
RickK