On 6/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote:
On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 16:45:14 -0700, you wrote:
It is never good to piss people off.
I disagree absolutely. It is very often good to piss them off, when
the alternative is letting them deface the project. This list is full
of people who are pissed off because they have been prevented from
degrading the encyclopaedia.
Reducto ad absurdum. Pissing off an obvious vandal (or subtle one) is par
for the course. I don't care about their feelings.
I do care about normal positive editors who happen to run afoul of Tony's
latest crusade du jour. One of the reasons to follow process is that people
tend to go along with a consensus decision even if they personally disagree,
but will often react strongly negatively to an arbitrary ruling by someone
percieved to be a tin-pot dictator.
In this specific case, the only things which I have seen generally
negatively reported about the collective small crowd highly offended by
Tony's refactoring signatures is that they're newer contributors. Not
vandals and not as a rule problem users.
Tony stepping on vandals a lot doesn't mean that everyone he steps on is a
vandal. If you start seeing everyone you piss off as the same, you've lost.
--
-george william herbert
gherbert(a)retro.com / george.herbert(a)gmail.com