Timwi wrote:
As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.
A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm "blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to mean "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read the entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.
It isn't a question of what you name something. As long as a newbie isn't causing damage or otherwise acting in a hostile way, there should be some latitude given. Before any blocking takes place there should be good faith attempts to contact and reason with him. It may be frustrating to see today's newbie do the same stupid things as last week's newbie, but one cannot assume that he saw the warnings that were given lto ast week's newbie.
A sysop who ignores this and peremptorily and impatiently blocks a newbie deserves the same treatment that he would mete out to the newbie.
Ec