On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 01:28:34PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
Yes, I think banning people is bad. But it may help the situation since everyone needs to take a few steps back and relax, Lir especially. Since I trust that Jimbo isn't happy and self-satisfied about banning Lir, I'm not overly upset. What we *don't* need is people like Clutch being juvenile with Lir's userpage, because public shaming in this manner isn't really the right tactic to handle someone like Lir.
If public shaming isn't available to us, then what other methods can we use? I don't think Lir is going to shape up within a week. I didn't see anyone trying to "shame" Lir; what I saw was Clutch offering an article that looked like it could really benefit Lir, if he would read it and take it seriously.
Lir enjoys the community here, but has a strong trollish streak. He alienated a lot of people so badly, they may never be able to look at his edits in an unbiased way. Maybe his user account should stay locked, but at the end of the week his IP be unblocked so he can make a new account, and take a fresh start, with a fresh name, without all the poisonous bile which makes any attempt at reconciliation impossible.
I further propose that if Lir shows any sign that he hasn't learned his lesson, he be banned right away again. He has already wasted an incredible amount of time and energy of Wikipedians who have tried to help him and work with him. He rejected all such help and delighted in fucking people around.
His edits were trash, and they were all the worse because of our policy of never deleting information. I feel that policy needs to be reevaluated. Not all information is appropriate to an encyclopedia, no matter how interesting and factual it is. Like Lirs edits to "Wealth of the Nations", which just consists of a string of quotes from the book.
Jonathan