Matt R wrote:
--- David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
There is the fact that a specific vote on whether admins could block people for personal attacks failed to achieve consensus a few months ago (a real pity, in my opinion). As such, it's dicey ground.
(Do you know where I could find the page where this vote took place?)
[[Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks (old)]] has the vote. The vote came out 36 for, 26 against, 5 neutral - simple majority, but not enough of one to indicate consensus. As far as I can tell, the objections are that it's too subjective.
The instructive recent case of Skyring versus Adam Carr (a coupla messages ago) shows one obvious hole: Skyring belittling or ignoring all attempts at reason until the editor attempting to reason with him blows his top at the intransigent POV-pusher.
(In recent cases like this, the ArbCom has tended to admonish to caution the editor in question not to respond in kind even to severe provocation, rather than giving blocks per se, and the provocative editor has typically been strongly sanctioned. Note however the AC uses precedent as a guide, not a bounding.)
- d.