On 26/09/2007, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
Stopping vandals isn't attacking, it's defending against an attack.
1. Not everyone who is banned is malicious - some were trying to help, many certainly weren't trying to hurt. 2. As someone said earlier, it doesn't matter if you've done anything wrong or broken any rules (which, let's face it, are things everyone does anyway, being human), if the community wants you out, you are gone. Being unliked doesn't mean you deserve to have your name dragged through the dirt on top of Google. In these cases, Wikipaedia attacked first. 3. The rules contradict each other any way, so you can't do much without breaking them. Bureaucracy doesn't have much to do with the worth of a person. 4. Even some vandals are drunk - not guilty by reason of insanity. 5. Even if it was malicious, vandalism is usually easily reparable - much more reparable, in many cases, than much of the well-meaning damage. Punishing it by dragging someone's name through the dirt for years is Draconian.
Saying the vandals are right to attack /again/ through the infamous "attack sites" is OK since the poor vandals are the victims is ... (sorry, I'm not a native speaker of English, so I lack the words to express just how perverse that is).
Magnus
Many banned users, specifically, the ones who did nothing wrong but were disliked, not to mention the ones who simply made mistakes or got on the bad side of some silly bureaucratic rule, were attacked first, so by attacking back, they are not attacking again. They probably see it as self-defence. In many cases, it is self-defence.
I'm not saying that gives a person the right to put other people's lives at risk by outing them, but by provoking them, Wikipaedia shares the responsibility for the damage done by that. And I certainly won't blame them for being annoying.