So let me see if I have this straight.
As long as a user holds strictly to written policy, he/she may
cause as much disruption, damage and hell as possible, and community
consensus on a matter is secondary to ill-thought-out and often
unenforced legalistic jargon.
Does that pretty much sum it up?
-Hephaestos
A Wikipedia administrator needs to be
thoroughly familiar with those parts of Wikipedia policy they chose to
deploy. Many of us never block anybody. Those who do need to
know what is permitted and what is not. That is laid out on the page
[[Wikipedia:Blocking policy]]. What the arbitration committee is
trying to do is to craft a remedy for those instances where
administrators are making up their own policy, perhaps to some extent
in reliance on community consensus but nevertheless expanding their
actions beyond those set forth in blocking policy. Certain parts
of that policy are somewhat ambiguous but it is a limited policy which
permits blocks only in certain cases. Not in every case where it
"feels right" or in every case where "something has to
be done".
Fred
From: Rick <giantsrick13@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 23:04:58 -0700 (PDT)
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking policy
This "rule" requires sysops to have to have all of the
policy pages available at hand. Fine. Then give me a table
of contents.
RickK