On 2/7/06 7:15 PM, "wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org" wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
From: Delirium delirium@hackish.org Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:06:43 -0500 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
charles matthews wrote:
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Could we agree
not to ever again block people for what they are?
Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and has its reputation pretty much intact. What about the guy who arrives in the middle of an election and annouces "I'm being funded to remove all your bias on candidates' pages"?
I don't see why that would require preemptive banning. If he makes problematic edits, they can be reverted; if he starts ignoring usual community standards, e.g. by refusal to discuss on talk pages or excessive reverts, he can be banned.
There are cases where preemptive banning makes some sense, mainly obvious reincarnations of banned users and malicious bot-created accounts. In the latter, this is mainly because the potential damage a botnet can inflict in a short amount of time is quite large, so waiting around and cleaning up afterwards is an unappealing option.
In a case like the one you described, though, the potential damage to Wikipedia's reputation from being too ban-happy far outweighs the relatively minor inconvenience of waiting a bit to see if banning is really necessary. The clean-up there would consist of reverting a handful of pages.
-Mark
I can't believe where this is going.
I have it, lets form a committee to review all of his edits, maybe even stop by his house and see if he actually IS a pedophile before we do anything! Yes, yes, wonderful idea!! After all, it's far more vital to the project that people be allowed to make bold statements such as condoning or making light of molesting children on their user page than risk losing the incredibly valuable contributions such a person is bound to make to the project.
Have I crossed into the frakking Bizarro world here or something? What the hell is this NONSENSE?? The guy puts on his page "I am a pedophile" i.e. "I molest children" and his "joke" is more important than the obvious disruption it causes? More important than the blatant insensitivity to those who have had someone in their family molested or perhaps even molested themselves? The fact that this has absofrakkinglutely NOTHING to do with CREATING AN ENCYCLOPEDIA???
Yes, by all means, let's protect and hold up this fine example of a contributor to our project, send him out on the press stops with Jimbo! After all, if he does any damage it's just to a few pages. Heck, who cares if some 13-year-old girl who gets molested nightly by her father is doing some research on "pedophiles" on Wikipedia and comes across someone who is proclaimed to be one and we allow to continue to be here as a valued contributor to our community. Who cares right? It's just a few pages.
--Guy (User:Wgfinley)