Abe Sokolov wrote:
Since the Wiki mailing list is libertarian country, I'll say that it's like slapping on price controls to curb inflation.
I think this is a useful observation. I'm not sure it's 100% applicable, but the broader point is important. One of the most important observations of economics and game theory as we might apply it to our context here is that "passing a law" with a desirable outcome is not always the same thing as finding a good solution.
The reason I say that Abe's comment may not be 100% applicable is that what we really try to do around here is "tax" bad behavior. We know that we can't really stop "Michael" or "24" or "Plautus" from ever editing again, but we can try to make sure that we impose costs on them with minimal costs to us.
The best responses to problem users are responses that interfere the least with other people, that cost the least amount of good people's time and energy, while imposing the maximum possible difficulty on their continuance of bad behavior. Those are theoretical goals, which various of our software tools achieve to varying degrees.
--Jimbo