On 7/31/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
cohesion wrote:
I agree though, if they can't behave themselves why not block them completely? It sounds like you're talking about maybe PR people, or people that are exclusive POV pushers outside the normal wikipedia culture. If that's the case I think it would be very confusing for them and probably lead to resentment, creating a type of second class editor.
I agree it creates a second class of editor -- at least for the duration of the block -- but I hope that it would create less resentment rather than more. I imagine that happening in two ways.
First, some people blocked for COI or POV issues really do have something useful to say. Take the time we blocked some of the US Congress IPs because a handful of staffers misbehaved. Although the block may have kept out more puffery, and it was certainly useful in sending a signal, we kept a lot of people from even commenting on articles, articles where they had expert knowledge. That has to be frustrating.
Second, people often just want to have their say. Blocking people to prevent harm to articles is already frustrating to people. But I think they'll put up with that better if we indicate that we're still willing to listen to them, at least as long as they play nice.
My hope is that this will decrease tension on both sides. I think it's relatively easy to put up with some yutz on a talk page. The real strife comes when they start messing with articles. A mainspace-only ban would let us stop the main harm while still letting people participate in the community.
William
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
You do make a reasonable case for doing this, although I still think there will be few reasonable people put in this position of main space blocks.
KP