Emily Monroe wrote:
The vandal
problem hasn't gone away: admins deal with those vandals
we have more harshly in the past (and no one cares).
Is that, or is that not a good thing? I honestly, sincerely ask this
question not out of spite, but of curiosity.
It is composed of two things. Firstly, that powers to ban indefinitely
have been devolved (sort of) from ArbCom to the admins as a group (the
qualification being that ArbCom cannot ban anyone indefinitely). This is
fundamentally good. It means that there is no need to review formally
and at length the evidence on a particular case of vandalism, because by
now there is no real doubt about the standards to apply. And then there
is the part that some admins (probably not particularly representative)
are happy enough to run someone off the site either with little chance
to show they can reform, or by using more weaselly versions of
"disruptive" behavior on the same level as vandalism (which is basically
malicious damage to the site). This is not good, but it is hard to get
anyone not directly concerned to care about abuse within that part of
the system. In short, the checks and balances can fail where people are
unscrupulous and/or are too vested in getting rid of a particular editor
who is not a classic vandal but something else.
Charles