On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:05:57 -0800, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Forcibly outing people who fall into disfavor with our critics, however, seems like a short road to destroying the project. A large number of editors and admins I otherwise respect have happily run to do Bagley's bidding on this one, and that's highly disturbing. If we're going to enforce all the policies equally, then a number of people have met the policy definition of "acting as proxy of banned user" in this, in addition to attempts to reveal the real-life identity of a Wikipedia user in public.
A totally ridiculous policy, amounting to "thought crime"; the theory seems to be that once a user is banned, all ideas he espouses, true or not, are banned with him, and become a "third rail" that no other users had better touch. Better not say that 2 + 2 = 4 if a banned user has said that first! The policy makes no sense under the best of circumstances, and can be horribly abused in the worse circumstances that actually prevail, where powerful admins and their friends can win arguments by getting their enemies banned and then use "acting as a proxy for banned user XXXXX" as an all-purpose trump card to play in future arguments.
On Feb 13, 2008 7:34 PM, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:05:57 -0800, "George Herbert" < george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
Forcibly outing people who fall into disfavor with our critics, however, seems like a short road to destroying the project. A large number of editors and admins I otherwise respect have happily run to do Bagley's bidding on this one, and that's highly disturbing. If we're going to enforce all the policies equally, then a number of people have met the policy definition of "acting as proxy of banned user" in this, in addition to attempts to reveal the real-life identity of a Wikipedia user in public.
A totally ridiculous policy, amounting to "thought crime"; the theory seems to be that once a user is banned, all ideas he espouses, true or not, are banned with him, and become a "third rail" that no other users had better touch. Better not say that 2 + 2 = 4 if a banned user has said that first! The policy makes no sense under the best of circumstances, and can be horribly abused in the worse circumstances that actually prevail, where powerful admins and their friends can win arguments by getting their enemies banned and then use "acting as a proxy for banned user XXXXX" as an all-purpose trump card to play in future arguments.
The idea put forth can't be described as contagion, no.
But ...
We have editors who saw the idea, worried about it, and then without further reference to the source then went off and investigated.
We have editors who talk to the source on and off, who saw the idea, talked to the source about it, and have gotten involved while maintaining their own POV.
We finally have editors who have taken an on-wiki POV which is identical to the off-wiki posturing of the source, and are loudly arguing it.
The last time Bagley pulled one of these stunts, he was technically correct but misleading, and a whole bunch of editors and admins followed the first admin who saw the info's lead and went on a short witch hunt. The lead admin there got taken to Arbcom and taken to task.
We cannot suppress dissention. But some dissidents may break existing policy, and they should not be spared just because they're dissenting. We've had policy on proxying for banned users for some time. While the overall investigation has been primarily conducted by people in category one, there are also those in the other two categories associating themselves with aspects of it, and that's not good for Wikipedia.
Dan, in response to you personally, I don't think you have anything to worry about in this - you have always maintained what appears to be significant personal independence of point of view on both WP and WR, for example. Some of your friends over there are odious, but you clearly aren't parroting their views over on WP or anything like that.