On Feb 13, 2008 7:34 PM, Daniel R. Tobias <dan(a)tobias.name> wrote:
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:05:57 -0800, "George
Herbert" <
george.herbert(a)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.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com