Durova has blocked Cla68 for 24 hours for responding to Jimbo's posting on [[Talk:Gary Weiss]], which included "No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight.", with "Most of us usually try to give some reasoning for any action, proposed action, or threatened action that we discuss on an article's talk page. Would you mind doing the same?" It was claimed that this was a "WP:POINT" violation. Just how is asking the reasons behind a draconian statement a block-worthy violation?
I swear, with every passing minute Wikipedia becomes more of a self- parody, with people getting subjected to punitive sanctions for having the effrontery to question whether the authorities on Wikipedia are getting overly punitive. It reminds me of the government of Singapore, which once sued a journalist who had written that the government suppresses criticism by suing its critics.
People sometimes justify the need for "getting tough" on trolls, harrassers, and the like because they're driving good editors out; however, I've been feeling more and more like I'm about ready to take a Wikibreak myself, being constantly disgusted at the direction the Wikipedia culture is going and how Jimbo seems to be actively supporting this development himself. I'm sure there are a bunch of people who will cheer if and when I go away.
On 20/10/2007, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Durova has blocked Cla68 for 24 hours for responding to Jimbo's posting on [[Talk:Gary Weiss]], which included "No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight.", with "Most of us usually try to give some reasoning for any action, proposed action, or threatened action that we discuss on an article's talk page. Would you mind doing the same?" It was claimed that this was a "WP:POINT" violation. Just how is asking the reasons behind a draconian statement a block-worthy violation?
Looks a little unfair to me, too. A lot of people seem to miss the "disrupting Wikipedia" part of "disrupting Wikipedia to make a point". Just making a point is NOT a policy violation. Posting to a talk page is not disruptive.
On 21/10/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Looks a little unfair to me, too. A lot of people seem to miss the "disrupting Wikipedia" part of "disrupting Wikipedia to make a point". Just making a point is NOT a policy violation. Posting to a talk page is not disruptive.
Just about anything can be construed as a policy violation if an admin wishes it to be so. Our plethora of policies with plenty of weasel wording even inside the policy explanations is ample fodder for that, nevermind that even if we had copper-fastened perfectly-written entirely self-consistent immutable policy, it would still be open to individual interpretation.
The problem is unfortunately far greater than individual rights or wrongs, or even the general behaviour and conduct of editors and/or admins.
Zoney
Just about anything can be construed as a policy violation if an admin wishes it to be so. Our plethora of policies with plenty of weasel wording even inside the policy explanations is ample fodder for that, nevermind that even if we had copper-fastened perfectly-written entirely self-consistent immutable policy, it would still be open to individual interpretation.
That is, of course, entirely by design. It's even written out explicitly on WP:IAR.
The problem is unfortunately far greater than individual rights or wrongs, or even the general behaviour and conduct of editors and/or admins.
I disagree. The problem is entirely to do with user conduct. The policies are built on the basis of trust - we trust users (including admins) to interpret them in a way that is beneficial to the project and give sufficient leeway to allow policies to be moulded to fit each situation. It's when that trust is misplaced that we have a problem. When it's a fairly new user that isn't trustworthy, it is easy to force a better interpretation on them, with blocks if necessary. When more established users, especially admins, interpret policy in a way that is harmful to the project (which is, of course, a matter of interpretation in itself) we have a more serious problem, and one we are not particularly good at resolving.
On 20/10/2007, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Durova has blocked Cla68 for 24 hours for responding to Jimbo's posting on [[Talk:Gary Weiss]], which included "No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight.", with "Most of us usually try to give some reasoning for any action, proposed action, or threatened action that we discuss on an article's talk page. Would you mind doing the same?" It was claimed that this was a "WP:POINT" violation. Just how is asking the reasons behind a draconian statement a block-worthy violation?
Cla68 has been trolling on the subject for ages. Perhaps someone will unblock him. Who knows?
- d.