Jimmy Wales wrote:

...

If it was at least an edit war about something that reasonable people can disagree on -- but his edits were pure vandalism, plain and simple.

I think that's the key here.

We have to be cautious, of course, that we not silently expand our understanding of "pure vandalism" too far.

But Erik has cogently and correctly made the point a few times recently that "Wikipedia is not about 'rights'. Wikipedia is about creating an encyclopedia. All this trolling distracts from that goal."

I can imagine, and I would probably enjoy (for a little while) a wiki with no purpose, no rules, no bans, anything goes, freewheeling, random, chaotic, with that anarchic structure (or should I say 'anti-structure') being the primary value.

But that's not wikipedia. Our open atmosphere is a means to an end, and it's the end that is our primary focus, our loving passion, the thing that brings us all together: the encyclopedia.

So while I'm certainly on the cautious end of the scale, very near to Cunctator in fact, as to the merits of bans and rules and so on, I do think it's very important to keep our priorities straight.

That's why I was supportive of Angela banning "UnbannableOne". That's why I banned "The Fellowship of the Troll" yesterday.

There are people in the world with active mental pathologies. It's difficult for good and benevolent people to really grasp that someone could have the time and energy to come to a charitable humanitarian project that tries to be open and friendly and inclusive and neutral simply for the purpose of causing trouble. We tend to try to project our happy loving values on their actions, assuming that they are just trying to help us remain neutral or whatever.

But sometimes, that's just not true. As difficult as it is to imagine, some people just are plain and simple assholes.

An important concept here is "the sanction of the victim". Leonard Peikoff defined that term as "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the 'sin' of creating values."

We fall into that trap fairly often, I'm afraid. Our own good values are used against us. We are open, patient, inquiring after truth, intested in fairness, neutrality, community, harmony, justice. And so we put up with a fair amount of nonsense, more than we should.

--Jimbo

And I doubt anyone will put it better.

Billy Mills

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