-----Original Message----- From: Daniel R. Tobias [mailto:dan@tobias.name] Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 04:57 PM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cla68 blocked for asking question
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.
Well, yes, you add little to legitimate dialog, but part of what you see is the contrast between the very liberal rules which govern this mailing list and the level of tolerance on the talk page of the article about a subject who is actively being harassed. If you have something to say about such harassment, you are expected to be knowledgable about it. Cla68 adopted a pose of naive ignorance. You like that pose too, and it is an effective debating technique, in fact, Socrates often used in the dialogues published by Plato. However, when you get down to cases, and there you are, in the midst of an active dispute, acting dumb, well...
None of that is "disrupting Wikipedia", though. Cla98 may have been being annoying, but that's not the same as being disruptive.