At 10:15 AM 10/2/03 +0200, Erik wrote: That power is supposed to be used only to enforce an already-existing ban: it was created to deal with Michael's endless aliases and can reasonably be used in any similar situation. It doesn't mean that any sysop--of whom, as you note, there are many--can exclude someone from Wikipedia. That way lies instability at best. -- Vicki Rosenzweig vr(a)redbird.org http://www.redbird.org

"Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote in message news:8v5NnLKSpVB@erik_moeller... This represents a significant jump in the power wielded by sysops over other users. Deletion, IP blocking and page protection are insignificant compared to the ability to effectively block any non-sysop. I was afraid my software feature might incite a policy change like this, so I made sure my policy statement was carefully worded. In hindsight, I'm not particularly surprised Eloquence chose to ignore it. Eloquence obviously has a different idea of "simple vandalism" than I do. RK got angry, he lashed out at a few users. He didn't replace the contents of an article with "poo poo". I hope Jimbo takes this opportunity to clarify the definition of the term. Repeat vandalism probably could have been prevented by protecting the user pages involved. Instead of merely dealing with the effects of RK's actions, Eloquence was able to take retributive action. I strongly believe that sysops should not be capable of punishing other users in this way. Threats of such actions could greatly increase the perception of a power structure; a pecking order. -- Tim Starling (still theoretically on holiday)

Erik Moeller wrote: And so you got angry and banned him. The issue could have brought up on the mailing list. In the past, we have often discussed weeks and weeks before banning long-term Wikipedians. I do not think that this practice should be changed now. There was no imminent danger. RK rudely and unexcusably replaced four people's user pages with angry messages, that's all. Wikipedia was never under attack. Axel

Erik Moeller wrote: After he had vandalized your user page he was banned by you immediately and did not have time to continue his "spree" (consisting of four edits). I disagree. There was no urgency. RK throws irrational fits about people editing his user talk, so people try to talk to him on his talk page. Why not switch off the computer and take a walk instead? Solves lots of problems like that. I am certain of that, but you won't be that lucky. Axel

Erik Moeller wrote: Yup, that is correct. However, not one was to the encyclopedia proper. Axel

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)joey.bomis.com> wrote: So you agree that, in some cases but not necessarilly, longtime logged-in contributors can be banned without discussion? RK was also a very active participant. Why don't you cut him some slack? LDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

Erik Moeller wrote: I agree with Vicki on this. Anything more than a short term "emergency" ban needs to be a community decision. In the case of enforcing an already-existing ban that community decision has already been made. Vicki's stability concerns are very real. RK has been a sysop. It is certainly conceivable that he would apply the same interpersonal skills to that role as he has to his discussions of anti-semitism. Ec

Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: I share your concerns, but did want to add that the power is also legitimate for sysops to use in cases of 'pure vandalism'. It was created to deal with Michael's endless aliases, but remember also the infamous "MIT Vandal" who wasted an entire Saturday morning of several people's time by logging in over and over with different usernames. RK is different from *either* of those cases, of course, in that he's a "made guy," in the parlance of the mob. We know him, he's a Wikipedian, he's one of us, not just some random ip number going berserk. Whatever RK may have done, it's *probably* a safe bet that he wasn't about to go ripping through the wikipedia putting penis pictures and profanity on various pages. --Jimbo

Erik Moeller wrote: Since wikipedia isn't really accessible at the moment (sigh, new parts arriving tomorrow or Monday, though!), and also just for the historical record of the mailing list, can you give the mailing list some details of what RK was doing? This might be an ideal case study for 'line drawing' in the case of temporary bans for vandalism. BuddhaInside botched the homepage and so a temporary ban was certainly warranted for simple defense. Since we don't "know" BuddhaInside in the same way that we "know" RK, who knows what he might have done. But RK is a different sort of case. He's a controversial user, and I trust your judgment (not having seen what happened) that he wasn't doing a good thing, but at the same time, he's a known quantity who has been around for a long time and done an enormous amount of good work. --Jimbo

he's a known quantity who has been around for a long time and done an enormous amount of good work. --Jimbo He certainly is a known quantity and has done an enormous amount of harm, but because you seldom edit you don't know. Essentially it has generally been his way or the highway. He probably should have been banned long ago for reasons that have nothing to do with the current anti-semitic accusations. He has a long-standing pattern of tenditious advocacy of an ideocentric point of view, a sort of scientism, that simply will not admit any alternative. I first ran into it on the chiropractic article. He simply would not admit a postitive point of view into the article. Now if I see he is editing actively on an article I just abandon it. Fred

Jimmy- After one of his many flamewars (I sent you an email when I noticed I had another inbox full of RK flames), he started accusing people - respected Wikipedians including Angela and Martin - of "vandalizing" his *user* page. What they did is post comments on his *talk* page. Both Angela and Martin are exemplary, reasonable Wikipedians, and their comments were not hateful in any way. (In fact I deeply admire Martin for his patience with RK, if he had treated me like that I would have called for consequences long ago.) He then accused these people of hating Jews and replaced their user pages with disparaging comments. If I remember correctly, he also blanked a regular talk page. I put a comment on his talk page to the effect that 1) there is a distinction between user and talk pages, and everyone was free to leave comments on RK's talk page; 2) vandalism is absolutely unacceptable, that if he continued blanking Martin's user page, that page would be protected, and that he would be banned if he continued vandalizing other pages. This, to me, seemed like a reasonable safety measure to prevent this nonsense from escalating further. In response, he inserted a disparaging comment on my user page. At that point I decided to ban him. In my opinion, this is a clear cut case of vandalism by a user who has obvious psychological problems, and an enforced cooldown period was very much within the "arsenal" of sysop powers that we should acknowledge. It is correct that RK has made good edits in the past. He is very knowledgeable about Jewish culture and has a healthy pro-scientific attitude. But whenever he has a conflict of opinion, his usual course of action is to revert -- completely. I spent weeks trying to find compromises over a single article with an anonymous user, responding to each of his arguments in detail. RK, on the other hand, will just write something like "reverting anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish nonsense" in his edit summary. When the other person doesn't back down or is a regular, he will send a rambling post to the mailing list about evil persecution. Because most of his "victims" are anons, they usually don't defend themselves much -- but it creates a very negative impression of our project. Not that there weren't real anti-Semitic edits. But there's a difference between anti-Semitism and criticizing Israel's current and past politics. In fact, even if you accuse Ariel Sharon of being a murderer or a terrorist, that has not necessarily anything to do with anti-Semitism. I think we can agree on that. Yet, that has always been RK's accusation against anyone. I was accused of being anti-Semitic by him months ago because I oppose circumcision. He lost it completely this time, and most people who are familiar with the matter consider the response adequate. Whether he returns is his decision, but I personally am of the opinion that he should apologize for this recent episode before being allowed to edit again, not the least because he insulted everyone working on this project and it would be a further insult to just pretend that nothing happened. I for one don't like being called a nazi, in rage or not, and I don't like to work with people who do so. Regards, Erik

Jimmy- Ban faster? :-) Seriously, I don't see how you can avoid dealing with problematic persons, and I don't see how the persons attacked by RK should have acted any differently, and I still think that a temporary ban was the best action in this case. There are some people who believe that I am somehow working on a grand strategy to usurp power on Wikipedia, which is kind of funny, because the first thing I would do it if I had it is democratize everything ;-). We should avoid developing too much of a behavioral double standard. RK was tolerated because he contributed good material. But how much good material has not been contributed because of his well documented behavioral problems? In my opinion, we need to set clearer rules on Wikiquette and be serious about enforcing them, with a well-defined protocol of warning, temporary banning, permanent banning etc. Maybe there could be a 5-10 member Wikiquette "committee" where violations could be reported and decisions would be made by voting. By making it proprietary (totally unwiki, but so is reporting directly to you) we can avoid having the lists and talk pages cluttered up with these complaints and can make sure that users will not have to fear repercussions for reporting Wikiquette violations. Implementation wise, this could be a mailing list with non-member posting rights (perhaps with a web-based submission interface to avoid spam -- this could actually be done inside Wikipedia by creating a fake user with that email address and using the "Email this user" feature, how about [[User:Mediator]]?). Right now, it's really difficult for users to deal with insults and personal attacks. I would love to be able to say in 5-10 years that the discussion climate on Wikipedia is the best anywhere on the Internet. Regards, Erik

Note:Forgive me if this is a little out of date-- just catching up. --- Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)joey.bomis.com> wrote: Well for starters, how about if you, Jimbo. and you, Ed, don't pamper and coddle people "like" him. If there is anything practical to learning about "this sort of thing." I would someday when the breezes permit, like an explanation as to why you let it get this far. Perhaps you think as Abe does-- that 'extremist points of view are necessary to Wikipedia,' even if they are held by people who think of a comment on their talk page as "vandalism." Jim, you've put your foot down before-- why is it that you merely tapped your foot with RK? At least this is my perception of it. As I recall there have been around 3 users banned in connection with fights with RK. This raised to me the issue of an "imbalance," and as I suggested to you in private-- this is perhaps more an issue of your *confusion over the "ethnic issues", or lack of time for detail, rather than anything overtly POV (as others here have suggested. Ed: I told you on your talk page that I would support you in a role where you could act as a formal moderator. I am still somewhat suspect of you, given your current cotton-glove defensism for RK. This suspicion comes from your previous statement (perhaps in haste) that your opinion on matters Israel, are not your own but rather in deference to the opinions of your religious leadership. I think perhaps you've had time to reflect on this since I first asked, and perhaps you have formed an opinion of your own. With that said-- I think of you as a uniquely soothing presence, one which was invaluable the other night in diffusing the situation with RK. Bcorr: Your journalistic spirit is yet unmatched on Wikipedia. Thank you for your work in vindicating me-- where previously RK's accusations saw no meaninful resistance, and no specific retort could be more damning than your proof that RK himself tampered with the text to include a term I would never use. http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-October/006792.html "Shameful", to quote RK. He here violated God's 9th commandment -- "thou shalt bear no false witness..." I consider it entirely forgivable-- as is Edward's lame attempt to cover it up: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-October/006794.html On this whole list thread: Considering the various forms of coddling: Attacks on Erik's "strange precedent"; Abe's silly notion that extreme POV is necessary for NPOV (thank you Angela); and Jimbo and Ed's (still, or until just hours ago) seem to want to make gold out of pyrite. It's was never a problem with his Jewishness--it was his *low-self esteem, and persecution complex* that were the real problems all along. I'm glad you all now can see it for what it was. Robert will be in a prayer or two (like it or not)-- in the hope that he comes away from this stronger, and finds some peace of mind. I hope he can someday soon rediscover his *faith-- one which perhaps he knew only of its dogmas and traditions until now. Faith is much more than what many think it is. Faith is sustaining, and the *true path to "it" is not found in any book, or on any computer screen. On his ban-- I think *I* ( whether I have any "authority" or not, Jimbo ) must take a harder line. I would like to see "RK" permanently banned from Wikipedia. (No, I dont agree with Martin that he simply "wont be back.") That said, if "Robert Kaiser", after getting down from his self-appointed fictitional role as 'defender of all things Jewish,' wishes to return as "Robert," I would only be encouraging. Let "RK" be no more. But if *Robert finally wants to introduce himself, I for one would like to meet him. Jim and Ed, Abe, et al. I dont mean to be rude--I simply dont have time here to beat around the burning bush. If I may choose this as a final word: 'Shalom,' ~S~ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

Axel Boldt wrote: No, Erik did this on his own. I support it in a limited sense, i.e. I give my moral support to Erik's good will and legitimate concerns, but don't want it to set a precedent and do think that it's a good case for us to discuss the limits on sysop powers. I won't be criticizing Erik for it. I think it's actually a very interesting thing that, so far, the consensus *of existing sysops* seems to be running against expanded sysop powers. So at least we're not power hungry maniacs. Oh, except for me, of course. ;-) --Jimbo