How about 'suspended'? Equally accurate and less terminal-sounding than block.
Hi everyone, by the way. As you might guess from my e-mail address, I am User:Worldtraveller.
-----Original Message----- From: Asbestos [mailto:asbestos999@gmail.com] Sent: 10 May 2005 17:29 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "block" considered too harsh a word?
If users can't be bothered to read the part of the message where it says they've been blocked for just 24 hours, they're going to throw a fit no matter what the word is. "Blocked" itself is a neutral word: it accurately describes the fact that they can no longer edit.
This reminds me of the idea that some schools are now requiring their teachers to grade papers in purple pens, because a red F apparently distresses some students...
Sam -- Asbestos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos
On 5/10/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the
Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours.
A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to
something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm "blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to mean "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read the entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit.
Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm
wondering what everyone else here thinks?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Actually, "suspended" is a pretty good alternative, as it combines the blocking and the temporary nature of the block into a single word. I Iike Rholton's "suspension of voting *privileges*" as well.
Sam