On 27/11/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's incredibly fucked up and the blocking admin could do with being taken out and shot. Good thing the RFA process protects against such blithering idiocy. - d.

On Nov 26, 2006, at 6:53 PM, George Herbert wrote: Handing out indefinite bans to people who have made 15 edits is controversial. Fred

I'm with Luna Santin on this. If the user in question reforms there's no reason to do a checkuser and they won't be found out. Indef blocking should only be used in serious cases. Simple vandalism isn't one of them. And an attempt at reforming the user should be made whenever possible. Other than that, I see no problems, yet. Blocks can always be undone if misplaced. Mgm On 11/27/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I don't see anything controversial about blocking AltUser, if that's what you're saying. Dmcdevit, although an Arbitrator, blocked AltUser before the case against Konstable began. As far as I can tell, Dmcdevit was acting as an admin should. --Ryan On 11/27/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:

No, but as the controller of two abusive sockpuppets (and somebody who abused his admin privileges to unblock one), he should be. --Ryan On 11/27/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:

I guess the length of the ban doesn't matter in that situation, and a more complex solution is needed. --Ryan On 11/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:

On 11/27/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: Having them is just an indicator of the scope of Wikipedia; if you look back at all the prior Internet interactive projects of note, they have all attracted malcontents of various sorts over time. Success attracts them. The question is what is done about it. The best solution I saw was benign dictatorships where someone in power just booted troublemakers, and was trusted by the rest to not boot good guys, and where social pressure functioned and kept good guys having really bad days from becoming troublemakers requiring the boot. I don't think WP can do that; we have a form of that, but the scope is so large that it's not a benign dictator; it's a benign oligarchy, with its own internal politics and dynamics within the group and between the group and elements of the group and the "normal editors" outside the group. And it's not just a benign oligarchy of uninvolved people; the admins largely but by no means completely overlap the really active editors, which means that active editor admin / active editor non-admin conflicts happen all the time. The successful benign dictators I have seen stayed out of the day to day fray. We can't possibly do that here. I don't suggest replacing the current mechanism; I lack any good concepts for a better approach. It's just a hard problem, by the nature of the project. It's probably going to continue to be a hard problem, eventually driving good people to frustration and exit from the project at a moderate rate. Avoiding admin burnout is going to be important over time. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: RFA as a cabalist institution is a failure; the presence of inclusionists and clueless twits in the ranks of adminship is proof of this. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Thanks for clearing that one up. :) --Ryan On 11/29/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: