Danny wrote:

Jimmy Walse wrote:

...

I, too, object strongly to this practice of creating '/ban' pages as a place to complain about people. It seems likely to escalate a conflict rather than to resolve it.

I want to second that. I do not like these ban pages as a place to complain about other users. Remember, bans are only a last resort and one that is taken only after careful consideration. This also tends to make the banning process more accessible, in my mind.

I like having the [[/ban]] pages as a place to discuss a ban rather than the mailing list where fewer people see it. The problem in my mind is that bans get suggested at all far too quickly! If they were only suggested when appropriate, then the openness of a [[/ban]] page would be nice.

An idea: Create a page [[Wikipedia:Users suggested for a ban]]. Even now, people rarely discuss more than one user at a time. It's still not good that banning is suggested so quickly so often, but at least now we won't have talk pages associated with user names. The page can be wiped after a discussion is over (with the discussion still available in th edit history), so Wikipedia will be largely free of personal acrimony at any one time.

This is suggested as a compromise between those against [[/ban]] pages at all and those that might insist that they're necessary (and more open).

-- Toby