On 16/09/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything can be undone, any block can be appealed (including to the unblock mailing list). I agree that your scenario might be grossly insulting if it were true. But it's not. Blocks are easily appealable.
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed.
And by poof I mean leave Wikipaedia altogether. Do not attempt sockpuppetry - you can easily get caught and then things will just get worse. There is more at stake here than simply being able to edit Wikipaedia. If you have disclosed your real name, imagine what future potential employers will think if they Google your name and find something about you being banned from Wikipaedia. And even if you haven't, if you have a long-standing pseudonym, you probably want to protect the online reputation of said pseudonym. (If you have not disclosed your real name or a long- standing pseudonym, I guess you are okay.)
If it's a short-term block, it depends, you might be better riding it out and archiving your talk page when it ends.... And by archive I mean history link archive, so the blocking notice is hidden from Google.
Why are the list moderators a) still allowing boring diatribes from Armed Blowfish and b) allowing 2 day old boring diatribes from anybody through all of a sudden.
On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 16/09/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything can be undone, any block can be appealed (including to the unblock mailing list). I agree that your scenario might be grossly insulting if it were true. But it's not. Blocks are easily appealable.
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed.
And by poof I mean leave Wikipaedia altogether. Do not attempt sockpuppetry - you can easily get caught and then things will just get worse. There is more at stake here than simply being able to edit Wikipaedia. If you have disclosed your real name, imagine what future potential employers will think if they Google your name and find something about you being banned from Wikipaedia. And even if you haven't, if you have a long-standing pseudonym, you probably want to protect the online reputation of said pseudonym. (If you have not disclosed your real name or a long- standing pseudonym, I guess you are okay.)
If it's a short-term block, it depends, you might be better riding it out and archiving your talk page when it ends.... And by archive I mean history link archive, so the blocking notice is hidden from Google.
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On 18/09/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Why are the list moderators a) still allowing boring diatribes from Armed Blowfish and b) allowing 2 day old boring diatribes from anybody through all of a sudden.
(a) Just about everything on WikiEN-l is boring to me; it's hard to tell what is boring and what is not;
(b) Usually the list gets cleared often enough to not make it a problem, so I forget to check the dates. Get over it.
~Mark Ryan
Nick wrote:
Why are the list moderators a) still allowing boring diatribes from Armed Blowfish and b) allowing 2 day old boring diatribes from anybody through all of a sudden.
Even people who write boring diatribes eventually tire of it. These things pass. Some of us would prefer to make our own judgements about what we want to read instead of sticking the list admins with that job. If I find Armed Blowfish boring I don't need to read very much before my finger finds the delete key on my keyboard.
Ec
On 9/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nick wrote:
Why are the list moderators a) still allowing boring diatribes from Armed Blowfish and b) allowing 2 day old boring diatribes from anybody through all of a sudden.
Even people who write boring diatribes eventually tire of it. These things pass. Some of us would prefer to make our own judgements about what we want to read instead of sticking the list admins with that job. If I find Armed Blowfish boring I don't need to read very much before my finger finds the delete key on my keyboard.
Ah, I remember the good old days when it was possible to delete individual messages. Of course, back then it wasn't easy to ignore entire threads. Yeah, I don't think it was ever easy to sort through the boring stuff and find the interesting stuff in an unmoderated mailing list. I'm jealous that you figured out a way to do it.
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Ah, I remember the good old days when it was possible to delete individual messages. Of course, back then it wasn't easy to ignore entire threads. Yeah, I don't think it was ever easy to sort through the boring stuff and find the interesting stuff in an unmoderated mailing list. I'm jealous that you figured out a way to do it.
The people of Usenet are decades ahead of you. Does inbox.org not have killfile functionality? If so, would you consider replying to the Mailman software thread on the topic of a Mailman-side killfile?
On 9/18/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Ah, I remember the good old days when it was possible to delete individual messages. Of course, back then it wasn't easy to ignore entire threads. Yeah, I don't think it was ever easy to sort through the boring stuff and find the interesting stuff in an unmoderated mailing list. I'm jealous that you figured out a way to do it.
The people of Usenet are decades ahead of you. Does inbox.org not have killfile functionality? If so, would you consider replying to the Mailman software thread on the topic of a Mailman-side killfile?
I use gmail. I could possibly set up a filter to automatically delete messages from certain people, but I'm not sure if that would work or not, it wouldn't delete messages made in reply to those messages from certain people, and sometimes those people send messages which are actually interesting. As for hitting the delete key, that actually doesn't work in gmail, if you hit delete it deletes the entire thread. And it's fairly useless anyway, because once I've wasted the time scanning the email to figure out if it's worth reading I've wasted plenty of time already.
Gmail does have the nice auto-threading feature though, its filtering lets me put mail from all the mailing lists I subscribe to in a single folder, and gmail lets me send replies using inbox.org as the from address.
As for your second question, I don't understand it.
I certainly enjoy the fact that moderators will occasionally block messages which tend to do nothing other than destroy discussions (the off-topic trolling ones can really destroy a thread sometimes). Other times I'm sure the moderators have blocked messages that I'd find useful. There really isn't a good solution within the email-based discussion framework. And web-based discussion boards are usually even worse, even though they have the potential to be better (and one incredibly useful thing they never provide is the ability for me to read all my mailing lists in a single place without jumping from board to board).
On 9/18/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I use gmail. I could possibly set up a filter to automatically delete messages from certain people, but I'm not sure if that would work or not, it wouldn't delete messages made in reply to those messages from certain people, and sometimes those people send messages which are actually interesting. As for hitting the delete key, that actually doesn't work in gmail, if you hit delete it deletes the entire thread. And it's fairly useless anyway, because once I've wasted the time scanning the email to figure out if it's worth reading I've wasted plenty of time already.
It does work. I have a filter for <certain people> that reads "skip inbox, delete it". It just sends those individual messages to the trash folder without killing the rest of the "conversation" that Gmail sets up for each thread. I find that the replies are generally much more elucidating than the original post, and people usually quote just enough for me to follow -- and honestly, I can follow the entire thread without <those people's> posts anyway.
Gmail does have the nice auto-threading feature though, its filtering lets me put mail from all the mailing lists I subscribe to in a single folder, and gmail lets me send replies using inbox.org as the from address.
The other nice thing is that Gmail hides the excessive quotes if people don't *snip* them, and colors the relevant quoted text it does show, so you can easily tell what's being reposted (or rehashed, or dead-horsed).
--Darkwind
The other nice thing is that Gmail hides the excessive quotes if people don't *snip* them, and colors the relevant quoted text it does show, so you can easily tell what's being reposted (or rehashed, or dead-horsed).
That's once of the best features. It does get a little confusing, though, when someone says something very similar to what they're replying to and gmail thinks part of it is a quote and you end up with half a paragraph in purple...
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I use gmail. I could possibly set up a filter to automatically delete messages from certain people, but I'm not sure if that would work or not, it wouldn't delete messages made in reply to those messages from certain people, and sometimes those people send messages which are actually interesting.
*shrug*
It's your killfile.
On 9/19/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
As for hitting the delete key, that actually doesn't work in gmail, if you hit delete it deletes the entire thread.
There's a little down arrow at the top right corner of each message; if you click it a drop down list of options is displayed including the option to delete an individual message.
Anthony wrote:
On 9/18/07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Nick wrote:
Why are the list moderators a) still allowing boring diatribes from Armed Blowfish and b) allowing 2 day old boring diatribes from anybody through all of a sudden.
Even people who write boring diatribes eventually tire of it. These things pass. Some of us would prefer to make our own judgements about what we want to read instead of sticking the list admins with that job. If I find Armed Blowfish boring I don't need to read very much before my finger finds the delete key on my keyboard.
Ah, I remember the good old days when it was possible to delete individual messages. Of course, back then it wasn't easy to ignore entire threads. Yeah, I don't think it was ever easy to sort through the boring stuff and find the interesting stuff in an unmoderated mailing list. I'm jealous that you figured out a way to do it.
Gee! I don't know how to respond when someone is jealous of my doing something that I hadn't realized was special. Maybe it's because I never graduated from the good old days. Some people keep flushing the toilet with a bucket of water without ever realizing what the handle on the tank is for. :-)
Ec
On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed. blah blah
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick up a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear the end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed. blah blah
on 9/18/07 8:50 AM, Vee at vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick up a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear the end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
Vee,
They react against you because you protest being banned!? And simply the fear of this is enough to deter you?!
Doesn't sound like a very friendly, mature culture!
Marc Riddell
On 18/09/2007, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 9/18/07 8:50 AM, Vee at vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick
up
a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear
the
end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
Vee,
They react against you because you protest being banned!? And simply the fear of this is enough to deter you?!
Doesn't sound like a very friendly, mature culture!
Marc Riddell
Well, I never have been banned (and therefore not protested against it). I'm just speaking from what I've seen happen to other people - generally if you get to the point where you're banned, people are pretty pissed off by your presence anyway, so if you make a fuss over it, it tends to get used as a reason to protect you talk page or whatever. I don't know, maybe I would get a good hearing or whatever, but the chances of that happening are sufficiently small that I wouldn't bother risking it (and no - I'm not trying to say that admins are really abusive or anything. Just that people tend to have very little patience for banned people.. rightly or wrongly, I don't know).
On 9/18/07, Vee vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/09/2007, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 9/18/07 8:50 AM, Vee at vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick
up
a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear
the
end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
Vee,
They react against you because you protest being banned!? And simply the fear of this is enough to deter you?!
Doesn't sound like a very friendly, mature culture!
Marc Riddell
Well, I never have been banned (and therefore not protested against it). I'm just speaking from what I've seen happen to other people - generally if you get to the point where you're banned, people are pretty pissed off by your presence anyway, so if you make a fuss over it, it tends to get used as a reason to protect you talk page or whatever. I don't know, maybe I would get a good hearing or whatever, but the chances of that happening are sufficiently small that I wouldn't bother risking it (and no - I'm not trying to say that admins are really abusive or anything. Just that people tend to have very little patience for banned people.. rightly or wrongly, I don't know).
If you review unblock requests, you'll see the general answer is "uhm ... no", which is entirely appropriate. People don't spend much time on it.
That said, I've reduced a block for someone I blocked when he pointed out he didn't get the warning to desist until after all his reverts (the timestamps were close, and I might've been sloppy). It does work to ask if you have legitimate cause. Most blocked users simply don't have legitimate cause to be unblocked, and get told "no".
Cheers, WilyD
On 18/09/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you review unblock requests, you'll see the general answer is "uhm ... no", which is entirely appropriate. People don't spend much time on it.
That said, I've reduced a block for someone I blocked when he pointed out he didn't get the warning to desist until after all his reverts (the timestamps were close, and I might've been sloppy). It does work to ask if you have legitimate cause. Most blocked users simply don't have legitimate cause to be unblocked, and get told "no".
Cheers, WilyD
I'm talking about bans, not run of the mill blocks :)
On 9/18/07, Vee vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/09/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you review unblock requests, you'll see the general answer is "uhm ... no", which is entirely appropriate. People don't spend much time on it.
That said, I've reduced a block for someone I blocked when he pointed out he didn't get the warning to desist until after all his reverts (the timestamps were close, and I might've been sloppy). It does work to ask if you have legitimate cause. Most blocked users simply don't have legitimate cause to be unblocked, and get told "no".
Cheers, WilyD
I'm talking about bans, not run of the mill blocks :)
Err, fair enough, I've never unbanned a user - I offered once, but he told me in no uncertain terms I could go fuck myself. Almost all bans probably fall under the same criterion as blocks above - no legitimate cause, can't be told much beyond "no".
WilyD
Err, fair enough, I've never unbanned a user - I offered once, but he
told me in no uncertain terms I could go fuck myself. Almost all bans probably fall under the same criterion as blocks above - no legitimate cause, can't be told much beyond "no".
WilyD
Exactly why I wouldn't bother protesting.
On 9/18/07, Vee vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Err, fair enough, I've never unbanned a user - I offered once, but he
told me in no uncertain terms I could go fuck myself. Almost all bans probably fall under the same criterion as blocks above - no legitimate cause, can't be told much beyond "no".
WilyD
Exactly why I wouldn't bother protesting. _______________________________________________
Well, the question is "What if your ban is illegitimate?" Most banned users gets their requests for unbanning denied? Fine, most should. But what about the exceptions?
WilyD
On 9/18/07, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the question is "What if your ban is illegitimate?" Most banned users gets their requests for unbanning denied? Fine, most should. But what about the exceptions?
I'm guessing that illegitimate bans are extremely rare. I can't imagine anybody getting banned unless they have already been asked not to do something over and over and over again.
On 19/09/2007, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/18/07, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote: I'm guessing that illegitimate bans are extremely rare.
Given that Wikipaedia is the place where one can be banned for being molested as a child, I don't buy that. But hey, it's your website, ban who you like, just don't drag the person's name or pseudonym or whatever through the dirt.
I can't imagine anybody getting banned unless they have already been asked not to do something over and over and over again.
Or attacked over and over and over again until they are really really upset and don't care any more what the people attacking them want.
Or just indef blocked after a run-in with an RC patroller.
On 20/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 19/09/2007, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/18/07, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote: I'm guessing that illegitimate bans are extremely rare.
Given that Wikipaedia is the place where one can be banned for being molested as a child, I don't buy that. But hey, it's your website, ban who you like, just don't drag the person's name or pseudonym or whatever through the dirt.
Stop it. We're all extremely bored of your constant lies and false accusations. I tried talking to you in private, trying to understand why you feel the way you do and offer you advice on how to resolve some of the issues you have, and you haven't listened at all. You continue to do the exact things I told you would not help. You don't want to be helped, you don't want people to be nice to you, you just want to complain, and I'm not interested. Please, shut up and go away.
On 9/19/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/18/07, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the question is "What if your ban is illegitimate?" Most banned users gets their requests for unbanning denied? Fine, most should. But what about the exceptions?
I'm guessing that illegitimate bans are extremely rare. I can't imagine anybody getting banned unless they have already been asked not to do something over and over and over again.
Er, I would imagine the same as well. But they no doubt happen ... a mistaken checkuser/sockpuppet case might do it for instance. There are possibly other cases - I'm not directly aware of any, but I think it's likely it happens.
WilyD
On 9/18/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed. blah blah
on 9/18/07 8:50 AM, Vee at vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick up a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear the end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
Vee,
They react against you because you protest being banned!? And simply the fear of this is enough to deter you?!
Doesn't sound like a very friendly, mature culture!
Marc Riddell
No it doesn't. But deterence due to fear sounds smart.
People did seem to enjoy, with malice, how irritated I got at being banned by an administrator who had plenty more history of bannable actions than I did. Protesting a wrongful ban was pretty stupid, because of the way the administrator involved took it as AN INVITATION to berate, attack, and insult me to all of AN/I. And, again, as far as I can tell, the other administrators really enjoyed it.
Armed Blowfish is giving good advice in the current climate at Wikipedia.
KP
On 20/09/2007, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
People did seem to enjoy, with malice, how irritated I got at being banned by an administrator who had plenty more history of bannable actions than I did. Protesting a wrongful ban was pretty stupid, because of the way the administrator involved took it as AN INVITATION to berate, attack, and insult me to all of AN/I. And, again, as far as I can tell, the other administrators really enjoyed it.
I'm sorry you feel that way. ;_; *hug*
On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Come to think of it, appealing blocks of any kind can often result in being attacked. Therefore, my advice to blocked or banned users who have disclosed their real name or a long-standing pseudonym is this: DO NOT APPEAL. Simply request any courtesy blankings / deletions you want, hoping that by not appealing you don't become 'notable', by some odd defintion that Wikipaedia uses as a justification for destroying the online and offline reputations of banned users, and then go poof! Unless your requests for courtesy blankings and deletions are refused, or worse yet responded to with more attacks, in which case I guess you are screwed. blah blah
on 9/18/07 8:50 AM, Vee at vee.be.me@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick up a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear the end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
On 9/18/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Vee,
They react against you because you protest being banned!? And simply the fear of this is enough to deter you?!
Doesn't sound like a very friendly, mature culture!
Marc Riddell
on 9/20/07 7:39 PM, K P at kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
No it doesn't. But deterence due to fear sounds smart.
People did seem to enjoy, with malice, how irritated I got at being banned by an administrator who had plenty more history of bannable actions than I did. Protesting a wrongful ban was pretty stupid, because of the way the administrator involved took it as AN INVITATION to berate, attack, and insult me to all of AN/I. And, again, as far as I can tell, the other administrators really enjoyed it.
Armed Blowfish is giving good advice in the current climate at Wikipedia.
There appears to be a great deal of power resting in the hands of a relatively small group of persons in this huge Community. And, from what I can ascertain, they are given this power as a result of a popularity contest and edit count. The decisions of these persons have the power to impact not only the substance and credibility of the Project, but the credibility, reputations and emotional states of its Members.
As the Project grows more complex, I believe the screening process involved in selecting the persons who administrate it should also grow more complex. In short, a crucial question that must be asked: is the person emotionally mature enough to handle such a powerful and sensitive position?
A major principle involved here is fairness: to the Project, to the Community, and to every single Member of that Community.
Marc Riddell
PS: This process of choosing administrators in the Project sounds very much like our own American political process - and look what that has produced as our most recent "administrator".
On 9/21/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
There appears to be a great deal of power resting in the hands of a relatively small group of persons in this huge Community. And, from what I can ascertain, they are given this power as a result of a popularity contest and edit count. The decisions of these persons have the power to impact not only the substance and credibility of the Project, but the credibility, reputations and emotional states of its Members.
As the Project grows more complex, I believe the screening process involved in selecting the persons who administrate it should also grow more complex. In short, a crucial question that must be asked: is the person emotionally mature enough to handle such a powerful and sensitive position?
A major principle involved here is fairness: to the Project, to the Community, and to every single Member of that Community.
Marc Riddell
PS: This process of choosing administrators in the Project sounds very much like our own American political process - and look what that has produced as our most recent "administrator".
Hmmm, too much power in the hands of too few people all too capable of and willing to do anything to maintain that power and what happens?
When will humans become predictable?
Thanks for continuing to say what needs to be said no matter what the reception, Marc. And Wily.
KP
On 9/21/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
There appears to be a great deal of power resting in the hands of a relatively small group of persons in this huge Community. And, from what I can ascertain, they are given this power as a result of a popularity contest and edit count. The decisions of these persons have the power to impact not only the substance and credibility of the Project, but the credibility, reputations and emotional states of its Members.
As the Project grows more complex, I believe the screening process involved in selecting the persons who administrate it should also grow more complex. In short, a crucial question that must be asked: is the person emotionally mature enough to handle such a powerful and sensitive position?
A major principle involved here is fairness: to the Project, to the Community, and to every single Member of that Community.
Marc Riddell
PS: This process of choosing administrators in the Project sounds very much like our own American political process - and look what that has produced as our most recent "administrator".
on 9/22/07 1:50 AM, K P at kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Hmmm, too much power in the hands of too few people all too capable of and willing to do anything to maintain that power and what happens?
When will humans become predictable?
Thanks for continuing to say what needs to be said no matter what the reception, Marc. And Wily.
Thanks, KP. We do what we can do.
BTW, I understand that the Foundation is moving its offices from Florida to the San Francisco area. Progress!! You can practically taste Berkeley from there ;-) Progress!!
Marc
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick up a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear the end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
That depends how you go about appealing. If you post hundreds on {{unblock}} tags to your usertalk page, and email wikien-l hundreds of times, yeah, people are going to react against you. If you send a calm email to an arbitrator explaining your case, they will open an arbcom case for you and you'll get your fair hearing (you will probably even be unblocked so you can participate directly - just don't abuse it, whatever you do).
(Note: That's the way to deal with bans, not blocks - if you're just blocked, arbcom is probably overkill.)
On 18/09/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Oddly enough I actually agree with this. If I was banned I wouldn't kick
up
a huge fuss fighting it (even if it really was unfair) because in those cases people tend to react against you even more and you'll never hear
the
end of it. Best to just drop it and move on.
That depends how you go about appealing. If you post hundreds on {{unblock}} tags to your usertalk page, and email wikien-l hundreds of times, yeah, people are going to react against you. If you send a calm email to an arbitrator explaining your case, they will open an arbcom case for you and you'll get your fair hearing (you will probably even be unblocked so you can participate directly - just don't abuse it, whatever you do).
(Note: That's the way to deal with bans, not blocks - if you're just blocked, arbcom is probably overkill.)
Reasonable advice. I guess I just don't have the time or the patience for wikidrama and ArbCom cases seem like they would be too much effort. Clearly I am far too apathetic about WP to ever get banned in the first place :P I've seen quite a few people like that though - newbies who come to WP with something to contribute, get blocked for NPA when someone bites them for not filling in form 2451x.2b correctly, and leave in disgust, confused about the whole thing and lacking the motivation to bother getting unblocked. This isn't very widespread, but it does happen.
That said, I don't think it's a particularly big deal. If you're getting banned in the first place you're probably enough of a disruptive element that it's better for you to (a) leave or (b) get a new account and edit non-disruptively without the shadow of all the drama over you.
Reasonable advice. I guess I just don't have the time or the patience for wikidrama and ArbCom cases seem like they would be too much effort. Clearly I am far too apathetic about WP to ever get banned in the first place :P I've seen quite a few people like that though - newbies who come to WP with something to contribute, get blocked for NPA when someone bites them for not filling in form 2451x.2b correctly, and leave in disgust, confused about the whole thing and lacking the motivation to bother getting unblocked. This isn't very widespread, but it does happen.
You're right, that certainly does happen. Reducing the bureaucracy would be good, but I'm not really sure how to do it without significantly increasing admin/arbitrator workload (and therefore, backlogs).
That said, I don't think it's a particularly big deal. If you're getting banned in the first place you're probably enough of a disruptive element that it's better for you to (a) leave or (b) get a new account and edit non-disruptively without the shadow of all the drama over you.
In most cases, yes. There are a few cases where something needs to be done, but the community don't like it, and whoever is finally bold enough to just go against consensus and do it (using IAR, I guess) ends up getting in trouble for it. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and we really don't want to lose those people.
On 18/09/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That depends how you go about appealing. If you post hundreds on {{unblock}} tags to your usertalk page, and email wikien-l hundreds of times, yeah, people are going to react against you. If you send a calm email to an arbitrator explaining your case, they will open an arbcom case for you and you'll get your fair hearing (you will probably even be unblocked so you can participate directly - just don't abuse it, whatever you do).
(Note: That's the way to deal with bans, not blocks - if you're just blocked, arbcom is probably overkill.)
How often do you see an ArbCom case where the participants are *not* attacking each other?
File an RfAr, and you may never get it off Google, which is bad if you have revealed your legal name or a long- standing pseuodonym.