On 16/09/2007, Armed Blowfish
<diodontida.armata(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)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".