Earlier: ... When there is noise on a discussion list, the list itself suffers. Not just the people who have to read it ...
Peter Blaise responds:
I hear your pain. I do not, however, want a moderator to act on your pain as their reason to express banning powers over other wiki or list members. I've not seen positive results from expecting moderators to relieve other people's personal sense of suffering by banning. I have seen such powers directly cause damage to other members of the community, such as banning alternative sharing styles because the moderator or another member felt uncomfortable.
Instead, I suggest scrolling past any content we're not interested in, and not commenting on the content of such posts that do not interest us.
Moderators and members alike can contact the authors of what they may think are offensive posts, and try to resolve the problem with the author on or off wiki/list. If this takes three days or three years to resolve the misunderstanding ... then either don't do it, and don't complain to others ... or do it, and don't complain to others. Either way, the common denominator is: don't complain to others!
I suggest not banning anyone. Delete spam and vandalism, but since they usually move on from an email or IP, banning spammers and vandals just wastes admin time and system resources by keeping a list of dead emails and IPs.
In other posts, I share other reasons to prohibit admins from having banning powers.
-- Peter Blaise
On 8/30/07, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote:
Earlier: ... When there is noise on a discussion list, the list itself suffers. Not just the people who have to read it ...
Peter Blaise responds:
I hear your pain. I do not, however, want a moderator to act on your pain as their reason to express banning powers over other wiki or list members. I've not seen positive results from expecting moderators to relieve other people's personal sense of suffering by banning. I have seen such powers directly cause damage to other members of the community, such as banning alternative sharing styles because the moderator or another member felt uncomfortable.
Instead, I suggest scrolling past any content we're not interested in, and not commenting on the content of such posts that do not interest us.
Moderators and members alike can contact the authors of what they may think are offensive posts, and try to resolve the problem with the author on or off wiki/list. If this takes three days or three years to resolve the misunderstanding ... then either don't do it, and don't complain to others ... or do it, and don't complain to others. Either way, the common denominator is: don't complain to others!
I suggest not banning anyone. Delete spam and vandalism, but since they usually move on from an email or IP, banning spammers and vandals just wastes admin time and system resources by keeping a list of dead emails and IPs.
In other posts, I share other reasons to prohibit admins from having banning powers.
Call me biased, but this strikes me as arguing that newspaper editors should not have the right to tear up any letters that come in from one particular person. This is the English Wikipedia mailing list, and the mods should be able to prohibit or curtail discussion that does not relate in any way to the English Wikipedia.
Peter, can you give us one example of a successful online community where nobody has the power to ban a user?
Johnleemk