I know that you don't agree with that, Lodewijk :)
On 1/31/08, effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
I'm sorry, but I have some big problems with that. I thought for a moment I misread you, but I am afraight not. Communities have different values, different borders, different rules, different behaviour. I beleive we have some very valuable member of the transcom that has been banned for a long time from her home wiki. And I'm confident there are more of these cases. If I am seen as disruptive somewhere, that does not mean the same behaviour occurs at all on other projects, with other people. And even if it would, it does not automatically conclude that this behaviour is also bad on the other community. Personal attacks for instance are very differently interpreted in some communities as in enwiki.
- I really don't care about developed Wikimedian communities (and their cultures) which are not able to live with other Wikimedian communities. Bottom line is: If your cultural norms don't allow you to use computer -- don't use it.
- And if some community depends on one or couple of problematic contributors, it is a better idea to wait for some others or even to make some fund raising and find some professional editors.
- Long term ban is not a local, but a global issue. I was very clear about options.
- Personal attacks are personal attacks and, if needed, may be defined globally. Expressing racism is also a very clear field. Of course, someone may interpret that sun shining is a personal attack or a racism, but this is their own problem.
- Yes, I know that a person who did personal and racist attacks on en.wp may be a hero at its own language project. But, then we have a problem with a whole project. And sooner or later we won't be able to ignore it anymore.
- Also, Wikimedia is a culture with its own values and goals. A person who is not able to accept and understand this -- is not able to participate in the project, except as a POV pusher. And if it is a local community-wide behavior, then we are feeding a project which is unacceptable from the point our basic values.
- BTW, I know very well what "different culture norms" mean on the Internet (I live in a "different culture"). Members of really different cultures are not using Internet.
Also the open proxies of course. While in some wiki's open proxies are mainly used for vandalistic activities, in other projects they are being used to avoid easy government control, arrests or the loosing of a job. in some projects these addresses are disruptive, in others they are the backbone of the project. By deciding that for instance nlwiki's open procy policy should become wikimediawide (preventively block all open proxies, including TOR etc) might just very well kill some projects. I am confident this is not your intention. Of course there are ways around it, but this is just an example. My whole point is: who is one community to decide for another community who is allowed to join them. On one side you extremely rely on good faith of the blocking community, but on the other side you forget that also the blocked person might be acting in good faith, but for *some* reason, makes him/herself impossible on a project. Maybe because of language barriers, maybe because of long ongoing disagreements. It can all be in good faith, it can all be a reason to block if that is best for that local community. It is not per se the best for every community.
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies
- There are a couple of projects which need open proxies free for editing and it is possible to make exceptions for them. However, ways for helping to valuable editors from such places.