2008/1/31, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
Eh, I thought than you are proposing some *real* changes ;) (OK, it was just my initial wish, but I realized the meaning a couple of moments after.) Here are my thoughts about that:
- Every block longer or equal to 7 days should be Wikimedia-wide.
- The fourth block on two days in, let's say 15 days should be Wikimedia-wide.
- The fourth block on one day in 7 days should be Wikimedia-wide.
- And so on...
So, here is "better" group of reasons:
- If en.wp (or any other approved by WMF) ArbCom decided to block
someone on 1 year, I really don't want to see such person on any other project.
- If some community decided to block someone on a longer period, it is
probably because of very good reason.
- If someone got N-th consequent block (usually, any consequent block
is higher) on any project, I assume that such person is troll or whatever-destructive.
But, we have the dark side, too:
- If some ArbCom fails, it would be much more visible to the whole community.
- If some community made some crazy decision only to remove some
person from their project, it would be a global issue.
- If some admin is not reliable, it would be, again, a matter of the
whole community.
Of course, I would be happy with any kind of moving toward this model, which includes WM-wide IP blocks, too. I would really like to see open proxies blocked indefinitely because they are much more harmful to the small projects then to the big ones (yes, Andre, I know that you don't agree with that ;) ).
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.
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.
BR, Lodewijk