Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton at
gmail.com:
>It's not a matter of whether Wikipedia
"can" work with you. It's a
matter of whether it wants to. You've
been banned, which means it
doesn't want to work with you. It's not an inability, it's a choice.
Many individuals on Wikipedia were deeply opposed to the ban in question,
and continue to be opposed. So when you 'it doesn't want to work with you',
it's not clear what 'it' means.
In any case, there is nothing to stop a banned individual from working with
others to improve the project. The question comes down to whether the
project is to be improved or not.
For example, when our book on Scotus appears, what happens if any of the
facts cited in the book are then incorporated into the article? Is copying
from a book 'written by a banned user' something that Wikipedia will
'choose' not to do? What happens if I read out passages from the book to
someone like Charles, and he edits the article using his own account. Is
that prohibited by the 'banned' rule? In any case, I can't see anything in
the banning policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BAN that prohibits
this.
Stepping back, it would seem extraordinary to a member of the general public
that any organisation whose purpose is the construction of a comprehensive
and reliable reference work should be banning specialist editors in the
first place. The usual reply, that 'crowdsourcing' will take the place of
specialists, doesn't seem to work. I have pointed out some serious problems
with an article about one of Britain's most prominent and influential
philosophers, on this very forum, and the article hasn't improved in any way
since last week. Is this good PR for Wikipedia or Wikimedia?
So I say it again: it's a matter of whether Wikipedia and Wikimedia 'can'
work with the system to improve articles. There is in fact a choice.