On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 13:52, Gareth Owen wrote:
The Cunctator <cunctator(a)kband.com> writes:
I think that most people would agree that in an
ideal situation, banning
would be unnecessary
I think everyone would agree.
However, since our situation is less than ideal, I don't see the relevance.
It's just the same with NPOV. NPOV is the ideal situation.
Our situation is less than ideal. That doesn't mean NPOV is not
relevant.
These things are relevant since we have near-complete power to define
the rules of the society--and the environment in which the society
exist. Wikipedia is almost a purely closed system, having a relationship
with the "real world" only (just about) at the intersections of law
(limited to copyright issues, mostly) and physical constraints (which
are very limited; as Jimbo has said, we can assume infinite disk space).
The other primary limiting factors are human behavior and software
capability. Both of these factors are highly malleable, given time and
the right approach.
In short, with effort, we should be able to approximate the ideal as
close as necessary.