I don't want to dig up the dreaded RK issue again, but as I was knocked off the wikilist and so have come on with a new email account, I haven't had a chance to comment.
1. Abe made a very useful and thought-provoking point about the useful of having RK on wiki, if only because his virtual waging of war on anyone who disagreed with him tended to lead people to be restrained in what they wrote on the Israel-Palestinian issue. Unfortunately RK went way to far. Far from being a useful restraining force he became a destructive individual who scared people away from wiki.
2. For me the last straw was seing Robert's mucking up of the [[Mel Gibson]] article. Robert had done it before; taken articles that were on individuals and overloaded them with the issue of anti-semitism. But in the case of Gibson, it hit farcical proportions. Gibson is an actor. He is known as an actor. People would come to the page to read about the actor. But Robert, as usual, turned the entire article into a polemic rant about Gibson's views on jews. Yes, Gibson has what I personally regard as anti-semitic views. And homophobic views. His views make my skin crawl. But that is no justification whatsoever for turning the article into one big expose of Gibson's opinions on jews, much less turning much of it into a rant about his father's views as a Holocaust denier. As a gay man I would love to give Gibson right rollicking over his homophobia but if I was to turn the article around so 70% was about his views on gays I would be actively disgracefully. Gibson's personal views on any issue, no matter how repulsive, warrant no more than a paragraph in an article primarily focused on the broad view of who Gibson is, what his career is, what his film career is like etc. But then Robert did this in article after article after article. And true to form, given his hypersensitivity being such that he would read anti-semitism into the wrong location of a comma, Robert accused everyone who tried to turn the Gibson back into a proper balanced encyclopædia article, of being anti-semitic and trying to cover up the truth.
Eloquence's actions in banning Robert were 100% correct. I thought a temporary ban was right, but having read Robert's ''nazipedia'' rant that followed, I cannot see any reason why wiki should take Robert back. He has caused too much offence, too much chaos, made too many outrageous personal attacks. I don't know of a single other user whose behaviour was so continually outrageous, who treated people so badly and yet was allowed to go on, unbanned for so long. Wikipedia needs to ensure that no-one is ever allowed to behave that way again. And that no-one is shown so much tolerance. The tolerance he was shown amounted to a slap in the face of everyone else who was bullied by him, who had to clean up his polemics, and deal with the regular wars he triggered. He should have been dealt with months ago. His behaviour caused more damage to wiki, and drove away more good people, than any troll. That scale of blank cheque tolerance to one user, and by implication toleration of his disgraceful treatment of everyone else, must never be shown again.
JT
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