On 10/24/02 8:56 PM, "lcrocker@nupedia.com" lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
I think perhaps what Ed is arguing for, and what I support as well, is the idea that we should perhaps take the idea of freedom of action and the act-first-argue-later system that seems to make Wikipedia work pretty well most of the time and apply it at the meta-level as well; that is, let the sysops and developers do what they think is necessary, so long as it can be undone by others, and not freak out about it. That includes the drastic things like deleting articles and blocking users. In other words, let's agree to see them as less drastic because they're reversible, and accept that mistakes will be made now and then, but nonetheless give people power--and the cultural authority--to do them.
I generally agree with that philosophy, especially if it's really followed. Blocking users is sticky, because people are quite different from entries. I'd feel better if there was a way for blocked users to reverse their blocking (without having to make a request to the person who blocked it), and since that's hard to even conceive, at a minimum automatic unblocking.
I guess I also don't see blocking users as that obviously necessary, especially if we say built a tool that could automatically roll back one user's edits. (Though that could be even worse--imagine edit wars on such a scale. Probably not a good idea. But interesting to think of.)