On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Sean Barrett wrote:
Larry, weigh in directly against me; I'm the first who wondered aloud whether a one-hour ban might help. I will only point out that it is the first time I have ever proposed a ban, and I don't think a single occurance should be called a "habit."
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that one-hour bans were a habit; but proposing to ban people over content disputes has become a regular habit, it seems to me.
Did you follow the battle with Lir through all the various talk pages? On the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page, Lir accused Zoe of "defacing the Columbus page, probably due to some form of inherent racism against Africans and Amerindians." Lir has no comprehension of NPOV, utterly refuses to compromise, rejects even proposals that I consider absurdly accomodating, and insists on entirely unsubstantiated historical revisionism.
I'd agree that's all pretty bad, and Lir is certainly an abrasive character who doesn't understand what's generally accepted to be Wikipedia policy. I just looked at the talk page and histories of two of the mentioned pages, and didn't find anything so completely outrageous as to require an outright ban.
For all I know, you're absolutely in the right. I just want to try to slow us down, that's all.
Larry