Jimbo Wrote:
Not having reviewed the incident in question, I would tend to agree with Axel here. Banning ips is supposed to be for vandalism of the most obvious sort, like inserting random 'farts' in pages, or uploading inappropriate pictures, etc.
What did the guy say, anyway?
For those who haven't been following this - GrahamN had posted a bad tempered message on Anti-Semitism/Talk in which he referred to the 'Zionist's desire to dominate all other ethnic groups in [Israel]' and similar. It was originally in response to a change to the page by SLRubenstein. I understand that Graham and SLR have since come to a civilised mutual understanding.
There then followed a very lengthly, bad mannered and inappropriate exchange, mainly between GrahamN and another user, RK. Each was accusing Zionists or Non-Zionists of racism and bigotry in broadly equal measure (with RK liberally making allegations of anti-semitism, directed at April among others).
Ed, I appreciate your attempts to stop this inappropriate argument on the talk page. However, using your sysop status to threaten banning people just isn't appropriate. In a situation like this it could be perceived that you were taking sides in an argument on behalf of Wikipedia, which is not what sysop status is for.
In this case we were dealing with two known Wikipedia contributors, both of whom have made good contributions in the past. Reasoning with them is the approach to use here and a ban, or threat of one, totally inappropriate.
I would also ask that sysops should not generally sign contributions as sysops (i.e. writing "Ed Poor - Sysop"). It could be give the misleading impression that sysops are acting officially on behalf of Wikipedia, rather than acting as an individual contributor.
Tim (Enchanter)
Axel Boldt wrote:
This is a warning: any more personal or provocative remarks, and I will will ban you for a day. --Ed Poor, sysop
...and the ban will be undone immediately of course. Ed, please refrain from using your sysop status as if it were a position of power.
Axel
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Tim Marklew wrote:
I would also ask that sysops should not generally sign contributions as sysops (i.e. writing "Ed Poor - Sysop"). It could be give the misleading impression that sysops are acting officially on behalf of Wikipedia, rather than acting as an individual contributor.
Yes, I think that should be socially unacceptable. Anyone can be a sysop just by asking, so it's really nothing. We only reluctantly have sysop status in the first place, to deal with some specific technical problems.
In essence -- there are some commands (delete, remove) that have some ramifications that people need to understand before using them, so we'd prefer that people have been here for a little bit before using those powers. And there are true vandals, people who post random crapola just to be funny or whatever. We want sysops to be able to ban those people, but we don't want people to get into ban wars, etc., so we restrict that ban power to sysops.
And then there are the problem cases, people like '24' and possibly Helga -- these people aren't simple vandals, but neither are they getting with the program in a constructive way. I reserve the right of final banning on those cases to myself, although of course I'm probably too patient in seeking general consensus first.
--Jimbo
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