[Foundation-l] Dealing with interwiki disruption

[Robert Horning]

White Cat wrote:
> Has there been any discussion on this matter? If a user is being disruptive
> on a wiki he or she will eventually end up getting blocked for it. If the
> same user decides to continue this disruption he was blocked for on other
> wikis, particularly sister projects, commons, meta and etc how should he or
> she be treated.
>
> I know every wiki is independent. But letting a disruptive user become the
> source of agony on many wikis seems like a problematic thing to do.
>
>     - White Cat
>   

Based upon my own personal experience in dealing with highly disruptive 
users on Wikipedia that also edited on Wikibooks.... each project 
certainly has its own personality in terms of encouraging or 
discouraging disruptive behavior, and how a user acts or is reacted to 
on one project isn't necessarily the same on another.

In one case that I remember, a fairly active user on both Wikipedia and 
Wikibooks was permanently blocked on Wikipedia.... where he had been 
more or less quite cooperative on Wikibooks.  I kept close tabs on his 
account (as an administrator) on Wikibooks, and didn't see any serious 
problems... intending to leave him alone.  Real and positive 
contributions were made to the Wikibooks project by this user as well.  
And yes, I did read through the flamefest on Wikipedia that he was 
involved with.

Unfortunately, one of the Wikimedia board members (I won't name names 
here as it is buried in the past) decided to permanently block his 
account on en.wikibooks as well with the only rationale and 
justification being that he was disruptive on Wikipedia.  At the time, I 
strongly considered reverting the block.... and in hindsight I should 
have.  Frankly in this case I was intimidated due to the fact that it 
was a board member who performed the block.  Certainly no discussion 
took place within the Wikibooks community on this individual.

I don't know what could have happened had this user been allowed to 
grown and mature on Wikibooks for awhile, but then again we won't ever 
know.  That is something you have to consider when trying to get 
vindictive against some users is that they tend to be the kids that they 
are, and they simply need to grow up.  Sometimes getting blocked by one 
project might wake them up to the fact that they have to play nice with 
others and try to be much more cooperative on the other projects.

On the other hand, if a systematic pattern of abuse and disruption is 
occurring on multiple projects, a much more global block might be in 
order.  I have seen vandals get bored with vandalizing Wikipedia with 
the hope that the other sister projects might not revert their actions 
so quickly.  But then again, they are using throw-away accounts 
usually.  The issue here is about those users who have made some 
meaningful and useful additions to the projects, but are simultaneously 
enflaming conversations on talk pages and otherwise being disruptive.  
Anybody reading this list knows precisely this kind of user.... as I'm 
sure nearly everybody reading this list has likely even been accused of 
being such a user at one point or another if you have done any kind of 
significant impact on any of the projects.

-- Robert Horning