[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation's partnership with Kaltuna and loss of freedom

[Robert Horning]

Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> It's not our job to do background checks on our volunteers. What people do elsewhere is their business. Our community consists of
> mostly-anonymous amateurs, people from whom no reputation or
> qualifications are expected nor required. His zeal against one group
> or one community does not translate directly into actions at our
> community. So long as he doesn't troll us, we shouldnt label him a
> troll.
>
> --Andrew Whitworth
>   
>

Along this line of thought, I have seen somebody banned on en.wikipedia 
that seemed to have behaved themselves rather well on en.wikibooks.... 
only to have a zealous steward (I won't name names here, but it has 
happened) go into en.wikibooks and do a permanent ban on their account 
due to an arbcom decision on en.wikipedia.  I think this is 
inappropriate behavior on the part of that particular steward, and I 
hope this doesn't become a widespread practice.  Certainly trollish 
behavior on one project should be a "heads up" to scan for similar 
trollish behavior on other projects, but it shouldn't be the automatic 
reason to kick them off.

Trollish behavior toward trolls begats trollish behavior.  Also, the 
environment of one project isn't necessarily the same on another 
project, so you can't really make a good comparison.

I certainly have seen some project administrators work very well with 
some borderline trolls and be able to redirect the "trolls" behavior in 
a postive and productive manner, and other administrators with similar 
situations be very confrontational and make a major enemy out of that 
troll.  So I'm suggesting here that some wiki communities are able to 
cope with problem individuals better than others as well.  Also, 
sometimes a person may mature over the course of time and may be willing 
to try with a fresh start at a new place...and I'm willing to give most 
new contributors the benefit of the doubt unless their actions prove to 
be damaging.

-- Robert Horning