[WikiEN-l] Deliberate chain yanking

[Jimmy Wales]

[Note: At the bottom of this is an important "blessing" by me of the
quickpoll methodology.  I put this note up here after I was done
because I realized that part was pretty important and I don't want
people to miss it.]

An edit by 'Michael33':
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&dummy=1&diff=3015477&oldid=3015334

>In this case we chose the name of a hard-banned user
>([[User:Michael|Michael]]) hoping to make you believe
>[[User:Michael3|Michael3]] was his sock puppet.

An edit by 'Bird':
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Bird&dummy=1&diff=0&oldid=2831400

>Your distrust for this username is a product of efforts by the
>creator of this username to undermine your trust. I have manipulated
>other user names to demonstrate continued niave trust among this
>juvenile group.

But in both cases, it may be instructive to read the whole thing.

I just wanted to express my firm public opinion, Speaking Officially
and all that, that both of these admissions are sufficient in and of
themselves to justify a hard ban.  In both cases, the confession is to
actual trolling, i.e. misrepresenting oneself in order to get a
reaction from people.

The mental pathology of some people is astounding.  Wikipedia works
because such people are rare.  But they do exist.  I sit here in
amazement at a person who comes to my user_talk page to ask for action
against a sysop for banning someone while *at the same time* admitting
to having been trolling for the ban in the first place.

--

I fully approve of and authorize the use of QuickPolls to authorize a ban,
as per the policy on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quickpolls_policy.

This policy gives teeth to the "three revert guideline" but also
provides for a good mechanism for community feedback and control over
the process.

I added "a signed in user confesses to deliberate trolling" but if for
some reason that's pushing it too far, I didn't mean for that to be
Policy From On High, just something that I think is a good idea.

The biggest problem I see with the mediation/arbitration paradigm is
that while it is fair and extremely respectful of due process, it's
just very very slow, and some people who ought to be banned end up
driving us bonkers for awhile.

Temporary banning, with community oversight, is a good interim
measure.

--Jimbo