The course of action I recommend to everyone is to leave a crystal
clean paper trail so that the arbitration committee can ban this guy
with a clean conscience if he misbehaves.
His "lawyer" contacted me (from France, so I'm not really worried
about it), but made no specific legal threats other than the typical
lawyerly hints and tone.
It's very important, as a matter of justice and transparency, that we
not ban Irismeister for behavior that others commit against him. This
is one of the biggest reasons why Usenet-style flaming is so bad
around here -- it deprives us of one of the cleanest reasons we have
for getting rid of bad apples.
In a real anarchy like Usenet, where getting someone else kicked out
is impossible, the only known solution to jerks is to yell at them in
the hopes that they get some sense. (This solution doesn't work at
all, but that doesn't keep people from trying it.) Around here, the
solution is to greet them with respect, love, and sincere attempts to
help them achieve whatever rational goals they may have. And this
leaves us a nice clean and simple paper trail for banning if they just
can't behave.
--Jimbo
James Rosenzweig wrote:
I have been talking with Irismeister for several days
now, partly (I admit) in an effort to get him to talk
to me instead of insulting Theresa, and partly because
his edits to [[Iridology]] were POVing that page again
(and his comments in the article's talk page seemed to
be false). After he made comments which seemed
contradictory, I admit I said that he either needed to
admit he didn't mean his 2nd statement, or else admit
that he had been a liar in making his original
statement. My patience was wearing thin, I admit.
You may judge whether I have acted wrongly.
At any rate, he just posted this at [[Talk:Iridology]]
-- "His Quackness is back and will let gentle,
knowledgeable lawyers deal with the libel and slander
off Wiki, having gathered all necessary material,
addresses, and hard evidence, thank you :-) Nobody
calls a doctor a lier without some very serious
consequences, trust me !" I have to assume I am being
implicitly threatened with legal action. I thought
that I should notify this mailing list of the threat
for information's sake, to warn others who attempt to
converse with Irismeister, and to announce to those
who care that I won't be talking to him anymore. I
would ask that the matter be forwarded to the
Arbitration Committee, but fear that doing so might
constitute legal evidence of harassment (IANAL). You
can assure me he's making the whole thing up, but I
don't have the money or time to risk it.
James Rosenzweig (Jwrosenzweig)
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