[WikiEN-l] Ban policy

[Delirium]

John Robinson wrote:

> User JRR Trollkien [...] was blocked by an administrator before he had 
> made 20 edits.
> [...]
> c) at least a month of which was caused by some sort of crazy 
> departure from the case itself ("JRR Trollkien is an offensive name". 
> Where did that come from? Why was that even put forth?)

The reason for the discussion of the username is that the initial block 
was justified on the basis of his username, along the lines of "the name 
JRR Trollkien is obviously implying he is a troll and therefore should 
be banned".  The discussion was therefore whether this was a legitimate 
reason to ban a user.  Content did not enter into it, as he was banned 
before anybody even had a chance to complain about his content.  
Subsequently, some content complaints have also emerged, but there is 
far from consensus on the matter.

I'd suggest your frustration may stem from the fact that you take a 
particular viewpoint on who ought to edit Wikipedia that not everyone 
here does.  Wik, for example, has quite a few people calling for him to 
be banned, but also quite a few people who do not think he ought to be 
banned.  In many cases both sides are equally at fault (many of the 
people Wik has been in edit wars with could just as easily be ban 
candidates themselves), so unless we are simply going to be banning lots 
of people left and right, it takes some time to sort out the few cases 
in which there is absolutely no option but to ban people.  I also don't 
respect the "good contributors have left because of Wik" argument 
either.  That's a temper-tantrum sort of "people didn't do what I wanted 
so I'm going home!!" thing, and I don't think we can let that sort of 
thing influence Wikipedia decisions.  For what it's worth, good 
contributors would also leave if we banned Wik, and far more would leave 
if we were regularly banning people, especially people in relatively 
borderline cases.

-Mark