[WikiEN-l] I just blocked someone for 9999 hours

[Jimmy Wales]

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> 1. Empower sysops to make on-the-spot decisions and act
> accordingly. If most people don't trust them to act wisely, they
> should not be sysops.

In this case, you had a case of obvious vandalism and a threat to do
more.  Policy already supports you 100% in this, and we absolutely
should make it clear to all sysops that this is perfectly fine.

(Actually, I just re-read the vandalism policy, and it doesn't quite
say that, does it?  Well, it should.)

> 3. Stiffen penalties. If a group of people (like a school) are
> planning to damage Wikipedia, it will last longer than 24 hours.

I think that's sensible.

> 4. Act quickly and decisively with POV pushers. I recently received
> an email from a colleague at work, that was forwarded to
> her. Someone posted to a professional mailing list, asking them to
> join Wikipedia en masse to ensure that certain articles maintain
> their point of view. Their POV is often close to my own, however, I
> am disturbed that a group can potentially band together to push a
> particular POV, regardless of what it is. At one point, such a group
> will succeed. (I have forwarded the email to Jimbo, but will say no
> more about it to protect the confidence of my colleague).

*nod* -- The issue here is subtle but potentially a huge deal, as
follows.

Each of us has come to the project individually, and so whatever POV
we may have, we don't imagine that we could get away with pushing it.
I mentioned the other day that I think a lot of our gun rights
articles have a pro-gun bias, but I have to admit that the main reason
I looked at them in the first place was to check for anti-gun bias,
which I care about as a personal issue of interest to me.

Because we have come here individually, we have come mostly because of
our interest in the encyclopedia _per se_, as opposed to a particular
narrow agenda.  (Not true for everyone, obviously, but I'm speaking in
generalities.)

It would be unfortunate if it became common practice for groups of
people to come _with a specific agenda_, as a group.

(I agreed with pretty much everything else Danny said, too, I just
omitted it because I didn't have much comment.)

--Jimbo