[WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?

[W. Guy Finley]

> From: Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 22:49:17 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
> 
> Hi all,
>   Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
> 
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
> 
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
> 
> Steve


Umm, no.  Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an airport and
joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just joking!" excuse
gets while you're being cuffed and hauled to jail.  "Joking" that you are a
pedophile is no different in my mind.

What is staring to kill me is that people feel hey have a RIGHT to edit
Wikipedia.  Editing Wikipedia is a privilege and if you demonstrate you're a
dolt and can't handle that then there should be no question your ability to
edit should be revoked for a set period of time or indefinitely.  We're
talking about a user here who's vast majority of time has been spent putting
all the "funny" boxes on his user page and embarrassing the good name of a
rock and roll legend.

If we continue to allow the user space to be populated with "funny" little
boxes and statements that have no fathomable use towards writing an
encyclopedia then we might as well shut the foundation down and call up
Rupert Murdoch to tell him he forgot to buy a part of MySpace.

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)