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

[W. Guy Finley]

On 2/7/06 7:15 PM, "wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org"
<wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org> wrote:

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:06:43 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
> 
> charles matthews wrote:
> 
>> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>> 
>>> Could we agree
>> 
>> not to ever again block people for what they are?
>> 
>> Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and
>> has its reputation pretty much intact.  What about the guy who arrives
>> in the middle of an election and annouces "I'm being funded to remove
>> all your bias on candidates' pages"?
> 
> I don't see why that would require preemptive banning.  If he makes
> problematic edits, they can be reverted; if he starts ignoring usual
> community standards, e.g. by refusal to discuss on talk pages or
> excessive reverts, he can be banned.
> 
> There are cases where preemptive banning makes some sense, mainly
> obvious reincarnations of banned users and malicious bot-created
> accounts.  In the latter, this is mainly because the potential damage a
> botnet can inflict in a short amount of time is quite large, so waiting
> around and cleaning up afterwards is an unappealing option.
> 
> In a case like the one you described, though, the potential damage to
> Wikipedia's reputation from being too ban-happy far outweighs the
> relatively minor inconvenience of waiting a bit to see if banning is
> really necessary.  The clean-up there would consist of reverting a
> handful of pages.
> 
> -Mark


I can't believe where this is going.

I have it, lets form a committee to review all of his edits, maybe even stop
by his house and see if he actually IS a pedophile before we do anything!
Yes, yes, wonderful idea!!  After all, it's far more vital to the project
that people be allowed to make bold statements such as condoning or making
light of molesting children on their user page than risk losing the
incredibly valuable contributions such a person is bound to make to the
project.

Have I crossed into the frakking Bizarro world here or something?  What the
hell is this NONSENSE??  The guy puts on his page "I am a pedophile" i.e. "I
molest children" and his "joke" is more important than the obvious
disruption it causes?  More important than the blatant insensitivity to
those who have had someone in their family molested or perhaps even molested
themselves?  The fact that this has absofrakkinglutely NOTHING to do with
CREATING AN ENCYCLOPEDIA???

Yes, by all means, let's protect and hold up this fine example of a
contributor to our project, send him out on the press stops with Jimbo!
After all, if he does any damage it's just to a few pages.  Heck, who cares
if some 13-year-old girl who gets molested nightly by her father is doing
some research on "pedophiles" on Wikipedia and comes across someone who is
proclaimed to be one and we allow to continue to be here as a valued
contributor to our community.  Who cares right?  It's just a few pages.

--Guy (User:Wgfinley)