[WikiEN-l] Hardblocking usernames

[David Gerard]

On 12/08/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Another analogy: A guy has obsessive compulsive disorder, which he is
> open about.  (He does not, however, state the reason for his obsessive
> compulsive disorder, which is that he was beaten many times as a
> child.)  Being obsessive compulsive, he keeps changing British
> spelling to American.  No revert warring, never on the same article,
> but he does this many times.  He can't help it - he's obsessive
> compulsive.  Aside from that, he does good work - he's written some
   [...]
> Would you say that he is not banned merely because he could get
> unblocked if he merely agrees to stop changing spellings?  Would you
> say it is his 'choice', because he could stop changing spellings, as
> though obsessive compulsiveness is something that can be turned off at
> the flip of a switch?  Or how is this situation significantly
> different?


There have been real cases like this - Mike Garcia in his heyday, for
example. That his behaviour was due to a mental problem did not make
it Wikipedia's problem to put up with. He got all of AOL blocked quite
a lot ...


- d.