On 12/08/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@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.