-----Original Message----- From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, January 5, 2007 09:39 AM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget
I try to apply it all the time, but apparently it is a dying kind of dispute resolution.
It isn't a form of dispute resolution at all. You can't really forgive someone until they accept they did something wrong (well, I guess technically you can, but it doesn't achieve much), and once they've done that, the dispute is already resolved. All "forgive and forget" says is "once the dispute is resolved, move on, don't try and punish people for their mistakes".
There is also "live and let live" by which, if someone isn't doing just what you want, you don't get on their case. There is also the common sense realization that if an experienced user is breaking a policy, essentially making a newbie mistake, that they may not be aware of it and may be somewhat embarrassed if attention is drawn to it in an aggressive way.
Fred