[WikiEN-l] Featured editors?

[Marc Riddell]

on 11/10/07 1:26 PM, Daniel R. Tobias at dan at tobias.name wrote:

> On 10 Nov 2007 at 12:10:38 +0000, Guy Chapman aka JzG
> <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> 
>> So in this case, as with Jonathan Barber (JB196), if it genuinely is
>> Awbrey then long experience shows that the banhammer is the right
>> approach.  Revert, block, ignore.
> 
> When it comes to essays about preferable Wikipedia behavior in
> dealing with people who disagree, I like WP:BRD (Bold, revert,
> discuss) much better than WP:RBI... the ultimate aim of the former is
> to lead to a discussion, rather than to lead to banning and ostracism
> and the suppression of discussion.  Which of these mindsets is more
> in keeping with the spirit of a community devoted to the collection
> and dissemination of information?
> 
> While the trolls and vandals do some harm, a lot more harm is done to
> Wikipedia, in my opinion, by the Judge Dredd types who see themselves
> as the thin blue line against trolling, vandalism, and anarchy, and
> have no compunctions against acting as judge, jury, and executioner
> against anybody they see as an enemy, or as somebody aiding the
> enemy.
> 
> Human history is full of cases where people decided that some enemy
> (real or imagined, significant or exaggerated) justified a state of
> war in which normal civilized, genteel considerations no longer
> applied.  The results, which include the Spanish Inquisition, the
> Salem Witch Trials, and McCarthyism, are often judged harshly by
> later historians.  In the throes of a moral panic, people can enter a
> state of hysteria where they undermine the values that made their
> community good in the course of allegedly defending it, like the
> soldiers who destroyed a village in order to save it.

> A Twilight 
> Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", provides a
> fictional illustration of the tendency of a community to be its own
> worst enemy.

That's where this comes from:

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and
fallout.  There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices,
to be found only in the minds of men.  For the record, prejudices can kill,
and suspicion can destroy.  And a thoughtless, frightened search for a
scapegoat has a fallout all of its own." - Rod Serling

Marc