[WikiEN-l] Featured editors?

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 12 Nov 2007 at 20:03:33 -0500, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu wrote:

> I don't understand what point you are attempting to make. Are you 
> attempting to
> argue that we should not have banned Amorrow?

I didn't say that; in fact, I said the ban was justified.  But you're 
deluding yourself if you think the ban will have any effect toward 
stopping real-world harassment; that's the province of the real world 
authorities, who fortunately did act in that case.

Wikipedia bans should be regarded as, at best, a necessary evil, 
sometimes useful towards reducing the level of harm and disruption to 
the project; but only slightly effective against determined attackers 
who use multiple hard-to-trace sockpuppets, and not effective at all 
against any sort of attacks or harassment that take place in the off-
wiki world.

Bans and blocks have more effect on reasonably honest people, who 
will actually respect them by not trying to evade them, than they do 
on serious, determined attackers.  Unfortunately, imposing bans on 
honest people is generally an unfair thing to do.

Whenever admins start putting emotion into their blocking, like in 
taking pleasure at blocking people, or showing anger at the people 
they're blocking, then they are not acting in a properly professional 
manner and should step back and leave the judging of the issue to 
somebody more dispassionate.


-- 
== Dan ==
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