[WikiEN-l] Cla68 blocked for asking question

[fredbaud at waterwiki.info]

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel R. Tobias [mailto:dan at tobias.name]
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 04:57 PM
To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cla68 blocked for asking question

Durova has blocked Cla68 for 24 hours for responding to Jimbo's 
posting on [[Talk:Gary Weiss]], which included "No nonsense, zero 
tolerance, shoot on sight.", with "Most of us usually try to give 
some reasoning for any action, proposed action, or threatened action 
that we discuss on an article's talk page. Would you mind doing the 
same?" It was claimed that this was a "WP:POINT" violation. Just 
how is asking the reasons behind a draconian statement a block-worthy 
violation?

I swear, with every passing minute Wikipedia becomes more of a self-
parody, with people getting subjected to punitive sanctions for 
having the effrontery to question whether the authorities on 
Wikipedia are getting overly punitive. It reminds me of the 
government of Singapore, which once sued a journalist who had written 
that the government suppresses criticism by suing its critics.

People sometimes justify the need for "getting tough" on trolls, 
harrassers, and the like because they're driving good editors out; 
however, I've been feeling more and more like I'm about ready to take 
a Wikibreak myself, being constantly disgusted at the direction the 
Wikipedia culture is going and how Jimbo seems to be actively 
supporting this development himself. I'm sure there are a bunch of 
people who will cheer if and when I go away.

-- 
== Dan ==

_______________________________________________

Well, yes, you add little to legitimate dialog, but part of what you see is the contrast between the very liberal rules which govern this mailing list and the level of tolerance on the talk page of the article about a subject who is actively being harassed. If you have something to say about such harassment, you are expected to be knowledgable about it. Cla68 adopted a pose of naive ignorance. You like that pose too, and it is an effective debating technique, in fact, Socrates often used in the dialogues published by Plato. However, when you get down to cases, and there you are, in the midst of an active dispute, acting dumb, well...
Fred