[WikiEN-l] Cla68 blocked for asking question

[Durova]

> 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...

None of that is "disrupting Wikipedia", though. Cla98 may have been
being annoying, but that's not the same as being disruptive.

******
These complaints are classic straw man rhetoric: take a small portion of the
actual situation, pretend that's the sole cause of a result, and bemoan in
various fora that the some action was unjustified.  I see through the game.
There are times to put one's foot down and that time was today.  Wikipedia
has been entirely too lenient about this type of disruption, with the result
that when one brief and overdue block occurs a cluster of people are shocked
by it.

The talk page of a Wikipedia article is not a venue for rehashing poorly
sourced rumors against a living person.  It's as simple as that.  If I have
any regrets about that block, it's that it wasn't longer, sooner, and
applied to more people.

How hard can it be to find reliable sources for an article?  When you locate
them, discuss them maturely.  Wikipedia isn't your water cooler.  Neither is
this list.

-Durova