[WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3))

[Matthew Brown]

On 9/10/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 10/09/2007, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Not necessarily, but unless our ban of them was mistaken, there was a
> > reason to ban them.  This was generally connected to their behavior on
> > the project.
>
> Do you really see people in such
> black-and-white terms?

Not entirely; however, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of
people banned have been banned for good reason.  There may be some
edge cases; I'd submit that in the vast majority even of those,
keeping the record available is beneficial, in that it can help
explain what happened and perhaps why.  Some people have been banned
unjustly, I'm sure, but comparatively few: of these, the vast majority
(unfortunately) are newbie-biting, and in most of those cases, there
is little on-wiki history to erase in any case.

It's also generally the case, I've found, that the banned people
making a big fuss about this are the ones for whom their history is
deeply unflattering to them, and for good reason; they actually did
behave badly.

(As I've explained before, YOU are not banned.)

-Matt