[WikiEN-l] Ban notices, Wikipedia, and search engines.

[Armed Blowfish]

On 26/09/2007, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Stopping vandals isn't attacking, it's defending against an attack.

1.  Not everyone who is banned is malicious - some were trying
      to help, many certainly weren't trying to hurt.
2.  As someone said earlier, it doesn't matter if you've done
      anything wrong or broken any rules (which, let's face it, are
      things everyone does anyway, being human), if the community
      wants you out, you are gone.  Being unliked doesn't mean you
      deserve to have your name dragged through the dirt on top of
      Google.  In these cases, Wikipaedia attacked first.
3.  The rules contradict each other any way, so you can't do much
      without breaking them.  Bureaucracy doesn't have much to do
      with the worth of a person.
4.  Even some vandals are drunk - not guilty by reason of insanity.
5.  Even if it was malicious, vandalism is usually easily reparable -
      much more reparable, in many cases, than much of the
      well-meaning damage.  Punishing it by dragging someone's
      name through the dirt for years is Draconian.

> Saying the vandals are right to attack /again/ through the infamous
> "attack sites" is OK since the poor vandals are the victims is ...
> (sorry, I'm not a native speaker of English, so I lack the words to
> express just how perverse that is).
>
> Magnus

Many banned users, specifically, the ones who did nothing wrong
but were disliked, not to mention the ones who simply made mistakes
or got on the bad side of some silly bureaucratic rule, were attacked
first, so by attacking back, they are not attacking again.  They probably
see it as self-defence.  In many cases, it is self-defence.

I'm not saying that gives a person the right to put other people's lives
at risk by outing them, but by provoking them, Wikipaedia shares the
responsibility for the damage done by that.  And I certainly won't blame
them for being annoying.