[WikiEN-l] Samiharris looks like a sock, and everyone suspected

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:05:57 -0800, "George Herbert" <george.herbert at gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Forcibly outing people who fall into disfavor with our critics,
> however, seems like a short road to destroying the project.  A large
> number of editors and admins I otherwise respect have happily run to
> do Bagley's bidding on this one, and that's highly disturbing.  If
> we're going to enforce all the policies equally, then a number of
> people have met the policy definition of "acting as proxy of banned
> user" in this, in addition to attempts to reveal the real-life
> identity of a Wikipedia user in public.

A totally ridiculous policy, amounting to "thought crime"; the theory seems to be that once a 
user is banned, all ideas he espouses, true or not, are banned with him, and become a "third 
rail" that no other users had better touch.  Better not say that 2 + 2 = 4 if a banned user has 
said that first!  The policy makes no sense under the best of circumstances, and can be 
horribly abused in the worse circumstances that actually prevail, where powerful admins and 
their friends can win arguments by getting their enemies banned and then use "acting as a 
proxy for banned user XXXXX" as an all-purpose trump card to play in future arguments.

-- 
Dan
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