[WikiEN-l] School shooting threats

[Chris Howie]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure I totally understand the contention that a policy is only worth
> having if you can be blocked for violating it. How many blocks are issued
> for violating AGF or NPOV? A policy or a guideline - but not an essay.
> Personally I'd prefer a policy, because it has the weight of consensus
> behind it and thus amounts to stronger encouragement than a simple essay
> from someone few have ever heard of.

I know of plenty of blocks that have been placed for violations of
CIVIL, which AGF is arguably an extension of.  I'm sure someone
rampantly assuming bad faith would be blocked pretty quickly, even if
some other policy is cited for the block.

Policy generally describes how things are supposed to be done, and in
some cases explicitly states what happens if it's not followed.  For
behavioral policies like CIVIL and AGF the obvious consequence is a
block.  For NPOV it's removal/refactoring of the contribution.

I'm not exactly sure what the obvious implication of breaching this
new policy would be.  I'm not even sure how it could be determined
that a breach took place.  If some remedy cannot be taken to "fix" a
policy breach then what is the policy even doing?  It's advising
people on what *should* be done.  Which sounds more like a guideline
to me.

> As far as a separate noticeboard - I think we have noticeboard
> proliferationitis as it is. Someone mentioned RSN yesterday and an admin had
> no idea what it was, so I think that demonstrates the limited utility of yet
> another reports noticeboard.

I'm an administrator and I have no clue what half of the noticeboards
out there are, largely because I'm not active in those areas.  Which
is why it's nice to not cram all this stuff on ANI.  People who know
how to approach threats would monitor the page.  The rest of us could
ignore it with little consequence.

-- 
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers