[WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting

[Charles Matthews]

Emily Monroe wrote:
>> The vandal problem hasn't gone away: admins deal with those vandals 
>> we have more harshly in the past (and no one cares).
>
> Is that, or is that not a good thing? I honestly, sincerely ask this 
> question not out of spite, but of curiosity.
>
It is composed of two things. Firstly, that powers to ban indefinitely 
have been devolved (sort of) from ArbCom to the admins as a group (the 
qualification being that ArbCom cannot ban anyone indefinitely). This is 
fundamentally good. It means that there is no need to review formally 
and at length the evidence on a particular case of vandalism, because by 
now there is no real doubt about the standards to apply. And then there 
is the part that some admins (probably not particularly representative) 
are happy enough to run someone off the site either with little chance 
to show they can reform, or by using more weaselly versions of 
"disruptive" behavior on the same level as vandalism (which is basically 
malicious damage to the site). This is not good, but it is hard to get 
anyone not directly concerned to care about abuse within that part of 
the system. In short, the checks and balances can fail where people are 
unscrupulous and/or are too vested in getting rid of a particular editor 
who is not a classic vandal but something else.

Charles