[Wikipedia-l] Reciprocal system...

[Jimmy Wales]

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> There's no real conflict; there's one anonymous crackpot with a
> pet theory, and the rest of the reasonable community.  The crackpot
> doesn't even /try/ to follow our guidelines here--he simply wants
> to make that article an advertisement for his pseudoscientific
> bullshit, and when we try to make a useful article out of it, he
> just restores his crap.  I don't think we should "lock" the article,
> but only because that prevents other reasonable people from editing
> it.  I /do/ think we should ban the crackpot if he doesn't give up.

I think that's right.  I think that a case could be made -- but we'd
need to get some consensus first -- that locking the article to
prevent him from overwriting it would be justified if we already had
banned him, and if he was evading the ban.  Removing the object of his
affection might help in a case like that.

> In general, though, I think we should not make hard-and-fast rules
> about use of sysop features.  We should use judgment, and do whatever
> is good for the project.  A content war between reasonable people
> who disagree is one thing, and we should treat such a conflict with
> respect.  But a crackpot spreading total nonsense is another, and we
> should use whatever tools we have to defend against his damage.

I agree with this, subject to a caveat that we should take the sysop
code of honor seriously, and try hard not to have it come to this.

The banning of 24 was done only after much soul searching.  It seems to have
worked.

--Jimbo