[Wikipedia-l] Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce them

[The Cunctator]

On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 16:22, Tom Parmenter wrote:
> 
> Ed Poor is repeating himself, apparently because no one has paid
> attention to his sensible remarks, so I will do the same.  Ed talks of
> Sunday School, I will speak of my experience moderating open mailing
> lists on the Internet.
> 
> One of these lists was for a group of non-religous recovering
> alcoholics.  The other was a company list for experts in a
> software-development tool that, frankly, required serious attention
> from experts to be used at its best.  I was neither alcoholic nor
> software support.  Both lists had their cranks, and certainly strong
> opinions were the norm.  
> 
> On both lists, I left discussion wide open, but retained for myself
> the privilege of chiding and chastening when then conversation got out
> of hand.  Inevitably, these interventions of mine were followed by
> periods of profound silence, even from those who had not offended in
> any way, and then open discussion would slowly resume.  I only banned
> one person from the alcoholic list and no one from the company list.

At first blush, it doesn't seem to be unreasonable to have as a social
norm that text on the article talk pages that is OT or personal,
overheated, etc., can be erased by people who aren't involved in the
topic at hand.

Though I fear that would probably end up not working well unless it's an
all-or-nothing thing. That is, the acceptable thing to do would be to
erase the talk page entirely, or erase it and summarize the topics of
discussion in your own words.

This wouldn't solve everything, but it would certainly help.