[Wikipedia-l] Re: Less than an outright ban

[Daniel Mayer]

>Ed wrote:
> > Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
> >* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
> >* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open

On Tuesday 22 October 2002 03:27 pm lcrocker wrote:
> I proposed exactly that once, but the idea got little support.
> I'm all for it, though I don't think even a complete block
> really shuts down dialog.  After all, Bridget did show up here
> on the list, and she's quite free to e-mail anyone (the "you're
> blocked" page shows the user who blocked you, and the "e-mail
> this user" function is not blocked).

I vote for this too - this would give a person who is trying to "hijack" a 
page time to focus on crafting their arguments on why the page should be 
changed. Most contributors want us to have the best encyclopedia there is so 
we will listen and consider the arguments. But I would probably freeze the 
page as Ortolan suggests before I would block a user.  I would also only 
resort to blocking the "hijacker" from editing anything in the 'article 
namespace'  if they did something to subvert the process like copying their 
version under a different page name and then proceded to orphan the frozen 
page by pointing all links to it to their version at the new page title. 

> But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
> block.  While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
> are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
> involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
> unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
> as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
> grounds.  Others may disagree.

Not me - I find it odd that we tend to bend over backwards to try and 
accommodate people who exhibit anti-social behavior when this very behavior 
/has/ resulted in the loss of great contributors in the past (and is 
threatening to do so for at least two others now - and those are just the 
ones we have heard from). Do we really want to encourage this type of 
behavior and thus decrease the average quality of our contributor base? I 
hope not.

>.... 

> And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
> perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
> of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
> to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
> they should be treated like one.  A block isn't saying "you're an
> awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
> a while, the grown-ups are talking".

That's right.  We are a community of contributors and if somebody can't work 
with the community then they are working against it. Nobody gets paid to 
contribute to Wikipedia and the only reason people do contribute is because 
they derive some enjoyment from it. 

The question before is this; What type of "enjoyment" do we want to encourage? 
I for one enjoy working with very intelligent people from all around the 
world  while writing a unique, neutral, free and useful encyclopedia. Other 
people enjoy being anti-social and/or starting fights while pushing their own 
POV agendas. 

Which type of contributor should be bend over backwards to keep?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)