[Wikipedia-l] Re: Ban warning to GrahamN

[Bryan Derksen]

At 05:42 PM 06/09/02 -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
>On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> > Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a
> > "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing
> > it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting
> > disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only
> > the disruptive yahoos stick around.
>
>This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent
>"disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban
>them.

Odd bit of logic there, not sure if I can untangle it. Of course banning 
people isn't the _only_ way to stop disruptive people from disrupting, 
there are other gentler strategies to try beforehand. But what I'm 
objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_ those other strategies 
have failed, which means that disruptive people who are immune to those 
other strategies (the merciless editing and ignoring you mention below) 
_do_ "get away with everything" because there's nothing else we can do to 
stop them.

>But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
>worked every time so far.

It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I 
believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_, 
and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a 
higher quality of Wikipedia overall.

Maybe we should try it and see.