[WikiEN-l] silent bans

Thu Feb 27 00:14:29 UTC 2003

Hello,

there is usually so much fuzz about banning certain users, weeks of
tedious discussions, scrupulous arguments if someone like Lir should be
really banned or if he/she could learn to work cooperatively in the
end... 

I just followed the little edit war in [[Iraq crisis 2003]] and on the
talk page I found the following:

| This article was removed because the user who sumbitted it was banned,
| for reasons which are on the mailing list. Given the reason for the ban,
| it is surprising that this user is taking an anti-war position here!
| 
| The conclusion on the mailing list was that they should be banned, and
| therfore they don't get to play here. Period.

First question: I seem to have missed this debate (the user has written
under IPs starting with 142.177.) Could someone direct me to some links in
the archive?

Second question: Since when is the fact that some user was banned a valid
reason (without giving any other reasons) for deleting entire articles?

Third question: I can't reproduce the first reason for the ban:
* 08:12 Jan 13, 2003, Maveric149 blocked 142.177.97.215 (contribs) (racial
insult at Talk:Space Shuttle Columbia: "(On [[January 12]], [[1986]]
Columbia took-off with the first [[Hispanic-American]] astronaut,
Dr. [[Franklin R. Chang-Diaz]].) " Well, that explains where the
Challenger's O-ring went... <-- ;-D")

In the history of [[Talk:Space Shuttle Columbia]] I can find no edits by
this IP. Could someone explain the story of this ban?

And my fourth and last question: Why the hell do you ban users who write
articles like this: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asharites ???

or add substantial content like this one:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Ijtihad&diff=675212&oldid=650587 

or this (not banned, but apparently the same user):
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_philosophy

Okay, okay...one prefers to let other, more knowledgeable people write
about Islam. These people do also behave very civilly. 

good bye,
elian
-- 
# echo "127.0.0.1 www.wikipedia.org" >> /etc/hosts