[WikiEN-l] silent bans

Thu Feb 27 20:11:16 UTC 2003

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I'm not sure right now who 142.177.* is, but perhaps someone will
>remind me.  This is the death threat guy, right?  Or am I forgetting?
>
>elian wrote:
>
>>Second question: Since when is the fact that some user was banned a
>>valid reason (without giving any other reasons) for deleting entire
>>articles?
>>
>
>This is not as easy a question as it first appears.  My own position
>is that if someone is sneaking in to edit after a ban, it's really
>important to simply revert everything they do, in order to deprive
>them of the benefit that they seek.  Debating over the quality of each
>individual edit only encourages them to stick around and argue about
>it, as if they had never been banned.
>
Hmm!  This bout seems to prove my point.   When you start to delete an 
offender's work (in addition to his generally accepted banning) you open 
up that banning debate to whole new generations of disputatious 
individuals.  Do we love these arguments, or what? :-)

Eclecticology