QUOTE(Doc glasgow @ Sun 22nd November 2009, 6:38pm)
And we
are off QUOTE
Scott Mac's opinion
It would be more Wikipedian to attempt to communicate before posting an opinion which is certainly discourteous and arguably a personal attack. Scott Mac's syllogism suffers from the false dichotomy fallacy. Suppose one grants his premise that Kmweber is a troll (noting the incivility in passing). It does not necessarily follow that the solution to every type of trolling is to ignore it completely. Carry that premise to extremes and nobody would ever get blocked, because warnings and block notices constitute feedback. A lot less formal dispute resolution would occur at this site. This was initiated with the idea that if he were reasonable he would communicate reasonably, and if not then at least it would divert the disruption from his chosen high profile venue to a different venue where he didn't want to be. The premise of this RfC was set out pretty clearly, and I would hope that experienced Wikipedians could disagree respectfully. Durova369 00:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
You'll all have to pardon me for pretending to take any of this seriously, but I suppose it should be pointed out that it isn't a "false dichotomy" to suggest that "trolling" should be ignored; in this case it's simply an argument from experience, which is perhaps better known as
a priori reasoning. That doesn't mean Mr. MacDonald/Glasgow is correct in his approach to Mr. Weber, but it does perhaps suggest that Ms. Durova lacks an appreciation of the finer points of logic.
At some point they might have had to address the question of whether or not Mr. Weber's ArbCom candidacy is actually "disruptive" in some way, or just a relatively harmless diversion. If any of them are concerned about the ArbCom elections being seen by the general community as a farce, they should probably worry more about things they can still actually control.
QUOTE
The premiss of this RFC is bollocks. You state that you hope "Kmweber evaluates the reactions here at this RfC ... edits productively in mainspace for one year to regain the community’s confidence...". Is that really why you filled this? A good faith attempt to help Kurt see the light? You are not remotely stupid enough to believe that an RfC will do anything of the sort..... --Scott Mac (Doc) 00:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Mr. Weber is an interesting case in some ways, in that he does his best to follow the basic rules of WP civility and decorum while espousing a bizarre (and somewhat radical) interpretation of an already-insane ideology to anyone who will listen. But since the basic ideology he espouses is the one Wikipedia is fundamentally based on, this makes it more difficult to manufacture an adequate non-hypocritical ban-pretext to make him simply "go away."
The real problem for the WP'ers is that the technology (be it MediaWiki or the web in general) doesn't give them an effective means of
distancing themselves from people like Mr. Weber without explicitly banning them. Concepts like "mediation" and "arbitration" are of no practical relevance in his case... Their only real alternative is to subtly broadcast vague and general hints that everyone should ignore him, but some people don't take hints as well as others, obviously.