QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Sun 13th December 2009, 7:46pm)
Well, in principle, banning someone who is genuinely disruptive is quite a sensible thing.
In principle, I agree. In reality, it is not happening. No one is "banned" -- an account is disabled, that's all. When everyone stops pretending otherwise, we might be able to have some degree of progress in making WP work.
QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Sun 13th December 2009, 7:46pm)
The trouble is that they rarely seem to be able to tell the difference between disruption and sheer frustration at the daily stupidity to be tolerated and the likely results of that, and as you rightly point out, they have been magically blind to the disruption of some of the old guard.
If that was the case, then David Gerard, FT2 and a host of other losers would have been booted ages ago. Arbcom is playing kiddie games -- they have no control over the site and, sadly, they know it. This is just shabby pantomime, not serious administrative functioning.
QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Sun 13th December 2009, 7:46pm)
In fact in terms of disruption to the project, who has done more harm, Ottave Rima or Peter Damian, who may be difficult to deal with but ulitmately are individual nuisances to the project, or the old guard of Gerard, SlimVirgin and so on who have consolidated the dysfunctional organisation of Jimbo's vision of Wikipedia and whose influence is enmeshed in the fabric to the extent it is proving impossible to reform.
Ottava and Petey don't have the friends to back them up, hence their pariah status with some WP people. Giano, for example, should have been booted ages ago if we were to apply the same standards, but he is still there.