QUOTE(Silver seren @ Thu 15th March 2012, 9:41pm)
What, my opinion that blocks only exacerbate the potential issues involved in this? That I feel like topic bans would be the easiest method of fixing the problem? I mean, if the users get blocked for violating those, then there's no choice but to block at that point, but you at least tried.
Really, it comes down to two possible situations.
1) The user is going to be using Wikipedia to advocate for pedophilia or otherwise contact children. Blocking them in a situation like this merely makes it so that they make a new, unknown account that you can't follow now. If you hadn't blocked them, then they could have been observed and, if they tried something illegal, they could be immediately reported to the police or FBI.
or
2) Whatever their past, the user isn't going to use Wikipedia to advocate for pedophilia or contact children. And, if they aren't, then what exactly is a block accomplishing in this scenario?
Your opinions would hold more water if you hadn't publicly doubted the identification of Volodya/Beta M despite knowing that all the necessary evidence was sitting right here. Nonetheless, let me share an observation with you.
You and others suggest that blocking users who identify as paedophiles or advocate paeophilia on WMF projects will only result in those users returning as socks. This, you suggest, is worse because people will not be able to keep an eye on their activities. There are a couple of problems with this argument.
One, it is not inevitable that the user will create a sockpuppet. They may not have access to other IPs after theirs is blocked. They may just not care enough. Two, there is nothing to prevent users under topic bans for advocacy of paedophilia from creating socks so that they can continue to agitate despite the topic ban. This happens all the time with people under topic bans. Just look at Prioryman/Helatrobus/etc. Three, you will be creating a situation where you say it is ok to be a paedophile and it is ok to have paedophiles on WP. Trust me, that is the thin edge of a wedge. They will soon move to working on "balancing" articles about paedophilia.
You may not have been observing WP long enough to know that blocking advocates of paedophilia is a deterrent to others who would follow that route. It also gives people time to clean up after the editor, remove the advocacy, and get more editors watching articles that are particularly attractive targets. It has worked to keep things under control, even if you don't see it.