[Talk-us] Turn restriction dispute

[Chris Lawrence]

Without wading too deeply into the personalities here, there's a
danger inherent to having rules that you will have people who think
they're being very clever by trying to repeatedly bump up against them
in ways that may respect the letter of the rules but not their
underlying spirit.  For example, a guideline like "don't tag for the
renderer" gets distorted into "any tagging scheme that could
conceivably be valid is equally valid, even if some renderers will
cope poorly with the one I like."

OpenStreetMap is not the argument room from Monty Python.  IMO people
who want to be in a community have to accept that sometimes the
consensus isn't what they'd like, and they can either live with it or
take their ball and join another community.  More importantly they
have to demonstrate a willingness and an ability to participate in
that consensus in the first place.  If they can't play sufficiently
well with others to help form a consensus, or refuse to accept what a
clear majority has adopted as the consensus if they don't participate,
then I'm not sure they can really be part of the community in any
meaningful sense.

What shouldn't be acceptable is wasting everyone else's time...
because this is the exact sort of attention-seeking
behavior-slash-performance art that people with this personality type
thrive on.  Which I fear is what this thread is.

In the immediate circumstances, what I think should be considered is
some general policy that creates a half-way house between either being
permitted full privileges or being banned; perhaps a policy in which
people are placed on mailing list moderation but can still contribute
after their message is vetted for appropriateness (for example, to
screen out ad hominem attacks and insults*) would be more appropriate
to community-building than this weird limbo in which you can edit but
largely can't be part of the community otherwise.  Of course, that
creates work for other people that may be unfair.  The simpler route
is the ban hammer.


Chris

* For example, if I can go to another site where you're a participant
and *every single use* of "f*** you" directed at other members is by
you, I might humbly suggest you need to work on your communication
style.