User:Rich Farmbrough/Thoughts about sanctions

"Treating like Children" (are treated by people who don't know how to treat children)
"...by demanding contrition or guarantees of future conduct..."

This is something that has bothered me for some time, quite apart from the infantilizing aspect - despite having sympathy with the intent of the Standard Offer.

Firstly we shouldn't mind if they are contrite or not. It is their edits that matter.

Guarantees of future behaviour are hostages to fortune, that many will baulk at giving.

It seems though that we do need some dialogue with some sanctioned users, other than just "I'll unblock you, but be aware if you go back to what you were doing before you will probably be blocked again."

Or maybe not?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:57, 8 April 2016 (UTC).


 * It's all down to behaviour modification, and that seems to be something that folks in general have very little grasp of, and the Arbs in particular are not blessed with any greater insight. Most people probably remember what measures they encountered at school and extrapolate them (whether successful at the time or not) into adult behaviour. That's a recipe for treating adults as if they were children and it's no wonder that folks like Giano, Eric, Andy, etc. have had very poor experiences at the hands of admins. It's another reason I refuse to associate myself with the group. There are a lot of editors who would benefit from changing their ways - myself included, but that's not to say that they are doing anything wrong; they just allow others to put that gloss onto their actions, and if you throw enough mud, some will stick. If I could find a way of painless behaviour modification, I'd change Giano to suffer fools, Eric to stop calling a spade a fucking shovel, Andy to stop calling a 'non-automated metal-wood hand-operated digging implement' a spade, and myself to find trolls funny rather than annoying.
 * The teaching emotion (as Edward Albee calls it in Zoo Story) is the juxtaposition of carrot and stick. Anyone who is sanctioned and nothing else is rather unlikely to change their behaviour going forward; the recidivism rate is huge, particularly given the inability of the denizens of The Great Dismal Swamp to forgive, forget, or let things go. What is needed is some kindness to be shown: "I'll unblock you, and if you find yourself back where you were before, please talk to me [or Rexx, or 'Shonen, or Floq, or Rich ...] before you do anything precipitate. We're on your side and we want to help if we can."
 * All the very best, Rich, I'll catch up with you at a meetup soon. --RexxS (talk) 14:42, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Burden of work
In order to refute accusations, sometimes a considerable amount of work is required.

There is no reason we should expect volunteers to do this work. Indeed a significant number have simply left the project rather than engage in an ARB case.

Moreover there is a nasty assumption made that if someone edits when they have an ANI thread open, or in some cases a question on their talk page from an admin, they are guilty of some crime of moral turpitude. This is a false corollary from the general idea that one cannot be expected to respond while one is busy with "Real Life". Simply because one is able to, for example, correct typos, or create new text from reading source material, it does not follow that one is able to engage in potentially complex and ban inducing conversations - or indeed in re-coding templates, resolving difficult epistemological issues, performing complex history merges or any of a host of other things. Personal circumstances may include tiredness, health issues, surroundings, constant interruptions, multitasking and requirement to drop everything at a moment's notice.