Questionable punishment of D 98 The January 2010 block against User Darryl98 was extremely harsh IMHO as being a 1 month block for a WP 3RR violation that was escalated by a more experienced user who was well aware of goading people into a revert war Perhaps an 8 day block would have been more fair with an attempt to discuss the situation during those 8 days and possibly remove the block sooner than 8 days after true consensus that means a mutual agreement Please understand that Wikipedia policies are actually much more fair in writing than the way some users and admin users misapply those policies the typical block for WP 3RR is only a 24 hour block not 1 month In fact per WP Blocking policy use of excessive blocking is a violation due to the reasoning that new users will become highly irritated by excessive punishment The idea of fair punishment isn t just a matter of human decency or common sense when trying to actually collaborate with other users no much more than those reasons fair punishment is a stated policy issue I think what needs to be added to avoid excessive punishment is to develop a type of Code of Hammurabi as a list of wiki punishments for each situation based on length of tenure total edit count and repeat offenses so that the punishment does NOT just become a matter of lengthen the block so a user won t come back soon to cause more trouble Meanwhile rather than reducing future conflicts excessive punishment poisons the Internet community with unhappy users who spread the word of how they were mistreated Typically users will not see unfairness as a few admins crossing the line and violating policies in a harsh manner instead a user victim is likely to blame Wikipedia for being a bad system that harrasses and abuses people What needs to be emphasized in discussions during a shorter block is that some many users admins violate policies but this is not condoned it s just hard to enforce because a banned user can return using a social networking site that has thousands of IP addresses and Wikipedia can not easily stop them Also Wikipedia has very limited appeal processes and so there is nothing yet as sophisticated as even the American notion of justice in Wikipedia there are no trials by jury of informed peers chosen at random Instead many issues are decided by dog pile groups who collect around a common bias or mindset as a sort of feeding frenzy or hive mind that sees a negative remark as a veiled attack against the hive and many members of the hive must sink into sting mode to counter attack a person who states angry remarks Currently Wikipedia likes people who are ultra mild and don t claim any Bill of Rights but simply beg to belong with the others Hence people from democratic republics come to Wikipedia and might demand their rights under the law without realizing it is the Law of the Old West be as nice as possible to avoid getting shot by other users admins who are toting wiki guns Only some people think users have any rights to fair treatment despite current WP policies that even require actions to be fair within those regulations Perhaps WP needs to teach fairness classes to users who come from fascist countries or domineering parents being fair and courteous is not a strong force of nature but rather must be taught to users Wikid I m sure that you are well aware of why WP can not tolerate the improper use of WP Sockpuppets Just as your socking as Wz777 had to be stopped so did PilgrimRose s socking as Darryl98 But blocks are not regarded as punishment they are regarded as protection of WP from those who like yourself are having difficulty working within the rules The indef block of a sockpuppet is applied equally to all such come howl If you read that user s larger prior talk page revisions you will see that the stated preference was to become named as Darryl98 so I am respecting that request In changing names that user was not aware of how people can be goaded into a WP 3RR excess of revisions and that escalation seemed to be the most serious of the policy violations It is not a violation to have multiple usernames on Wikipedia Plus as an occasional user it seemed that Darryl98 had spent extensive time to read the policies about WP Sockpuppetry and properly explained each issue as it applied in the situation no clear violation of puppets but rather just being accused of nefarious intentions which was noted as a violation of WP AGF Again the largest disturbance was engaging in a WP 3RR violation typically risking a 24 hour block wh