Board Thread:Community Voting/@comment-5643582-20150816211900/@comment-4845243-20150817063917

ZXSpidermanXZ wrote: Obi the LEGO Fan wrote: ZXSpidermanXZ wrote: If it's not verbalized in a rule these trolls will start a smear campaign on anyone who deals harsher bans on them. Many of our CMs are fearful of giving longer bans because when the user complains to an admin it makes a spectacle. Either I'm completely out of the loop since becoming less active a few days ago, or you are blowing things way out of proportion.

The trolls that we are discussing (those who abuse socks and use ToR) are 1) less frequent now than they have been in the past, 2) not respected by the community and lack the reputation to cause much of a "spectacle" or succeed in a "smear campaign." Yes but with some we don't know the true identity of them til later so yes they can blow it out of proportion and cause a ruckus. I get your point and I don't necessarily disagree completely, I just don't see many valid negatives coming from this. How many legit users to we have that use TOR? i can only think of Yada. I've been on this wiki for over three and a half years, and not once have I seen an entirely unknown user creating any sort of smear campaign. Anonymous trolls certainly do not have the amount of leverage necessary to make CMs fearful.

Even one user proves that this rule would be harmful. Should we block Yada (I think he retired, but if he were to return, hypothetically) for using ToR?

Moreover, creating a new rule without proper justification is a bad idea. It adds to the unnecessarily complicated rule system and would be just another rule added specifically because of a handful of trolls. Essentially it's allowing trolls to make our policy more complicated than necessary (just like what happened with all the ridiculous rules about prohibiting banned users from voting, etc.). Our policy is already convoluted as it is, and I am firmly opposed to any continuation of this trend.