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. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us