 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Do not criticize a repentant editor in good standing for past misdeeds that have stopped reoccurring. This is a failure to assume good faith and instead is a personal attack. |
In the villages described in the Babylonian Talmud, for example, any kind of gossip or tale-bearing about other people — oral or written, true or false, friendly or mean — was considered a terrible sin because small communities have long memories and every word spoken about other people was thought to ascend to the heavenly cloud. (The digital cloud has made this metaphor literal.)
But the Talmudic villages were, in fact, far more humane and forgiving than our brutal global village, where much of the content on the Internet would meet the Talmudic definition of gossip: although the Talmudic sages believed that God reads our thoughts and records them in the book of life, they also believed that God erases the book for those who atone for their sins by asking forgiveness of those they have wronged.
In the Talmud, people have an obligation not to remind others of their past misdeeds, on the assumption they may have atoned and grown spiritually from their mistakes. “If a man was a repentant [sinner],” the Talmud says, “one must not say to him, ‘Remember your former deeds.’ ”
Unlike God, however, the digital cloud rarely wipes our slates clean, and the keepers of the cloud today are sometimes less forgiving than their all-powerful divine predecessor.
Wikipedia is a community with an infinitely long memory. Every word you have ever said on Wikipedia can be measured in bytes, and will be saved on a hard drive on some server. No one has a perfect record. Everyone has some misdeed or mistake in the past. That's how people learn. If someone makes a mistake and corrects it, you should once again assume good faith. It does not matter how big the past mistake or the disruption was. What matters is how the editor has learned from it and grown from it.
Wikipedia blocking policy states that sanctions are preventative, not punitive. If the editor is no longer violating any policy, it is against Wikipedia policy to keep reminding them of past misdeeds to malign their current actions. It is an accusation of bad faith, is a personal attack, and an example of incivility.
If you believe the editor is continuing their disruptive behavior, start a new discussion instead of bringing it into a current dispute.
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